The Extraordinary Life of Etienne Jean Brocher

When teenager Etienne Jean Brocher fled his Franco-Swiss border town home in the late 19th century, he found his way to Hamburg and a ship sailing for far-off New Zealand. There he began a life story that ended in 1897 on the Wellington gallows for a double murder he may not have committed.

Etienne Jean Brocher demonstrated perfectly how people like him fell afoul of social systems designed to create a perfect new society that was more illusion than reality. His interactions with police, the courts, the prison systems, shady financiers, duplicitous civic leaders and people on the make revealed a society set against anyone “different” and those who struggled to make the grade.

Brocher met his end at the hands of notorious New Zealand hangman Tom Long, whose own drunken exploits and antisocial behaviour scandalised the country for decades, testament to the brutality of the justice system of the time.

This, then, is a story about how the 19th-century “land of opportunity” New Zealand was not always so for a good many of its citizens.