He was working as a labourer and caretaking a boarding house in Wellesley St in 1955 when he got into a fight with Johnny McBride (real name Alan Jacques) at a party at the boarding house.
Paddy had allowed McBride to stay a few nights (rent free), but McBride proved to be reluctant to leave. This caused quite a bit of anxiety for Paddy who had never really taken to the guy who had proven not to be the ideal “boarder” and got violent when spoken to about leaving. Paddy had also got word that his landlady was coming back from holiday and she had told him that he was not to let rooms while she was away. The last altercation had McBride raising his fist, dropping it and walking out, leaving his gear behind.
Paddy decided to have a party to belatedly celebrate his 20th birthday, having had the flu (likely contracted from McBride) on the day. He went to Ye Old Barn Cafe in Queen St and invited a few friends who decided to make it a bit bigger do than Paddy anticipated. McBride was there at the time and Paddy said that he was not invited. When Paddy got back to the house the party was in full swing and McBride was once again there. When he told McBride again that he was not invited, McBride apparently laughed and told him that he was a boarder so therefore of course he was.
Things reached boiling point at the party when Paddy caught McBride kissing a 16 year old girl that Paddy intended sleeping with, despite already having a girlfriend. The two came to blows and McBride, the larger of the two, gave Paddy a good hiding. According to a close friend Paddy wasn’t a fighter, being of slight build and also recently ill with influenza.
The next day Paddy was back at Ye Old Barn Café waiting for his girlfriend, who he arranged to meet prior to the happenings of the night before. He went to the jukebox and selected a song, McBride leaned over him and changed the song. Paddy changed it back and so did McBride. McBride then hit Paddy in the eye and invited him outside. Paddy instead sat down at a table with friends and said “my eye”. Shortly afterwards he jumped up, saying “I’ve had a guts full of this” and “I’m sick of getting a hiding all the time”. He then pulled out a kitchen knife from his pocket and stabbed McBride, who was waiting in the aisle with his back to Paddy, in the neck. McBride slid down a post bleeding heavily and some of the bystanders, trying to help him, rolled him over onto the floor, driving the knife in further.
At his trial Paddy told the jury his version of what took place, including the fact that he was drunk and disoriented at the time and afraid of McBride, who boasted he had never lost a fight.
To quote Paddy: “He (meaning McBride) was the kind of chap who’d kick you till your guts dropped out or your shoes caved in. I’d taken the knife out of my pocket just as I rose from my seat. I took it out of my pocket to defend myself when I got outside. I thought I’d need the knife because I didn’t have much show – I’d heard he carried a knife and I’d seen one. I didn’t stand a show against him. I got the knife out; I was just overcome or something. Maybe it was fright, or funk. I don’t know what it was. All I remember is making a lunge at him”.
Paddy then left Ye Olde Barn Café in a daze, wandered around for a while, then handed himself in at the police station, not realising that Johnny McBride was dead.
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| Paddy Black's grave - photo by Geri Eccles |
Another thing that may have influenced the trial was the evidence given by the young woman that Paddy and McBride fought over at the party. A pretty and confident party girl who loved being the centre of attention and was convinced that the animosity between the two men was solely because of her, the evidence that she gave may have painted Paddy in a worse light, as a promiscuous moral delinquent so feared by the older generation.
Paddy was sentenced to hang as an example to other wayward teenagers. An appeal was dismissed and he was hanged on the 5th of December 1955 at the age of just 20.
The Truth newspaper, sickened by Attorney-General Jack Marshall’s apparent inflexibility, sent a reporter to cover the hanging and instructed them to describe what they actually witnessed in the floodlit stone yard of Mt Eden.
“Black did not walk bravely or imperturbably or any other way to the scaffold. As they all do, he shuffled. He shuffled because the movement of his body was harnessed. His arms at the elbows were shackled to the body with broad leather straps, his crossed hands were strapped in front of him and his legs were pinioned above the knee,” Truth wrote.
“Death comes to men in many forms. Black met death at the top of the stairs in the shape of a chunky figure dressed as if for a fishing expedition on a stormy day. This was the hangman. He wore a felt hat pulled down low over his eyes. To hide his eyes he wore sunglasses … this garish figure waiting at the back of the platform looked ludicrously out of touch like an actor in some fifth-rate melodrama.
“Black looked down, wished everyone a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year. The warders closed round him. They pinioned his ankles, drew the noose down over his neck and placed a white hood over his head. The sheriff raised his hand carrying the warrant of execution. Death in dark glasses performed his office. Black was no longer there. The white rope was taut. The rope oscillated like a leisurely pendulum.”
Four executions had gone ahead in 1955, but popular support for the death penalty appeared to be waning. A national abolitionist movement made its presence felt but it was the Truth article describing Paddy’s hanging that probably did the most that year to turn the tide. As it was, Paddy was the second to last person to be executed in New Zealand before hanging was officially abolished in October 1961, with hanging being retained for treason until 1989.
Compiled by Geri Eccles and Kath Kingswood
Source: NZ Herald 24/8/14 "Haunted by the Jukebox Killer"
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11313442
Recommended reading: "This Mortal Boy" - by Fiona Kidman
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