Person:John Lusher (1)

Agnes (Binkie) never spoke to her grandchildren of her husband, and may have referred to him when she remarked that "men are brutes". She removed the labels from books that had been bound by his firm, "Bowring & Lusher, Bookbinders and Law Stationers, High Street, Auckland".

John had an interest in engineering and resigned from his bookbinding firm to go into partnership with Mr. Kennedy, a Canadian, to introduce aerated drinks to New Zealand. Carbonic acid gas was to be imported from Germany at pressure and passed into a lower-pressure cylinder from which the bottles would be charged. The locally-made cylinder had a faulty pressure guage and exploded when John and the coppersmith were lowering it into a hogshead of water, killing and horribly mangling both men.

Four Founding Families is inconsistent, saying John was 26 when he died, which would put his birth around the year 1868, when his brother Charles was born; yet "baby John" is referred to when his father Randall was stationed at the Mercer telegraph office in 1866.

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Dr. Patricia Whitmore. Four Founding Families: Holland, Lusher, McKenzie, Woodward. (Privately published 1996).