On Friday, 16 October, a small ceremony was held at the Oamaru Old Cemetery block to reunite Jessie Marguerite Fendall with her fingers, 80 years after they were removed to help eliminate her fingerprints from the investigation into her death.
Accompanied by staff from the Otago Coastal policing area, Brian Collinge, one of Jessie's relatives, attended the poignant ceremony where a small wooden box containing her fingers was buried at her last resting place.
Jessie's fingers have been under the guardianship of the New Zealand Police Museum since it began, having originally been used as part of the New Zealand Police Forensics Collection.
In July this year the Police Museum, under the stewardship of Director Rowan Carroll, began the repatriation of the remains of 37 individuals they've had in their care for many years. The repatriation of Jessie's fingers marked the 33rd set of remains the Museum has completed, but this time there was more than just reuniting Jessie that the museum staff had to consider.
For the first time in the museum's repatriation project, staff have been working with the direct relatives of one of the individuals.
"The previous 32 repatriations we have completed have been for individuals who have been unidentifiable or have had no living relatives who could be identified," says Rowan Carroll, Director of the New Zealand Police Museum. "However, with Jessie, we were able to identify some of her living relatives, but it was difficult."
"Only one of Jessie's siblings had had children and, with respecting privacy requirements, we followed a family tree until we could locate one of her living relatives."
"Once a living relative was identified, we knew that broaching the subject with the family would be difficult, but we needed to make sure we were fully transparent while being both sympathic and empathetic as well."
With some discussions with the wider Fendall family, Rowan was put in touch with Brian Collinge who is the great nephew of Jessie. A meeting was then arranged in Kapiti and the repatriation process began with the wider family being advised of Police's intentions to bring Jessie's fingers back to her final resting place.
Brian attended the ceremony on Friday and spoke of how the family were more intrigued and pleased that police was able to use the fingers.
"Rowan and the local police have done a great job in doing this right," says Brian. "The family were happy that Jessie's fingers were used for a good purpose, and we have been impressed with the way police have handled the process of reuniting Jessie all these years later."
"Jessie wasn't forgotten within the family, however as time went on, less of the family knew her story. This process has allowed us to bring back some of our family history that some of us were not aware of."
The ceremony was attended by Brian Collinge, Rowan Carroll, Police Chaplain Rev Carol Grant, Inspector Mel Aitken, Senior Sergeant Jason McCoy, Sergeant Bruce Dow and Constable Craig Bennett.
The story of Jessie Marguerite Fendall
Jessie Marguerite Fendall was the assistant chief teacher at Otekaieke Special School after having spent seven years at the school. On the 17th of September 1933, Jessie was found unconscious at the bottom of an eleven foot bank of a dry creek bed near the school. Jessie was taken to the Oamaru Hospital and died on 25 September after she did not regain consciousness.
Relatives of Jessie living in Auckland did not believe her injuries were caused solely by the fall and her body was exhumed on 12 December 1933, even though police gave no indication to support the belief that her death was caused by anything but an accident.
In order to eliminate her fingerprints, Jessie's fingers were removed from her body and sent to the Wellington Fingerprint Branch where they were analysed by Edmond Dinnie. He established the bloody fingerprints on Jessie's magazine were her own.
After her fingerprints were identified, and due to Jessie's body having been reburied during this process, her fingers were placed in the New Zealand Police Forensics Collection so officers could be shown the process to be taken when they dealt with post-mortem remains.
As the advancement of modern techniques emerged, the Forensics Collection was last used in the 1990's and the remains were placed under the care of the New Zealand Police Museum, where they have remained until this year.
