“Are you sure this car is going back? I want to get to Queen Street,” asked the elderly man of William Clark, a butcher. The men were on a tramcar in Auckland’s Customs Street around 10pm on a Thursday in January 1914.
William said he would ring the bell so that the old man could get off at the next stop. When the tram was only about halfway between the stops, he alighted but missed his footing and was thrown from the tram. William, along with others, got off the tram and found the man unconscious in the street. He was conveyed to Auckland hospital where he gradually sank and died without regaining consciousness.
He was afterwards identified as 65-year-old Patrick Ligertwood, schoolmaster at the Waitomo Caves School. He had left Waitomo at the beginning of the week for Auckland, in order to see the Exhibition, having booked a room at one of the city hotels in advance. Newspapers called his demise an ‘Old Man’s mistake’ and the ‘Death of a country visitor.’
At the inquest William Johnston, farmer, of Waitomo, who had identified Patrick, said he had known him for about 12 months, but to his knowledge he had no relatives in the country. Patrick was unmarried, and originally came from Aberdeenshire, in Scotland. The coroner found that Patrick died from a skull fracture caused through jumping from an electric tramcar while it was in motion. The next week resolutions of regret were passed by the Education Board respecting the loss of Patrick.
Patrick’s teaching career in New Zealand seems to have begun around 1877, at Clarks Flat School, Otago. He was praised as possessing great ability and having the thorough confidence of the scholars. After a lecture at Clarks Flat by Rev Skinner on David Livingstone, the famous explorer, Patrick said that he had accidentally met Livingstone in Scotland in 1864. Over the next 36 years he taught in schools around New Zealand being either admired as the ‘popular Pat Ligertwood’ or leaving under a cloud.
While at Stoney Creek School, Manawatu, he was noted in a ‘Ramblings of a tramp’ newspaper story as a ‘scholastic curio’. An attempt to have him removed from this school backfired, being the action of a few malcontents. When he did leave there were some difficulties with a certificate and when he applied for further employment the Education Board did not hold out any hope of giving him any.
By 1897 he was at Pongaroa School, near Pahiatua, where he stayed for around 12 years. He was active in local clubs and was also correspondent for the local paper. Here he was caught up in a spat about where to hang a chart of the Ten Commandments.
In 1911 he left Pongaroa for the King Country. Now in his mid-60s he taught at Wairere Falls School and in 1913 came to Waitomo Caves School.
The man who had accidentally met David Livingstone was not returned to Waitomo but buried at Auckland’s Waikumete cemetery in an unmarked grave.
