Henry Bunny

Henry Bunny (7 October 1822 – 15 February 1891) was a 19th-century Member of Parliament in the Wairarapa, New Zealand.

Bunny was born in Newbury, Berkshire, and he was a partner in his father's firm of Newbury solicitors during his early life. Facing bankruptcy due to a failed property development scheme, he fled to New Zealand in 1853. He married Catherine Bunny (née Baker, born 24 June 1818 in Newbury) on 22 October 1844. his sister and her husband, Rev. Arthur Baker, on the Duke of Portland, leaving Plymouth on 19 November 1853. He settled on a sheep station in the Wairarapa and built a house named Longwood after Napoleon's residence in exile on Saint Helena. Bunny applied to the New Zealand Bar, was admitted in 1858, but became the first member to be disbarred when it was discovered his sponsor, Rev. Arthur Baker, was his brother-in-law. At the election on 14 May 1884, Newman, Bunny and Dwan received 636, 379 and 121 votes, respectively.

Bunny was defeated by Buchanan in the in Wairarapa South, and in and in Wairarapa.

Family, death and commemoration Bunny's first wife died on 24 July 1864. She was buried at Bolton Street Cemetery in Wellington.

On 3 October 1867 at St Mary's Cathedral in Wellington, Isabella Mary Bunny (1849–1932), his second daughter from his first marriage, married Lowther Broad (1840–1892). Broad had been goldfields warden at Queenstown, was resident magistrate in Arrowtown at the time of their wedding, and later a judge at the District Court in Nelson. Charles Broad (1828–1879) was Lowther Broad's elder brother.

In 1878 his daughter Eleanor Caroline (Nellie) Bunny (1860–1938) married runholder Edward Riddiford.

Bunny took his own life on 15 February 1891. He went to the Road Board office in his home town Featherston, asked for the key to the office and once he arrived there, shot himself through the heart with a revolver. He was buried at Featherston Cemetery. The village of Bunnythorpe is named after him. His second wife died at Opaki, a small village near Masterton, in 1915 aged 80. She was buried at Masterton Cemetery.