Mary Beatrice Dobie

Mary, her sister Bertha and their mother had sailed to New Zealand in 1877 to join their brother Herbert, an engineer working in building railways for the new colony.

The many deaths of Mary Dobie : murder, politics and revenge in nineteenth-century New Zealand (2015) by David Hastings. Dreadful murder at Opunake', said the Taranaki Herald, 'Shocking outrage', the Evening Post in Wellington when they learned in November 1880 that a young woman called Mary Dobie had been found lying under a flax bush near Ōpunake on the Taranaki coast with her throat cut so deep her head was almost severed. In the midst of tensions between Māori and Pākehā, the murder ignited questions: Pākehā feared it was an act of political terrorism in response to the state's determination to take the land of the tribes in the region. Māori thought it would be the cue for the state to use force against them, especially the pacifist settlement at Parihaka. Was it rape or robbery, was the killer Māori or Pākehā?

Mary Beatrice Dobie was a gifted artist who produced many sketches of New Zealand scenery for the London Graphic, a magazine owned and edited by her uncle. She was murdered while visiting family at Ōpunake on 25 November 1880. She had walked to Te Namu Bay to sketch Mt Egmont/Taranaki for the Graphic. When she failed to return that evening, a search party was organised and around 9.30 p.m. her body was found. Source: http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/hokianga-chief-patuone-arrives-in-sydne...