In 1920 New Zealanders were shocked by the news that the brilliant, well-connected mayor of Whanganui had shot a young gay poet, D'Arcy Cresswell, who was blackmailing him. They were then riveted by the trial that followed.
Mackay was sentenced to hard labour and later left the country, only to be shot by a police sniper during street unrest in Berlin during the rise of the Nazis.
Mackay had married into Whanganui high society, and the story has long been the town’s dark secret. The outcome of years of digging by historian Paul Diamond, Downfall: The destruction of Charles Mackay shines a clear light on the vengeful impulses behind the blackmail and Mackay’s ruination.
The cast of this tale includes the Prince of Wales, the president of the RSA, Sir Robert Stout, Blanche Baughan . . . even Lady Ottoline Morrell. But it is much more than an extraordinary story of scandal. At its heart, the Mackay affair reveals the perilous existence of homosexual men at that time and how society conspired to control and punish them.
Table of Contents:
FOREWORD 6
INTRODUCTION 8
PROLOGUE: Death in Berlin 10
1. Ridgway St 12
2. Blackmail 20
3. The trial 38
4. Mackay 56
5. Motive 90
6. Prison 106
7. Punishment 130
8. London 146
9. Berlin 160
10. Blutmai 184
11. Cresswell 212
12. Nemesis 228
13. Erasure 246
EPILOGUE 270
NOTES 282
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 308
INDEX 318
About the Author :
Paul Diamond (Ngāti Hauā, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) is Curator, Māori at the Alexander Turnbull Library. He is the author of A Fire in Your Belly: Māori leaders speak (Huia, 2003), Makereti: Taking Māori to the world (Random House, 2007) and Savaged to Suit: Māori and cartooning in New Zealand (Fraser Books, 2018). He has previously worked as an oral historian and broadcaster, and in 2017 he was awarded Creative New Zealand’s Berlin Writer’s Residency.
Review :
A crucial New Zealand story
Scandalous, gossipy and . . . historically revealing
Downfall remains a crucial resource for any future examination of . . . the evolution of New Zealand social and sexual attitudes. Diamond’s work is original and essential . . . It is a book of international importance
‘Meticulously researched and beautifully written’ — Catie Gilchrist, Australian Historical Studies
