Charlotte Knight's Feud with the Tramway Company

Charlotte Copp, born in Tiverton, Devon, in 1842, arrived in Lyttelton in 1863 with her husband, John Knight, and their three children. She would go on to give birth to 24 children, 15 of whom survived her. By the 1880s, the Knight family were dairy farmers in Aranui, on land described as cheap and infertile, often water-logged in winter and dry in summer.

The family bought shares in the New Brighton Tramway Company, which laid a track from Linwood Cemetery to the sea along what is now Pages Road. The company also built the first bridge at Seaview Road and started a horse tram service in 1887. But a dispute arose because the Knights claimed the company had promised to build a public road alongside the track and keep the drains clear, which they failed to do.

This led to a long feud. Charlotte, her husband, and their sons would ride their cart on the tram track to slow down the trams. They also smashed company gates that were locked at night. One moonlight night, with a tram held up, Charlotte used a gorse stick so effectively that the tram passengers sought cover, and the Clerk of the Magistrate's Court dived into a ditch. On another occasion, when a pimply youth used stern language, Charlotte asked him if he called himself a man, then scorned him, saying he didn't look like one.

As a shareholder, Charlotte presented her case at annual meetings. The company, in turn, took the family to court repeatedly, extracting fines they couldn't afford. Once, a court bailiff seized Charlotte’s cart in town. She refused to move, so her horse was unhitched, and the cart, with her still in it, was drawn around Oxford Terrace in the middle of the day, making her a laughing stock. Another time, a runaway tram threatened John Knight, who responded by attacking a company employee with a pitchfork, for which a judge fined him one shilling. The company also ruled that the Knight children couldn't walk along the tram line to school anymore.

Newspapers described Charlotte as being of "imposing stature and formidable proportions" with a deerstalker hat and an "amazonian tread." W.A. Taylor recalled that in the 1890s, when he cycled through Aranui, public sympathy was with Mrs. Knight. Though it’s doubtful she ever received satisfaction from the dispute, she wasn't bitter and reportedly "chuckled greatly at her exploits." Charlotte died in December 1907 of "fatty degeneration of the heart" and was buried in Linwood Cemetery.