16 Facts About Walter Mantell

Walter Baldock Durrant Mantell was a 19th-century New Zealand naturalist, politician, and land purchase commissioner.

Walter Mantell was a founder and first secretary of the New Zealand Institute, and a collector of moa remains.

Walter Mantell arrived in Wellington on the Oriental in 1840.

In 1848, Walter Mantell was appointed to the office of commissioner for extinguishing native titles in the South Island.

Walter Mantell left New Zealand as he did not feel right about trying to convince the indigenous Maori people to undersell their land and returned to England in 1856, where he met Geraldine Jewsbury, a woman eight years his senior.

When Walter Mantell was in England he had difficulty finding work.

Walter Mantell became restless at home as well as a tendency to act as a hypochondriac.

Jewsbury wanted what was best for Walter Mantell and felt deeply attached to him; she once proposed marriage to Walter Mantell in a letter, but he declined her offer.

Walter Mantell represented the Wallace electorate from 1861 to 1866, when he retired.

Walter Mantell died of typhoid at the Mantell home in Sydney Street on 15 March 1873, aged twenty-seven, and was buried in the Bolton Street Cemetery.

Walter Mantell had claimed to have married Mary Prince on 29 July 1863.

Walter Mantell married Jane Hardwick a daughter of Benjamin Hardwick of Kent on 10 January 1876 and died in Wellington on 7 September 1895.

Mantell and Mary Prince's son, Walter Godfrey Mantell, was born on 30 April 1864 and legitimized in 1894.

Walter Mantell became a dentist in Wellington and married on 28 November 1888 in Auckland Catherine Louise Marguerite Bucholz, daughter of Ernest Louis Bucholz, the late German, Belgian and Italian Consul in Auckland.

Walter Mantell's fossils remain in possession of the Museum of New Zealand to the present day.

Walter Mantell is commemorated in the names of the North Island brown kiwi Apteryx mantelli and the North Island takahe Porphyrio mantelli.