John Patrick Melody 1863-1942

The Family of John the Baptist
By Paul Melody

Note: click on the image to enlarge
There's a custom among New Zealanders to bestow nicknames on friends and relatives which are the opposite of the real thing. For instance, a bald man will be nicknamed Curly and a tall person will be called Shorty or Stumpy.

Some time after he and his family moved to Aramoho, at Wanganui, John Patrick Melody, son of William and Eliza, gained the name of "John the Baptist" from his neighbours. In the true Kiwi tradition, this was because J.P. was not exactly a saintly person!

Before that he'd become a freezing works butcher, and for a while was at the Patea works. While in Patea, he married an Australian girl of Irish descent, Mary Ellen Coleman from Maldon in Victoria. He was 23, she was 22.

Mary Ellen's-birthplace was the tiny settlement, of Porcupine Flat. At the age of 16 she came to New Zealand, and at first worked at the Whangaehu Hotel, between Marton and Wanganui, where an uncle, Owen McKittrick, was the publican.

J.P. and Mary Ellen - they called each other Johnny and Polly - had seven children, most born in Wanganui. Their order of arrival was: William John (Will or Bill), Eileen (Eily), Francis (Frank), Mary (Maidie), Eric (called Wira by his sisters), Magdalen (Penny) and Muriel (Bubs).

The family settled at Brunswick Road in Aramoho about 1900, where they owned a property which was later bought from them by Kempthorne Prosser's fertiliser company. J.P. became a butcher at the Imlay freezing works in Wanganui, and the family made their home on a 7-acre farmlet at 4D Brunswick Road, from where the children attended the Aramoho School.

In 1913 John Patrick was injured in a works accident, when a steel fitting from a travelling overhead chain fell on his head. He was unable to work at his trade again, but received only 65 pounds compensation.

As a result he and Mary Ellen raised their family on the meagre income from this tiny unit, which ran 8 dairy cows.

Polly sat alongside her husband on a stool and helped him to milk the cows. I have a vivid memory of this small, energetic lady at the age of 65, clad in a dress covered by a sugarbag apron, and wearing gumboots, as she rounded up each cow, then tethered them by a leg-rope to hold them while she milked.

As well as selling homemade butter, eggs, cream and milk the couple sold apples, plums, cape gooseberries, black and red currants and qµinces.

J.P. was a tall man, about 6ft in height, in contrast to his three sons, who were around 5 1/2 ft each. Maidie was the tallest girl, around 5ft 10ins.

In stature Mary Ellen was about the same height as her sons.

John Patrick had a wicked sense of humour and was an expert imitator. Eric recalled that often the Melody youngsters couldn't eat their meals at night because they were so exhausted by laughing at their father's imitations of people he'd met during the day.

PILLION PASSENGERS

The children all inherited J.P.'s sense of fun. The girls were a lively and attractive bunch, often to be seen perched as pillion passengers on motorbikes flashing around the streets of Wanganui during the Roaring Twenties.

Their mother was of sterner mould, though she showed quiet humour in later life. When Eric joined the Queen Alexandra Brass Band at the age of 15 (in 1916) he was obliged to sneak out of his bedroom window at night to attend practices because his mother refused to allow him inside a bandroom, believing they were dens of vice haunted by the criminal element.

I wonder if she knew he was also spending time in billiard rooms, where he became something of an expert. One day Dad and I went to Fitzgerald's billiard saloon in Palmerston North, when I was 26 or 27. Casually remarking that he'd had a misspent youth Dad played his first snooker game for many years and proceeded to wipe me off the table. Realising that he was playing against an incompetent, he gallantly gave me a 7 blacks start, and won that game too!

Gran, as all the Melody cousins called Mary Ellen, was a convert, having become a Catholic at the time of marrying John Patrick. As most Catholics know, converts are stricter about religious rules than those born to the Faith, as Dad found when he discovered his ability to play marbles.

While attending the Aramoho School Eric won a scholarship, at the age of 12, which admitted him to Wanganui Collegiate School. The gift of sharp eyesight which was useful in his later snooker playing days also served him well in games of marbles against his fellow Collegiate students, with the result that he won pocketfuls of marbles from them every week. Naturally he took the marbles home with pride, but his mother objected.

She declared it was unfair and unethical for Eric to be taking the marbles from his less skilful school-mates. So a pit was dug near the fowl-house on the Brunswick Road farm, where he was forced to throw his ill-gotten gains every week. And the cache of boyhood marbles probably is still buried there.

Of his spell at Collegiate, Eric recalled he didn't enjoy it because of the snobbishness and bullying he met as a scholarship boy and a Catholic. His best friend was a Jewish scholarship winner who was given the same treatment.

Night life for the Melody teenagers was strictly controlled by Mary Ellen, but the rules weren't always obeyed. One night Eric and his gay young sisters arrived home around 2 am from a dance, and queued to climb in a bedroom window. The girls were giggling merrily while Eric waited to follow them through the window.

Suddenly out of the darkness a voice complained, "Tell those girls to stop giggling, or we'll all get caught!" It was their father, John the Baptist, who had also enjoyed a night on the town!

Eily, Penny and Bubs.

John Patrick was the only son of William and Eliza Melody. He was claimed to be the first white child to be born in Arrowtown.