Howick Historical Village

🖤 This Friday: Matariki – Reclaiming Indigenous Death Practices

Join Trinity Hereora, Aratohu tangihanga and natural funeral guide, for a 1.5-hour session on natural and Indigenous approaches to end-of-life care. From death certification basics to hands-on shrouding with whāriki and natural materials like mānuka and kawakawa.

📅 Friday 17 July, 11:00am–12:30pm
📍 Howick Historical Village, 75 Bells Road
🎟️ Adults $22 / Student & Senior $20 (includes entry to the Village)

All proceeds go to Trinity Hereora. Bookings recommended, places limited.

Suitable for 16+.
👉 Book now: historicalvillage.org.nz/workshops/deathpractices

🎉 Swap the screens for something real these school holidays!
Head to Howick Historical Village for a full fortnight of Matariki magic ✨

📅 Sat 4 – Sun 19 July | 10am–4pm daily
📍 75 Bells Road, Pakuranga

What's on:
🧵 Tuesdays — Rag rug making
🪡 Wednesdays — Cross stitch a badge or ornament
🧶 Thursdays — Spinning, weaving & pom poms
📝 Saturdays — Old-fashioned school lesson (slates included!)
🧈 Sundays — Churn your own butter

PLUS, special ticketed workshop with master carver Calvin Devine (Ngāpuhi):
🎶 Thu 16 July, 11am–1pm — Craft a porotiti & pūrerehua (ages 10+)
💵 Only $12pp via Eventfinda (village admission not included), spots are limited, book now!

✨ FOLKLORE & FAIRYTALES IS BACK, AND IT'S GOING TO BE MAGIC ✨

Last year's event was a huge hit with everyone who came along and this year we're making it even better!

We've teamed up with the wonderful to help you craft your own enchanted forest crown 👑

Add puppet shows, fairytale trail, Morris dancers, bagpipes, a Victorian schoolroom, blacksmiths, candle making & old-fashioned sweets... it's a full day of folklore & fairytale fun for the whole whānau.

📅 Sunday, 9 August 2026 | 🕙 10am–4pm
📍 Howick Historical Village
⚠️ Tickets are limited.

Find out more here: historicalvillage.org.nz/eventslivedays/folkloreandfairytales2026

Create Your Own Signature Scent This Matariki.

Join us at Howick Historical Village for a Botanicals Perfume Making Workshop. A hands-on session where you'll blend your own custom fragrance using essential oils and botanical notes.

Matariki is a time for reflection and looking ahead, so we've built this workshop around that idea: craft a scent that captures who you are now, and who you're becoming.

📅 Friday, 10 July 2026
🕥 Two sessions: 10:30am–12:00pm or 1:00pm–2:30pm
📍 75 Bells Road, Pakuranga, Auckland
💰 $45 workshop + $18 village admission
🔞 Recommended for ages 14+

Spots are limited in each session, so get in early! Book now via Eventfinda: www.eventfinda.co.nz/2026/botanicals-perfume-workshop/auckland/howick

HISTORICALLY UNHINGED: This week we’re looking at the surprisingly gruesome world of Victorian grave robbing for medicine.

Ever seen an old iron cage sitting over a grave and wondered what it was for? Those are mortsafes, heavy metal frames families installed over fresh graves to stop body snatchers from digging up their loved ones.

Picture this: it's 1827, and to become a doctor in Edinburgh, you need a body to dissect. Not a diagram. Not a plastic model. An actual human body. And there aren't nearly enough to go around.

For centuries, religious and social taboos meant medical schools could legally only get their hands on the bodies of executed criminals. But as medical schools multiplied and demand for cadavers soared, the number of executions simply couldn't keep up. So, people got creative. Grave robbing became a booming, gruesome side hustle. Steal a body, sell it to a medical school, no questions asked.

Two men took this 'business model' to its most horrifying conclusion. Their names were William Burke and William Hare, and rather than dig up the dead, they decided it would be easier to just... make some. Between 1827 and 1828, they murdered at least sixteen people in Edinburgh and sold the bodies for dissection to one Dr. Robert Knox.

A chilling story on its own, but the twist is that it doesn't end in Edinburgh; it follows a trail all the way to New Zealand, and in more ways than one...

The buyer's brother started a new life here. The man who bought Burke and Hare's bodies was Edinburgh anatomist Dr. Robert Knox, and when the scandal broke, his career and reputation were finished.

His younger brother, Frederick John Knox, who had worked as Robert's assistant, landed in Wellington in 1840, possibly to get away from his brother's now disgraced reputation. Rather than fading into obscurity, he would become a fixture in the young colony: Resident Medical Officer at the Karori Asylum, Coroner at Porirua, and a founding member of what is now the Royal Society of New Zealand alongside historical figures such as Sir George Grey.

Here's the part that keeps us up at night: One of the killers may have jumped ship, too. William Hare struck a deal, testified against Burke, and walked free, then vanished completely. No one knows what happened to him. That mystery was too good for New Zealand author Cristina Sanders to resist. Her historical novel Ōkiwi Brown imagines Hare washing up in 1840s Wellington and quietly running a pub under a new name, hiding in plain sight.

The Burke & Hare murders even shaped laws. Burke and Hare's crimes were so shocking that they led to changes in medical law across the British Empire, and New Zealand inherited that legacy along with British common law. Our own Anatomy Acts and Human Tissue Acts were modelled directly on the legislation that followed the scandal, and they still underpin how institutions like the University of Otago Medical School handle body donation and dissection today.

So next time you walk past a cemetery or listen to a true-crime podcast, remember: some of Edinburgh's darkest history may have quietly settled in right here.