Maker: Gemma Pascall

Panel number: 48

Petition Sheet Number: 37 

Person honouring: Margaret Nordin 

Relationship to makers: None 

Margaret Clark had several brushes with the law. She was born about 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and arrived in Otago in December 1875 on the Nelson. 

Margaret’s early years in Dunedin did not go well. She faced many charges of drunkenness, obscene language, vagrancy and having no visible means of support. She served several short prison sentences with hard labour. In October 1883 Margaret, along with Lars August (Laurinseus Augustus) Nordin, was charged with ‘making use of obscene language in Walker Street.' 

The next year Margaret married Lars and they had a daughter in 1885. Margaret does not appear in the court news again until 1887 when she was charged, along with another woman, with stealing fence rails from Jubilee Park. Lars worked as a chimney sweep and night man (remover of night soil). 

Their daughter Margaret Henrietta Stewart Nordin appears to have been an accomplished violinist. In 1901 she appeared in a charity concert and won awards in the Dunedin Competitions Society events. 

Lars was admitted to the Seacliff Mental Hospital in 1908 and he died in 1910. Margaret re-married in 1932 to Robert Aitken. Robert died in 1938 and Margaret on 12 September 1941. She is buried in the Andersons Bay Cemetery. 

Panel materials: Nearly all my materials were up-cycled from the Re Sew stash or from items I already had in my own sewing stash. I only purchased the handcuff charms, some gold thread and the white thread to complete the camellia.