While this is a story it could be true.  Ōkiwi Brown, is set in the time of, Cristina Sanders other book Jerningham: early colonial Wellington, in all its rough and grubby glory.

Ōkiwi Brown draws heavily on historical fact and real-life characters to paint a picture of lives lived on the colonial fringe, away from what passed for ‘respectable’ society in the 1840s and ’50s. Two historically recorded suspicious deaths — first a child’s body found in a stream in 1846, his head cleaved open, and a drowned drunk washed up in 1852. The story is populated by whalers, soldiers, itinerants, drinkers and fighters — mostly male but some unlucky females occupying an even lower social standing.