Law Breakers and Mischief Makers: 50 Notorious New Zealanders

by Bronwyn Sell

0 ratings • 0 reviews • 0 shelved
Book cover for Law Breakers and Mischief Makers

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

New Zealand was supposed to be a model society at the end of the world, a utopia for 'men and women of good character' who were willing to work hard for a better life. And, for most, so it proved. But this book is about the others - the misfits, the swindlers, the fallen women, the love rats, the escaped convicts, the hoaxers, the charlatans, the highwaymen, the mass murderers - from the earliest days of European settlement to the present day...Law Breakers and Mischief Makers gives the scandalous details of those who've made a name for themselves in New Zealand for all the wrong reasons. Take for example, Charlotte Badger, a pistol-wielding English thief who launched a mutiny on a Tasmanian convict ship in 1806 and sailed over to hide among the Maori of the Bay of Islands, and Amy Bock, a con woman who masqueraded as a wealthy man to marry the daughter of her landlady in 1909...Some of the people featured in this book are monsters, some are merely rascals, but all make fascinating reading. A lot of the people featured in it have somewhat disappeared into the mists of time and readers will be surprised at the shady characters in this country's past.
  • ISBN10 1741768969
  • ISBN13 9781741768961
  • Publish Date 1 October 2009
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country AU
  • Imprint Allen & Unwin
  • Format eBook
  • Pages 208
  • Language English