Thorndon Pool

Thorndon Baths disappeared when the port and railway tracks by the harbor were expanded, leaving the district without a shared place to swim. In their place, the city set aside a site on Murphy Street for a freshwater pool one hundred feet long. It was built from the outset for school lessons, everyday swimming, and competitions, so concrete seating for several hundred spectators was laid out around it. Green markings are still visible beneath the water, while old tiles and brass handrails remain at the edges.

On Saturday, February twelfth, nineteen twenty-seven, about three hundred people were at the pool. Among them were ten-year-old Lyle Margaret Stella Ratcliffe and her friend Minnie Day. Minnie swam out to where she could no longer touch the bottom with her feet. Lyle reached her and kept her afloat until another swimmer led Minnie into the shallows.

The rescued girl changed, looked around, and could not find her friend. More than an hour later, unattended clothing was noticed in the changing room. The pool attendant, Edward Waters, began diving along the bottom and found Lyle lying face up. He carried her from the water and began artificial respiration, but the doctor who arrived could only pronounce her dead.

Police questioned the swimmers. None of the hundreds of people had seen how the girl who had just kept her friend afloat had herself ended up underwater. The coroner called what happened an accident and decided that the attendant had shown reasonable care. For Minnie, Lyle's act ended in rescue; for Lyle Margaret Stella Ratcliffe herself, in death in the same pool.

The pool was then operating for only its third season. Previously, Thorndon residents swam at Thorndon Baths by Thorndon Esplanade. They were closed and then demolished when railway tracks and the port began to be expanded on land reclaimed from the harbor. The promenade esplanade disappeared along with the baths.

In nineteen twenty-two, representatives of the North Wellington Ratepayers' Association demanded that the city council immediately restore a public pool to the district. Mayor Robert Wright, who was to secure its construction, acknowledged that Thorndon was entitled to a replacement. The council bought a small site off Murphy Street and created a freshwater pool here, one hundred feet long. The name was transferred from the old sea baths along with their public function.

In the original schedule, separate hours were set aside for men, women, and school groups, but mixed bathing was permitted for most of the day. Pupils accompanied by a teacher entered free of charge. The builders marked the depth with numerals on the tiles, laid green lanes along the bottom, and added cross-lines before the ends. The pool was intended at once for instruction, ordinary swimming, and competitions; the concrete terraces were designed for several hundred spectators. That was why, on the day Lyle Margaret Stella Ratcliffe died, equal numbers of men and women, and many children, had gathered here.

Today's thirty and a half meters are the same hundred feet measured out for the new pool. Outside, a marble opening plaque remains; inside, part of the original tiling and brass handrails remain. Lyle Margaret Stella Ratcliffe's name is not on them. What remains here is the place of her act itself: the deep part of the pool from which Minnie Day emerged thanks to her friend.