The Whanganui affair

What led to the downfall of a gay 1920s mayor remains cloaked in mystery and intrigue, but Paul Diamond ultimately uncovers a story of resistance.

- SALLY BLUNDELL

Saturday in downtown Whanganui. A gunshot rings out. A chair crashes through a first floor window. A young man yells, "Help! I have been shot." He is seen to struggle with an older man. Engineer Colin Cameron and labourer Sydney Sykes bound up the stairs.

"Mr Mackay has shot me," says the young man. "Get a car and take me to a doctor." "I accidentally shot him while I was demonstrating an automatic revolver," says the older man.

"I am dying," says the younger man. "I feel I am going. Give my love to my mother." The opening to Paul Diamond's Downfall is unashamedly melodramatic, but the story of the attempted murder of 24-yearold soldier-poet Walter D'Arcy Cresswell by Whanganui Mayor Charles Mackay on May 15, 1920 remains a mystery mired in fear, secrecy, political rivalry and homophobia.

"As a gay man in New Zealand of my generation, there is this curiosity about other gay lives," says Diamond, who was born in 1968. "Perhaps that's to do with things being hidden, being consciously and deliberately ignored. The world they lived in was so different. If there is no age of consent and all sex between men is illegal, then it's completely underground." Despite a bullet in his right lung, Cresswell survives to tell his story.

In a police statement, he explains that, after meeting the mayor during his brief visit to the town, he discovered "a certain disgusting feature" in Mackay's character: "I purposely encouraged him to display his qualities in this nature which I expected." On getting proof of the mayor's "dirty intentions", he tells Mackay he must resign from office. "I did not want to judge him but I was determined he had no business to be mayor." Mackay pleads with the young man. He threatens suicide. He assures him he had sought medical assistance for his "complaint".