Ben Löwenthal

Ben Löwenthal, the editor and publisher of the West Coast Times, occupies a pivotal place between Hokitika’s private dealings and its emerging public record. He gathers news, prints notices, and remembers the circumstances behind them with unusual precision. That attention makes him more than a local newspaperman: an advertisement he handled in June 1865 later helps expose the use of Crosbie Wells’s identity, while his reporting and questions bring less settled matters into view.

Newspaper and Public Life

When Löwenthal first arrived in New Zealand, the West Coast Times had not yet been founded. Its first issue appeared on 29 May 1865, with a print run of twenty copies: one for each of Hokitika’s eighteen hotels, one for the magistrate, and one for Löwenthal himself. He displayed that inaugural issue behind glass in his office, where seeing it every morning helped fix its date in his memory. The paper’s early scale was modest, but it was presented as Hokitika’s first daily gazette and soon became an important means of circulating local information.

Within a month, Löwenthal had acquired a steam-powered press, and the paper’s circulation had risen to two hundred. By January 1866, it printed nearly a thousand copies of each edition, and Löwenthal had hired two staff members. The contrast between the twenty-copy first issue and the later circulation gives his business a distinct place in the town’s changing public life: a notice placed in his office could reach a community increasingly linked by print.

That reach also mattered to local administration. When Harald Nilssen arranged to finance work connected with the prison project, he proposed advertising for tenders in the Times and sending Löwenthal a note directly. The newspaper could announce the tender and help bring labourers to the Auction Yards to be signed on. George Shepard reacted to the proposal by emphasizing Löwenthal’s Jewish identity, and then insisted that Nilssen’s investment of commission remain private. The scene shows the paper’s practical importance while also registering the prejudice that could attach to its publisher.

The Advertisement and Its Paper Trail

In June 1865, a scarred, dark-haired man entered Löwenthal’s office on Weld-street to advertise a missing shipping crate. He offered twenty pounds for its return, or fifty if it came back unopened, but did not disclose what it contained. Asked for his name, he supplied a birth certificate rather than answering aloud. Löwenthal copied down the name Crosbie Francis Wells and recorded an address on Gibson Quay as the place to which anyone finding the crate should direct a response.

The notice became memorable because of a small production problem. Its wording was one word too long for the two-inch column space the advertiser had paid for. The final word, Wells, would have been stranded at the top of a third column, so Löwenthal removed the middle name Francis to preserve the layout. The next morning, before noon, the advertiser returned and insisted that Francis be restored, without explaining why its inclusion mattered so much. Löwenthal apologized, reprinted the notice, and ran it again for the rest of the paid week, adding a further printing without charge.

Löwenthal could later date the encounter to June because the advertisement had been set on his old hand-powered press; the steam-powered machine arrived on 1 July. He could also recall the name and the missing middle name because the layout decision and the customer’s return had fixed the incident in his memory. When the account is reconstructed, the scarred advertiser is identified as Francis Carver, who had assumed the name Crosbie Francis Wells and produced a birth certificate bearing that name. Why Carver possessed the certificate, and how he had come by it, remain unresolved in the evidence available to Löwenthal and Walter Moody.

News of Crosbie Wells and the Estate

Löwenthal was also among the first people in Hokitika to hear that Crosbie Wells had died. Alistair Lauderback had just come from Wells’s cottage, where he had found the body, when Löwenthal interviewed him for a special report in the following morning’s paper. Lauderback’s account gave Löwenthal the news before the coroner arrived at the cottage.

He did not buy the Wells property himself. Knowing that Edgar Clinch was looking for an investment, Löwenthal told him that the estate would soon be for sale. Clinch came to Dick Mannering the next morning with a deposit, ready to purchase it. Mannering later suspected that Löwenthal’s so-called good turn to Clinch concealed knowledge of valuable gold and implied that the two men were acting together. Charlie Frost, explaining how the sale had proceeded, maintained that it was legal and said he knew nothing of such a partnership. The suspicion remains an accusation rather than an established fact; what is clear is that Löwenthal’s early knowledge of Wells’s death helped Clinch act quickly.

Questions About Anna Wetherell

After encountering Te Rau Tauwhare near Clinch, Löwenthal turned to a different uncertainty: the father of Anna Wetherell’s child, who had not survived. He asked Clinch whether he had known about the pregnancy before Anna spoke of it. Clinch said that her disclosure that evening was the first time he had heard of it, and that she had remained silent until then. He believed the father was a man from her Dunedin past, not someone from Hokitika, because the dates did not fit.

Löwenthal explained that Anna’s account had come under question after a conversation in the West Coast Times office. He did not declare that she had lied or accept Carver’s denial as decisive; instead, he considered the timing of her disclosure potentially significant. Clinch objected to treating Carver’s word as sufficient reason to doubt Anna, while Löwenthal made clear that he was not yet taking either side. Their exchange leaves the uncertainty intact, but shows Löwenthal testing what witnesses knew and when they knew it rather than treating a denial as proof.

His attention extends beyond testimony. As Clinch stroked his face, Löwenthal noticed the signs of careful grooming in his appearance and inferred that the hotelier had made an effort to look handsome for Anna. That observation does not resolve the question of paternity, but it reveals Löwenthal as an attentive reader of conduct as well as documents: he notices the small preparations that may disclose an attachment a person has not stated outright.

Memory, Identity, and Evidence

Löwenthal’s recollection becomes important because the case depends on names appearing in documents whose meanings are uncertain. His account establishes that a man presented a birth certificate for Crosbie Francis Wells in June, advertised for a missing crate, and insisted that the middle name Francis be printed. The later examination of a bill of sale for the barque Godspeed adds a separate piece of evidence: Moody observes that the purchaser’s signature, written as Francis Wells, has an ambiguous flourish that could also be read as C. Francis Wells. He connects that ambiguity to Carver’s earlier possession of the birth certificate, while still considering whether the shared middle name or the certificate itself might have another explanation.

The dispute is eventually tested by comparing signatures rather than relying on the names alone. In court, Moody states that the signature on Lauderback’s private correspondence matches the signature on the deed of gift witnessed by Crosbie Wells and on Wells’s marriage certificate, but not the signature on the Godspeed bill of sale submitted by Carver. He uses that difference to argue that the bill of sale is forged. Löwenthal does not make that courtroom comparison, but the advertisement he preserved in memory forms part of the documentary trail that makes the assumed identity legible.

His narrative function lies in this combination of civic record-keeping and human recollection. A newspaper column has limited space; a middle name is removed to prevent a typographic widow, then restored at the advertiser’s insistence. Months later, precisely those details matter because the printed record and Löwenthal’s memory preserve what an assumed name was meant to obscure. The paper does not settle every question about the certificate or Carver’s motives, but it gives Moody a dated, concrete account against which the later documents can be read.