28. New Zealand’s Founder and His Criminal Love
Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796 – 1862) was a British politician who played a key role in the colonization of Australasia. He is considered by many to be the founder of New Zealand. Before that, however, Wakefield had earned a footnote in history as the criminal defendant in a scandalous case involving the abduction and marriage of a fifteen-year-old.
Wakefield had been a diplomatic courier at the tail end of the Napoleonic Wars. Then he seduced a seventeen-year-old wealthy heiress in 1816, and got her to fall in love and elope with him. That netted him a marriage settlement from her father worth about U$8 million in 2020 dollars. However, his wife died soon after childbirth in 1820, and although now wealthy, Wakefield wanted more money to launch a political career – seems there was never a time when politicians were not obsessed with campaign finances. That quest eventually led him in 1827 to Ellen Turner, the only child of a wealthy textile manufacturer.