New Zealand was supposed to be a model society at the end of the world, a utopia for 'men and women of good character' who were willing to work hard for a better life. And, for most, so it proved. But this book is about the others - the misfits, the swindlers, the fallen women, the love rats, the escaped convicts, the hoaxers, the charlatans, the highwaymen, the mass murderers - from the earliest days of European settlement to the present day. Law Breakers and Mischief Makers gives the scandalous details of those who have made a name for themselves in New Zealand for all the wrong reasons. Take for example, Charlotte Badger, a pistol-wielding English thief who launched a mutiny on a Tasmanian convict ship in 1806 and sailed over to hide among the Maori of the Bay of Islands; and Amy Bock, a con woman who masqueraded as a wealthy man to marry the daughter of her landlady in 1909. Some of the people featured in this book are monsters, some are merely rascals, but all make fascinating reading.

Paperback
01-10-2009
Allen & Unwin
9781741759556
235 x 156 mm
256