Payroll Robbery Murder Site Monument Runanga

“The prisoner will be taken to the place of execution and there hanged by the neck until he is dead.”

Such was the sobering sentence passed in 1918 on William Eggers McMahon by a Christchurch court. McMahon had been found guilty of murdering two local Runanga men during a payroll heist in that area the previous year. A monument now marks the site of the hold-up.

On it, the words read: ‘Erected By The Residents Of The District To The Memory Of William Hall And John Coulthard, Who Met A Tragic End At This Spot, November 9 1917’. The court had been told during the trial how, on that tragic day, Paymaster William Hall was delivering wages to the local coal mines when his motor-car ran into a large box at a cutting on the Seven Mile Road, just south of Runanga, nowadays the Greymouth-Runanga Road.

The driver, John Coulthard, got out to clear the obstruction. Suddenly, a masked man leapt from the cover of bushes by the roadside. With revolvers in both hands he began firing towards Mr Coulthard and the car. Like a true, blue highwayman the robber grabbed the wages bag, which contained £3659 in notes and coins, and disappeared back into the bushes. As people arrived on the scene it was found that Coulthard was dying from gunshot wounds, Hall was mortally injured, and a backseat passenger, Isaac James, had been shot in the backside. Just six days later, McMahon was arrested in Christchurch when his steel trunk was found, with the stolen money inside, at a boarding house in Gloucester Street. He was duly charged and evidence gathered, before his trial began several months later.

This crime would have had a huge impact on the tiny mining community of Runanga. Not only were the miners robbed of their hard-earned wages for a week, but the fact that two of their own lay dead, and a third was injured, would have touched many local families deeply. Runanga was then only 14 years old, having been first settled as a mining town in 1903. Electric power was yet to arrive in the area, the settlement was still surrounded by thick west-coast forest, roads were rough and rutted, and the worst crime to be reported in previous years had been a fight at the Dunnollie Hotel, an offence for which the participants were fined £1 each.

It was a small town indeed.

Image Credits: Dir George Grey Heritage Collections, Auckland Libraries. Auckland Weekly News, 1917 Looking up a valley at the settlement of Dunollie, beside Runanga over a road, a church and houses. Buildings of the Runanga state coal mine sit on the hill to the right. In the foreground are the stumps from forest clearance. Arrested at Christchurch on the charge of committing the Runanga murder and robbery: Frederick William Eggers (x) leaving the magistrate's court after being formally charged. Showing a car with passengers on Point Elizabeth Road, Runanga on the spot where a gunman held up three men on 9 November 1917. He was positioned to the left beside the road where a man and woman stand. The bicycle marks the spot where the car's driver, John Coulthard was shot and killed. The other occupants of the car, Isaac James, manager of the state coal mine at Runanga and William Hall, the pay clerk, were wounded. The event is described in text beneath the caption.