Mt Eden’s future collides with Sāmoa’s history

A now‑empty 170‑year‑old prison in the centre of Tāmaki Makaurau is stirring debate over its future.

Some want Mount Eden Prison demolished; others imagine an Alcatraz‑style tourist site.

Retired sociologist — and former inmate — Greg Newbold told Radio New Zealand he favours preservation:

“Oh, it’s a museum… a relic of a past era. It should never, ever be pulled down.”

Whenever I pass the stone fortress, opened in 1856, I think of one of its most unlikely prisoners: Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, a tamaʻāiga of Sāmoa. Seized from his fale in 1928, deported to Auckland, and jailed in Mt Eden, he returned home only to be killed by New Zealand police months later on Apia’s Beach Road — the event Sāmoans call Aso Pogisa, the dark day.

By 1928 the Mau movement had united Sāmoans in a campaign for self‑government. New Zealand’s administration, in place since 1914, had become intolerable. Administrator Stephen Allen responded by creating a military police force and ordering the arrest of Tupua Tamasese, claiming he was a Mau leader.

Before dawn on 27 November 1928, 37 armed police raided Vaimoso. They carried Lee‑Enfields with fixed bayonets and two Lewis machine‑guns. Policeman Kenneth Grinling later wrote that the chief was “encircled with a ring of bayonets before the village could rub the sleep from its eyes.”

As Tupua Tamasese was led away, stones were thrown, and the Lewis gun was trained on the crowd. Handcuffed, he raised his arms and called out: “Filemu Sāmoa, filemu Sāmoa” — peace, Sāmoa.

He was held nine days before Judge William Woodward sentenced him to six weeks for contempt of court, then six months for resisting arrest. Allen insisted he serve the term in New Zealand:

“He is not a criminal, but a spoilt child… if subject to real discipline he may change his views.”

Senior civil servant Carl Berendsen escorted him aboard the trader Tofua. Tupua Tamasese was handcuffed to a bunk. In Suva, Fiji police refused involvement; Berendsen hired two men — one to watch the other. He later told British scholar Margery Perham he tried to cheer the “poor boy,” calling him “Tammy,” a grotesque familiarity given Berendsen’s role in the arrest.