Joseph Oram Sheppard, Sr.

Joseph made a fortune from the White Hart Hotel, invested it in station property and went bankrupt. He was married 3 times.

His mother was of the Oram family, of hotel fame in New Zealand.

His sister married Hadfield, and his first wife was Hadfield's daughter, Maria Alice.

His second wife, Nellie Hart, was the granddaughter of the original owner of the White Hart Hotel, under whom he had worked, and from whom he bought the hotel.

In October 1888, while managing the City Bar, Sheppard allowed J. K. Pawsey to drink and ‘shout’ at the bar and draw cheques on his agents long after he had run out of funds. Sheppard was charged with ‘inciting to drink’. However, the Resident Magistrate (and formerly a Canterbury Provincial Council grandee) John Ollivier was notoriously lenient towards publicans and let him off.

T. B. Bain wrote ‘a neat and witty rhyme’ on the incident but another Resident Magistrate decided that it was libellous. The verse began:

When gentle Sheppard guards his flock
in ‘City’ of the Plains ….

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