In April 1873, Timaru woke to upsetting news. Thomas Bottomley, a familiar figure in town and known locally as “the bellman”, was found dead at the foot of a steep cutting beside the Timaru Landing and Shipping Company’s premises. The discovery set in motion a formal inquest and a stronger public conversation about alcohol, public safety, and the responsibilities of the town’s growing businesses.
A Fall on a Dark Track
On the evening of 22 April 1873, Bottomley was seen in good spirits but affected by drink. Witnesses agreed he was “in liquor but not drunk”. He left Hobbs’s Hotel around half past seven and was later spotted heading along the track near the Bank of New Zealand. It was a common route towards the landing service, used for years before new excavations scooped steep banks into the hillside.
Before dawn the next morning two boatmen, Frederick Clarkson and Samuel Hatfield, noticed a shape below the cutting and climbed down. They found Bottomley lying face-down at the base of an 8 to 11-foot drop. His hat had been seen on the track above the brink.
Constable Alexander Macdonald and Dr Patrick McIntyre examined the scene. Bottomley had suffered a severe fracture to the right side of his skull and facial injuries consistent with a fall. His clothes were undisturbed, his pockets held sixteen shillings, and there was no sign of foul play.
The jury returned a verdict of accidental death, adding a firm rider: the landowners were at fault for leaving such a dangerous cutting unfenced where a public path ran along the edge.
A Commentary on Drink and Public Responsibility
The Timaru Herald used the tragedy to argue for stricter responsibility on the sale of alcohol, urging that publicans should be penalised for serving already-intoxicated men. Bottomley’s death became part of a wider discussion about drink-related harm in colonial towns and the need for safer working and walking environments around the developing port.
Why Thomas Was Buried in Row 0 – Free Ground
Bottomley left behind a wife and children who were described in the newspaper as “utterly destitute”. A small subscription was raised for them, amounting to about £20 by the following evening, but this was support for the living, not for funeral costs.
In 1873, Timaru’s cemetery was still young and only partly developed. Burial fees were required for most plots, and families who could not afford them were placed in Row 0, also called the Free Ground. These plots were unpurchased, unreserved, and often unmarked. They were used for the poorest residents, travellers, labourers with no savings, women who died in childbirth, infants, and those whose families lacked funds for a private plot.
Thomas’s sudden death, the family’s financial distress, and the lack of any pre-purchased burial allotment meant he was laid to rest in this earliest section of the cemetery. A grave in Free Ground came with no fencing, no stone, and no lasting record beyond the cemetery ledger. It was a common reality for working men of the era, especially those on irregular wages or affected by drink, injury, or illness.
Thomas Bottomley’s name survives mainly in the inquest reports and the brief notice that followed. Yet even these short records show something of the man: known around town, spoken of with sympathy, and mourned enough for the community to raise money for his family at short notice.
His grave, like so many in Row 0, may have no stone, but the story behind it reveals the pressures of early port towns, the dangers of unfenced works, and the harsh realities for families living close to the edge. It also reminds us why cemetery history matters. These small, unmarked plots tell stories of working people whose lives kept Timaru moving but who slipped quickly from the written record.
Side Quest: What the Timaru Cemetery Was Like in 1873
When Thomas Bottomley was carried to his grave in April 1873, the Timaru Cemetery was a very different place from what we know today. It was only just beginning the slow transformation from rough paddock to a cared-for landscape of remembrance. At the time of his burial, the cemetery had a reputation that would make today’s visitors shudder. The Timaru Herald had been calling it “a disgraceful piece of public property”.
A place of weeds, tussock, and neglect
For years the cemetery had been left almost entirely unattended. The newspaper described it bluntly:
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Rank weeds grew everywhere
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A dense covering of coarse tussock grass rolled across the entire section
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A few fenced graves stood out, tended by grieving families
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These rare tended plots only made the surrounding wilderness look worse
Walkers described it as a bleak, uneven, wind-swept site, far from the well-planned Victorian cemeteries developing in larger centres.
In this environment, graves in the Free Ground (Row 0) blended quickly into the landscape. Without fencing, stones, or levelled soil, they simply disappeared under tussock and weather. For people like Bottomley, whose families had no money for a private plot, burial meant returning to a place that looked more like open countryside than a cemetery.
A turning point in 1873
Just a few months before Bottomley died, a newly active Cemetery Managing Board began to tackle the problem. The newspaper praised this as a long-overdue improvement.
By April 1873:
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About 2½ acres had finally been cleared, dug, and levelled
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New grass had been sown over the individual grave allotments
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Main roadways and smaller paths were formed and gravelled
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Old lumpy mounds of raw clay were finally flattened
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Recently dug graves waiting for grass were the only exceptions
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A rule was introduced prohibiting wheeled vehicles inside the gates
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A caretaker was about to be appointed (for the first time)
For the first time, the cemetery looked like a place of respect rather than an afterthought at the edge of town.
Free Ground: the borderland between order and wilderness
Even with these improvements, the Free Ground sat on the very margins of order. In the early cemetery layout, purchased plots were the first to be tidied and levelled. Free burials, by contrast, were placed in the least desirable parts of the ground. In many colonial cemeteries, these were:
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edges of sections
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back rows
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corners of the consecrated area
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low or uneven ground
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places not yet fully developed
This is why Row 0 existed at all. It wasn’t just a “free” area. It was literally outside the neat rows. A space used because no one could afford otherwise.
When Thomas Bottomley was buried there in April 1873, the cemetery was in transition. Some areas were becoming orderly and green. Others, including the older and poorer sections, were still rough ground.
His burial likely took place in a patch of land that had not yet been included in the improvements, where tussock still grew thick and the soil lay uneven. The grave would have been a simple, unmarked mound, pressed into the earth with no fencing or memorial.
Why this matters
Understanding what the cemetery truly looked like gives deeper meaning to the record of Row 0 – Free Ground. It reminds us that:
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Bottomley’s burial place was shaped by poverty
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The cemetery was only just beginning to receive public care
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Free Ground graves were the most vulnerable to being lost
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Early working people in Timaru often disappeared into the landscape unless their stories were preserved in newspapers or community memory
The cemetery of 1873 tells us about social hierarchies, municipal priorities, and how colonial towns valued — or neglected — their dead. In its rawness we can see the lives of labourers, boatmen, bellmen, women who died young, and families without means. Their stories lie beneath the tussock, waiting for us to look closely.