Arthur Winton Brown was once Mayor of Wellington and one of the wealthiest men in the country. Then, out of nowhere, he vanished. Joel MacManus reports.

Mayor Arthur Winton Brown took a bronze farthing from his pocket and placed it in the copper box.

Laying the foundation stone of the Wellington Free Public Library was the last thing Brown would ever do as Mayor. It was the crowning achievement of a decade of public service.

Just days later, he disappeared from the city, never to be seen in New Zealand again.

He left his wife heartbroken, friends thousands of dollars in debt, and one of New Zealand's largest companies on the brink of collapse.

In the weeks to come, a web of lies would untangle. Brown's public image as a self-made business and community leader would crumble.

Underneath the facade was a man so obsessed with his self-image that he let his pride become his downfall.

THE SOCIAL CLIMBER

In both business and in politics, Arthur Brown was undeniably a prodigy.

His father was a carpenter, taking odd jobs wherever he could find them to support the family. As a teenager, Brown started work stocking shelves at a grocery store and quickly became obsessed with learning the business.

At age 20, he married Mary Linnel, the daughter of a successful importer, and within months opened his own store.

Lambton Quay, circa 1904. A.W. Brown's grocers would have been located just out of frame at the bottom right hand of this picture.

A.W. Brown's Grocers became the largest food supplier in Wellington, with three branches throughout the city. His flagship store sat in prime real estate on the corner of Lambton Quay and Bowen St, near where the Supreme Court is now located.

He was given the title 'Purveyor to his excellency the Governor', allowing him to use the royal crest on his advertisements.

But Brown didn't just want money, he wanted status. He worked hard to develop connections within the Freemasons and other fraternal organisations, and leveraged that support for his first council run, a sweeping victory in the Mt Cook ward at age 25. He held a seat for nine of the next 10 years.

Brown's sphere of influence continued to grow. His grocery empire expanded. He opened an auction house, selling real estate and art. He donated trophies and plaques in his own name to sports clubs around the region. He eventually became Grand Master of the New Zealand Order of Oddfellows, the largest fraternal business club in the country.

As the official grocer for Governor Robert Stout, Brown was allowed to advertise using the royal crest.

As one friend politely put it: "He was covetous of social distinction."

His desire for social status was reflected in the way he approached politics.

"Make Wellington the Empire City in fact as well as name," was the mantra of his political career.

He relentlessly pursued the kind of big ticket items that he felt would give the city the prestige on a world stage.

He wanted a grand town hall with a full scale organ, a vast public library, electric street lights, and a massive dock.

"Wellington will never be the premier city of the Colony until it has a town hall," he cried at campaign events.

He first ran for mayor in 1886 against Sam Brown, a union stalwart who attacked his flagship proposals as "unmitigated rot," more focused on keeping up appearances than the welfare of people.

"With the streets in their present condition, to talk of a public hall was like a man going out in a suit of broadcloth while his children were starving," he said.

A poster for Sam Brown, who rain against Arthur Winton Brown in the 1886 election

He won the 1886 election, serving a one-year term as Mayor before stepping down. He ran for council again in 1887, and held the seat until he was elected Mayor again in 1891.

He continued growing his business empire throughout his political career.

His most ambitious investment was the Mokau Coal Company, a first-of-its-kind attempt to create major mining business with no corporate interests.

After a major strike had left thousands of miners unemployed, 995 men organised to form a co-operative of their own. They would start their own mine, with workers as the primary shareholders.

A group of wealthy investors was recruited from Wellington to buy land and ships.

Arthur Winton Brown, as the widely respected Mayor, and a notoriously astute businessman, was recruited to be the company's chairman.

He resigned at the end of his 1891 Mayoral term. When construction began on the Wellington Free Public Library in December that year, he was asked unanimously by the council to perform the ceremony, because they knew how much it meant to him.

At his final council meeting, he received a standing ovation as he left the chambers.

In less than a week, he would disappear from the city, never to be seen in New Zealand again.

THE SUDDEN ESCAPE

Recently freed from the mayoral chains, Brown announced he would be taking a leisurely trip to Auckland to visit friends, including the Mayor of Auckland, before making his way to Taranaki to inspect a block of land for the Mokau Coal Company.

In the final days before the trip, he cashed in favours all over town. At Cohen's jewellers, he bought a £100 gold watch, entirely on finance. Brown had such a good reputation that the owner didn't even ask for a deposit. He asked a banker friend to advance him £50 for "pocket money".

PapersPast Brown's sudden disappearance garnered headlines around the country.

That was no petty cash - for context, most of the houses Brown sold through his real estate business went for between £200 and £400.

At 4.20pm January 29, the steamship Waihora left Wellington Harbour.

As ship after ship returned to Wellington over the next three weeks, whispers began to circulate that Brown was never coming back.

On the 19th of February, 21 days after Brown stepped onto the Waihora, a steamship brought mail from Australia confirming the rumours as true.

In Auckland he had paid for an extension ticket to Sydney, paying at the last possible minute so as to keep his name off shipping records.

"Many of Brown's friends refused to believe there could be any foundation to the reports, having always regarded him as a model of probity and a man who was particularly proud of his honour," The Evening Post reported.

"Today, the business circles of the city have been aflame over the affair, and nothing else has been talked of in offices, or warehouses, or in the street."

The first newspaper reports of his disappearance had tones of bewilderment - not only did Brown seemingly have no reason to want to flee the city, but he was apparently so wealthy that even if he had some unknown debts, his estate could easily pay everyone out in full.

From a hotel in Sydney, he wrote to his wife and several friends making it clear that he had run away to escape financial and reputational ruin.

"It may be cowardly, but after having occupied the positions in which I have been placed by the people of Wellington, I have not the moral courage to the inevitable crash," he wrote.

THE COAL COLLAPSE

The true weight of Brown's reputational collapse was measured in coal.

From the beginning, the Mokau Coal Company was a complex beast. Brown had to appeal to the interests of a thousand men, most of whom had no business experience.

On top of that, they had the near-impossible challenge of finding and fully developing a random piece of hillside into a working mine.

The company took out huge loans to finance the initial development, but the operation quickly spiralled into a money pit.

Needing more financing and running out of assets to secure loans against, Brown and three other directors personally guaranteed a £250 loan. He also borrowed another £100 against his own name to pay the first round of wages.

Brown pushed the company to buy a steamship, Rowena, and set out to develop a new block of land in Taranaki. It would bring in £100 every trip, he claimed.

In July, Brown and his fellow directors visited the mine and told reporters the company had struck on a resource-rich property with a prosperous future.

In November, Rowena was sent on her first official journey to the mine. That's when everything started to unravel.

She returned, not with the £100 worth of coal Brown promised, but with £11. The excursion to Marlborough never happened.

The first round of loans were due back, and Brown was forced to cough up.

It was quickly becoming evident that Brown was in way over his head.

In public he gave no indication whatsoever that anything was wrong. At the December shareholders' meeting Brown puffed up the company's future. There were big profits on the way if he could just arrange some more financing, he said, and negotiations were going well.

Throughout January, directors repeatedly asked Brown to call another meeting, but he shrugged them off, avoiding anything to do with the company.

The second round of loan repayments landed on Brown's desk just days before left the city.

From Auckland, he wrote to the company saying he would not be back in time to make the payment, asking other directors to cover his share until he returned. He never did.

In the wake of his exit, everything came crashing down.

Directors desperately tried to get another massive loan to keep the operation afloat, but came up short.

Shareholders meetings grew fiery. Dozens of miners and financiers would pack into halls and spend more of their time cursing the name of Arthur Winton Brown.

"He was an infernal scoundrel," the secretary of the board told the men.

"Guilty of systematic procrastination and neglect!" another declared.

Overnight, he went from highly regarded mayor, to an incompetent liar who had put a thousand men out of work.

Within two days he was declared bankrupt, and meetings of his debtors were held to organise the sale of his house and estate.

A proposal was made to obliterate his name from the records of all public institutes - most notably his crowning glory, the Wellington Free Public Library.

THE TRAIL RUNS COLD

Brown was at Plafhert's Hotel, Sydney, when he wrote the letters home declaring he would never return.

He knew he was safe - tracking him down and bringing him back would be too difficult and expensive, even for the most motivated of debtors.

Exactly what he told his wife in those letters was never made public, but there were plenty of rumours.

"[The letter] written to Mrs Brown is said to be positively heartless in its terms, and to show every determination to leave his unfortunately wife her own resources," The Evening Post reported.

As debtors swooped in to claim the remnants of Brown's now-bankrupt estate, Mary lost her home.

Mary Brown and their son, 13-year-old Arthur Bernard Brown received "widespread sympathy" in the aftermath.

Eventually, they decided to leave New Zealand, telling friends they would be going to London to join relatives.

As for Arthur, it appears his next stop after Sydney was Japan, but it's not clear if he settled or it was just a stopover.

In December of 1892, a newspaper column said: "An ex-Mayor of Wellington is said to be keeping a grocer's shop in the Whitechapel Road, London," though this may have been written as a joke.

The mystery of what happened to Arthur Winton Brown continued to swirl until 1896 when it was solved by the Feilding Star, apparently by complete accident.

The paper published a letter from a former Feilding resident now living in New Orleans, telling tales of the glittering parades of Mardi Gras.

New Orleans Mardi Gras in 1900, around the time Arthur Winton Brown lived there.

Halfway in, the author mentions running into some fellow expats.

"I was in a house the other night and in the room were five New Zealanders (born), and you can bet we had quite a time."

"One of them was Brown, who was at one time the Mayor of Wellington, and in the grocery business. He is doing very well here."

No more news about Brown made it to New Zealand until 1911, when The Press reported he was living in the United States and running a campaign for "an important public position".

There's no record of Arthur Winton Brown ever running for office in New Orleans. There was however, an Arthur Bernard Brown elected to Louisiana Board of Health in 1911.

Somehow, Mary and her teenaged son had managed to sail across the world and reconnect with the man who had left them for broke.

Whether she was always in on the plan, or if he wrote to her from overseas begging forgiveness is a mystery lost to time.

Brown lived the last 21 years of his life in New Orleans with his family. He built new connections though Freemason circles, and rebuilt his fortune as a newspaper advertising manager.

He eventually became a part-owner of the Shreveport Times, a daily paper which survives to this day.

He made no secret of his New Zealand political career, but was happy to skip over the gory details.

A newspaper clipping mentioning Brown's death.

He died after a paralytic stroke in 1916, at 60 years old. His death notice described him as a prominent newspaper man, music enthusiast, and a resident of the city for 21 years, but little of his intriguing departure from his former life.

It simply read: "During his residence in his native country, he was mayor of the town of Wellington, resigning this office during the latter part of his second term due to pressing personal business."