Felix Wakefield

Felix Wakefield (born January 1807 in Tottenham , London , England , † December 23, 1875 in Sumner , Christchurch , New Zealand ) came from the Wakefield family and was a surveyor, lieutenant colonel in the British Army and colonist in South Australia and New Zealand.

The best-known siblings were his brothers Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796-1862), Daniel Bell Wakefield (1798-1858), Arthur Wakefield (1799-1843) and William Hayward Wakefield (1801-1848).

Live and act

As the seventh child of Edward Wakefield (1774–1854) and Susanna Crash (1767–1816), after their father had lost his farm in 1807 and lived in Westminster , London , he grew up mainly with his grandmother Priscilla , ( Quaker and writer (1751– 1832)) in Tottenham , London. His mother Susanna and some of his siblings lived in changing constellations in the grandmother's house. Felix was often sick, like his mother Susanna and when she died in 1816 he and his two younger sisters Priscilla and Percy were left without proper care.

In 1823, at the age of 16, he left the Tottenham Grammar School in London to work for his father with his brother Daniel. When his father went to Blois in France , he followed him, learned to speak French fluently and impregnated the domestic servant Marie Felice Eliza Bailley, whom he finally had to marry under pressure from his father before the child was born in 1831. Constance was the first of nine children born by 1846.

His father's pressure must have been one of the decisive factors in emigrating to Tasmania in April 1832 . When he arrived in Hobart , he quickly got a job as a surveyor's assistant, quarreled with his superiors, and then moved to Launceston in October 1833 to take a job as a land surveyor from the government.

Critics described Felix Wakefield as erratic, moody, irritable and with a stubborn tendency to assert and assert oneself. Socially disadvantaged in his childhood, he lacked the ability to write decent English and formulate acceptable business letters. He was also said to have little sense of money and to be employed.

Knowing about his brother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield wrote a long letter from London with tips and advice for Felix. However, in November 1835, the Launceston office closed and Felix tried farming, doing odd jobs as a surveyor, selling land, or working for real estate lawyers. None of these efforts could prevent financial decline and family growth. At the beginning of 1839, when the fifth child was on the way, he was also charged with incorrect land surveys. In 1840, the family was almost destitute, he tried twice at gambling and won. With the money he was able to finance the legal battle and was finally rehabilitated in July 1840.

In 1847, the ninth child was born, he left his wife Marie with the youngest child in Tasmania, went back to England with the other eight children and suddenly stood unexpectedly in front of his brother's house, penniless and unkind, as Edward Gibbon Wakefield later recalled. Marie went to Adelaide with her young daughter in October 1847 and never saw her husband Felix Wakefield again. Three of their children, Murat, Salvator and Ariosto, came back to Australia around 1853/54, looked for and supported their mother.

Felix Wakefield received two attractive offers in the years 1847 to 1849 to go to New Zealand as a surveyor , but turned them down under pressure from his brother Edward. He did not trust the development of the New Zealand Company during these years and, moreover, did not consider his brother Felix to be capable or experienced enough.

In 1851 Felix accepted the third offer from John Robert Godley to come to Canterbury and help with the construction as a specialist. Felix arrived in Lyttelton on November 10, 1851 with six children . In early 1852 he left Canterbury after falling out with Godley to go to Wellington . In the care of Constance, the eldest at 20, he left his children to themselves for almost three years.

Returning to England in May 1855, he joined the British Army as an engineer, helping to plan the construction of the railway line from Balaklava to Sevastopol , which was used for the Crimean War and which would then go down as the first strategic railway line in railway history. After many military assignments, he returned to London in 1859.

When his brother Edward died in Wellington on May 16, 1862, he took legal action against his son Edward Jerningham Wakefield to get a piece of land in Canterbury, which Edward Gibbon is said to have promised him. Edward Jerningham gave in and so Felix, also encouraged by Prime Minister Edward William Stafford to get permanent residency status, went back to New Zealand in 1863 and settled in 1864 on his brother Edward Gibbon's farm in Sumner near Christchurch .

In 1867 he went to Wellington to make a living as a secretary on various committees and commissions. From July 1870 until his retirement in 1874 he worked in frustration as a clerk in the Nelson Post Office and wrote letters to the management to give him a better position and recognition as a Wakefield. On December 23, 1875, Felix Wakefield died lonely on his farm in Sumner of a heart attack .

literature

• Philip Temple : A sort of conscience - The Wakefields . Auckland University Press , Auckland 2002, ISBN 1-86940-276-6 (English).

Web links

• Bernard John Foster : Wakefield, Felix . In: An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand . Alexander Hare McLintock , April 22, 2009, accessed May 25, 2016 .