The Killing of Louisa

by Janet Lee

  When they first put me in this cell, some months ago, the Superintendent of the Female Division – the Female Governor – was most polite and apologised that I must share with one who is convicted as though I might be booking into a hotel and asking for the best private room only to find it unavailable. I had a mind to say I was not booking into a hotel at all, but held my tongue. We do try not to put those who are here on remand in with prisoners, she said, but I must ask you share with one who is convicted of a crime because of the overcrowding. She treated me most civil and has always done, and it is a shame they do not have a woman such as the Female Governor in charge of the whole prison, for they are used to running large houses and men have no idea. Here, the Female Governor answers to the Prison Governor, just as a wife is supposed to answer to a husband, as the Prison Governor is a man and he is in charge of all of the cell blocks at Darlinghurst Gaol and not just the female cell block. He puffs out his chest at his grandness.

  I was nervous of being in prison as I had no experience, but I’ve found Flora of great benefit. She knows her way around the women who are here, even though they come and go, and has told me who to be wary of and who can be trusted. She says there are women here who should rightly be in the lunatic asylum. Flora says the asylum takes only the worst of those with a madness as they have their own overcrowding, and so the women with only a little madness must stay here at the prison. She says it is as well that they stay here as conditions are very bad in the asylum, and I wonder how she would know such a thing, but I do not ask.

  The warders shall come soon and open the door and the women will walk down the metal stairs with their slop pails, to empty them into the slop tubs in the exercise yard. A parade of piss, dearie, Flora calls it.

  The ‘clean’ buckets, those which contain only night water, will go into one tub, and sit and fester to be used later in the laundry, as the ammonia is good for the linens. There is a warder to supervise the tipping of the buckets, but Flora says filth still makes its way into the laundry trough, and this is not pleasant to find in the wash.

  The putrid slop buckets, those with filth, go into a separate tub – one of those is used by the women during the day – and the muck sits and stinks until cleared away by the male prisoners allocated to the night soil duties. There are so many women crowded in here that the smell from this area is as bad as one hundred privies, and the area is full of flies, and when you visit you must hold your breath and cover your nose, as much for the flies as the stink. While you sit, the flies cover your whole body.

  I wait for the doors to open and the parade of piss to begin. My stomach growls, for after the parade will come breakfast.

  We women take our meals in the exercise yard at long tables laid out for the purpose, although far too close to the slop tubs for my liking. There are always flies upon your food, particularly in summer. There are several hundred women crammed into this cell block and many hundreds more men in the cell blocks which are around us. All of us wanting feeding and waiting upon. The kitchen must never stop.

  The prison meals are mainly of a mash variety and I suppose this to be as many of the prisoners do not have strong teeth. There is bread, hominy and watery stews, which are said to be meat and potatoes, but there is never much meat to be tasted.

  At first I did not look at the other women, for fear of giving offence, but I do look upon most of them now and I have grown to like the meal times best of all. Until I came to prison, it had been a long time since I had sat and had a meal placed before me that was not one I had needed to prepare myself, so I like the experience of it, even if the meal is only prison food. There is something of a companionship among us, for we are a world of women all locked up together away from the men. And it is time out of our cells.

  The warders allow the kitchen prison workers to give us a cup of tea, although they make sure this is lukewarm lest one of the prisoners throw it in the face of another to scald them, for Flora says there are those here who would. The prison kitchen is a distance away, so the tea is nearly cold when it comes. It is the worst tea you have ever tasted. On the first day it is so strong it might rip the flesh off your insides, and by the second day it is weaker, for the warders reuse the tea leaves for economies and after a few days it is simply dirty water.

  Piss water, Flora says.

  On the piss water days, the colour of the tea reminds me of the waters which used to run in the little creek near our home in Botany and I look into my cup and imagine I am there still, with the tea-trees down to the water’s edge and the children playing in the shallows. I am grateful enough for my tea on any day, because I do not have to fetch the wood and pack the stove and light it and lug the water from the well and boil the pot myself. So I welcome the prison tea, even the piss water.

  On Saturday afternoons the Church of England prisoners walk to the Chapel for the service. We women walk straight from the top level of the female cell block across a short walkway, high up off the ground, and we seat ourselves in the top part of the Chapel so that we sit above the men and they aren’t distracted by our beauty. From that spot, we look down and see the many things the men do instead of listening to the chaplain’s sermon. The chaplain is a quiet, gentle man. I like to listen to his sermons as they provide some distraction from my thoughts. In the past, I might have felt some joy considering all the men who sat below me in Chapel and imagining which I might prefer – which was the better looking, or which might best offer me protection from the world. But my present situation has cured me of such an interest.

  In Chapel, notes are thrown up to sweethearts and I do not believe that the warders don’t see this, for sometimes the throwers are none too quick. I have heard that the notes are all of the same type, confessing love.

  I don’t think the men care who finds such words, so long as it is a woman, even one of the female warders.

  On most Sundays, we take our morning meal and then the Roman Catholics have their turn at Chapel, and there are so many of them there is a service on the Saturday besides. We sit in the exercise yard while a do-gooder woman, as Flora calls them, comes and sits on a chair on a platform and reads to us from a book of Sunday Bible readings.

  I sit very still and I look, but I don’t pay attention to the words the do-gooder reads. The words all sound the same in any case. I watch her. I look at the way she sits, the way she holds her head and her hands. She never lets you see any emotion while she reads. I want to learn to hold myself in this way in court to convince the judge to let me go.

  I sit and practise how to hold myself as tight and stern as a do-gooder woman, and I give no one an opportunity to see inside me.

  The warders come and sit in their chairs and watch. It passes the time for them to sit and they earn their wage just the same. Easy money for some.

  Flora says the warders must protect any do-gooder who comes, lest an inmate stab the woman or gouge her eyes. I have looked around and wondered which of us women would be the one to do such a thing.

  I have not yet decided.

  Maybe it would be me doing the gouging and stabbing.

  After the reading, we have our dinner and then the prisoners are allowed to have visitors, and I have seen some of my children on occasion. It is hard for them to get here as they are scattered to the winds – the two older boys away from Sydney, working up near Newcastle somewhere, and the young ones must have someone to bring them. The police or the courts, I am not sure which, have separated my younger children and sent them out to live in different places. May is with someone who is appointed her guardian, although only temporary I am told, and I do not know if she lives with them in a house or in a children’s home. I know Edwin and Charles are in a benevolent home, which I do not like, as this is something like an orphanage and they are not orphans.

  I think Arthur and Frederick are still living in the house at Pople’s Terrace.

  Of course, I have also seen my chil
dren when they have testified in my trials, but these were not social visits.

  When she comes to see me in prison, I do not want to quarrel with May over the words she said in court. She might not be brought back to see me if I do. So I hold myself back. Keep my emotions tight and try to speak of other things. But it is difficult to visit with your child in a place such as prison and so very hard to hear her testimony, and although I think she does not understand how damning her words are, I must still hear her say them.

  The lawyers do not have much, but they have her words about the box of Rough on Rats and the glass she points out in court.

  They have those things.

  And my dead husbands.

  Latest Special Telegrams

  Louisa Collins, for the murder of her second husband, at Botany, will be tried the third time, at Darlinghurst … the jury in previous trials having failed to agree.

  The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser4

  3.

  Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney

  4 December 1888

  I knew another trial was coming as Mr Lusk had told me to expect this, and now the Female Governor has been to tell me that my new trial will begin in the morning. She says to me that they will try me for the murder of my husband, so I ask which one, although I had thought it would be Michael.

  Charles, she said, then she looked down at the paper in her hand and said, No, Mrs Collins, it is a trial for the murder of your husband Michael. She said she was sorry for making such a mistake.

  I told her it was a simple mistake to make.

  Flora has laundered my dress and my cape and they lie upon my mattress, there being nowhere to hang clothes in our cell. They don’t let you have a nail in the wall on account of the injury you might do.

  Flora has told me not to be worried, as three trial juries previous have not been able to reach a verdict and unless there is some new evidence this jury will no doubt think the same, even though they should be different men. She herself has heard much talk of my case.

  She learns a lot from being in the laundry, for she says the warders do nothing when they are there but sit back on their arses and gossip. Lately, they say there has been much in the papers about me, although some not too kind neither, dearie. Flora has learnt to listen well as she cannot read very much and also it is useful in her profession, as she calls it, for she says conversation overheard is information which can be used, dearie.

  In their gossip, the laundry warders nearly always speak of this warder or that one and complain about the wandering hands of the male warders and how they are no better than those they are sworn to guard. On occasion the warders say something and then think upon it as though they shouldn’t have spoken and they ask Flora if she has heard. What do you think of that then, Flora, they call, and though she hears them, she always waits until they call a second time. And even then, she is slow to turn around so as to give the impression she has been thinking of other matters, or of a place miles away and only lately distracted from her thoughts. Flora says this is the best way to listen to gossip, and is the same way used by servants in the big houses, for she says she has been one of those, and you would not believe what she has heard. At other times, in the laundry, she also pretends she is going deaf, which she says they accept readily because of her age.

  They lock us in the cells at five o’clock and it is a thing I do not like, the closed door. The door of my house at Botany was nearly always open and I would place a rock in front of it so it would not bang shut. The open door let in the air; with so many people in the house the odours could be none too pleasant.

  We are locked up for so long and the window in my cell gives no air.

  My neighbour at one time, Mrs Malone, did not ever leave her door open on account of the snakes, for she said she was from Ireland, where there were no snakes and a thank you to Saint Patrick for that. Snakes are the work of the devil to be sure, Louisa, she would say. And I told her that I was afeared of snakes too, but I had grown up in the bush and I knew that snakes would come into your house whether the door was open or not.

  I think back to Mrs Malone, with these prison doors always being shut, and how I would like to tell her I was right. See, I would say, even when the strongest doors are shut the snakes can still get you, only these snakes will say you killed your husbands, for not all snakes crawl on their bellies, Mrs Malone.

  When we are locked in our cells at night, Flora comes and lies next to me upon my straw mattress and she whispers to me and though her breath is foul because of her rotten teeth, I press my ear close to her mouth. I know she will not speak any louder as she does not want it learnt about her eavesdropping and even though we are locked in our cell a warder might be just outside the door without us knowing. She tells me more of the murderer in London, who is taking a knife to prostitutes and leaving their bodies all over the city, and it is a most dreadful thing which is happening and I am glad I am not there for the police cannot catch the man who is doing it. It is much discussed in the laundry as to who this man might be.

  The warders talk of how I am called the Botany Murderess by some papers who do not like me, but other papers think the government is pursuing me by their keeping on with the trials, and there are those in high places who think it’s wrong that I should be tried again and again.

  Flora has said I should say my husbands beat me and that was why I done it, and they might let me off. She said I should complain about my solicitor, as one who was any good would not let me go to court so many times. But then, she said, he is appointed by the government and so he will make good money for being at so many murder trials as it is the murders which pay the best, or so she thinks.

  Flora says some of the people who write to the papers say the men who are chasing after me are being wicked and only do so because I am a woman, and that these men are worried that all the wives in Sydney might want to get rid of their husbands with a bit of rat poison put into a cup of tea. And these men think that I should not be allowed to get away with it; I should be made an example of. Flora says she cannot remember if this is something that was written in the papers or something the warders said among themselves, but I say it is no matter for the thought would be the same.

  She says there is a do-gooder woman who has written to the paper and said the courts should not be pursuing me as I have no vote, and I might be hung without any chance of ‘parliamentary representation’, although Flora says she is not entirely sure what this means. Flora thinks this is one of the do-gooders who read at the prison, but she cannot rightly remember the warders having said it was. And she says the talk then turned to whether women should be permitted the vote, or to keep their own children after their husbands might die, and that I should be careful when I get out of prison as there will be those who want to take my children away from me as I’ve no man to raise them, and no man will have me as I’ve killed my husbands. Then she adds that of course this will not be proven if I’m let out of gaol.

  She says that she has heard this will be my last trial, for some men have said that if there is no conviction this time then they will have almost run out of juries in Sydney as there has been so much talk about my trials that it would not be fair to send me to court again. But, she says, if I am convicted I will need to hang, on account of the men and their cups of tea wanting me as an example.

  We lie quiet for a moment.

  Flora pats my arm and says I should not worry, they will not hang a woman, even though they used to do that in the mother country. There are those in this country who say it is wrong to watch a woman do the high-dance jig, and that is why there have been other women who have murdered and not been hung, just locked up for life, she says. And at any rate, Flora has been in gaol when they have done hangings but they’ve never done a woman in this gaol and she doesn’t think the hangman would know how to do it to a woman, and she makes some rude gestures as she says thi
s and she laughs.

  I laugh too, but not really.

  And we lie quiet for a time.

  Then she pats my shoulder and says, Night, dearie, and gets up off my bed to use the slop bucket, as is her routine. She goes to her own mattress and I can soon hear her snoring, for although it is only early she is always tired after the laundering.

  I think about everything Flora said. In the time we have shared a cell, she has never once asked me if I done for my husbands.

  Darkness comes into the cell block and the warders light the candle sconces in the centre of the building, which they keep burning all night so they have light should there be trouble, as it would be too inconvenient to be lighting a candle should trouble come.

  I lie and swat at the mites and think it must cost the government considerable money to keep candles burning all night in prison, and it might be cheaper for the government to hang a prisoner whenever they can.

  Then I imagine a rope coming around my neck.

  Intercolonial

  (From Our Own Correspondents)

  New South Wales

  Louisa Collins was again placed on her trial at the Central Criminal Court to-day for the murder of her husband, Michael Peter Collins, at Botany, in July last. On two former occasions the jury were unable to agree. The evidence is not yet concluded.

  The Brisbane Courier5

  4.

  Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney

  5 December 1888

  Today, I am to walk to the Darlinghurst Courthouse through the tunnel which leads there from inside the prison. They always have two warders escort me when I do this walk in case I make a run for it. I do run through the tunnel, if I can, to escape the rats.