by Janet Lee
I would have liked Cook to hear that, sir.
Beyond the fence we had two small orange trees, as Charles had planted the seeds when we first arrived at the house, even though we were only renting. The seeds had grown into strong little trees in the five or so years since we had been there and we’d had some fruit from them.
I didn’t have the rose bush any more by then, though, sir. Even though it had done so well in Muswellbrook, the rose had never taken when we moved to Sydney and it died not long after we came to Botany. I was a good deal sorry for that because the Missus had given it to me, and when it died it was another piece of my other life gone, and I missed the pink roses.
29.
Michael was one of the only boarders that I brought into the house at Pople’s Terrace, as most were brought home by Charles. I met Michael at the Amos’s Pier Hotel one Saturday afternoon when Charles and the boarders were having their weekly baths.
By this time I had had my dear baby Charlie and that particular week him, May, Edwin, and Frederick had all been sick with colds and slept in my room, that I may better tend them through the night. Charles had slept in the sitting room with the older boys.
I myself had very little sleep that week and so, feeling the children were a little better and needing to escape the confines of the cottage while the men had their baths, I left all the children in the care of their father. The older boys would be bathing themselves and May could help with the baby, so I went out for a walk.
On bathing days, I could not go out to the swamp as I might have liked because the men would all be undressed at the back of the house. And so it was for most of the houses in that row, for Saturday afternoon was bath time right along the street. There were only a few walks which were decent for the women on a Saturday afternoon. I went to the hotel, which was only a few doors away.
I had no coin to speak of, for I had spent the last few pennies at Sayers’s grocery store when I purchased some camphor oil to ease the children’s chests, although Mr Sayers was a good grocer and often let me run on tick. The publican at the Amos’s Pier Hotel knew me; he gave me the nod as I entered the lounge. I saw my friend Mary and her husband, William, sitting at a table with another gentleman who I did not know. William and the other gentleman were quite close in conversation and Mary gave me a wave and motioned for me to go and sit beside her, which I did.
She said, Are you not drinking then, Louisa? I told her I had no coin, having spent the last on the children while they were sick, and she said she would stand me a drink, for that was the way with our friendship, that we would share when the other was a bit short of coin. And though I may borrow, I always return.
You will not know Mary, sir, for she and William moved on to Melbourne shortly after I met Michael and she has not come to any of my trials.
I gladly accepted the drink and she said she would introduce me to her new friend. When the two men paused in their conversation, Mary said, Mr Collins, I would like to introduce you to my friend Louisa Andrews, and the gentleman turned and smiled at me, and said it was his pleasure to meet me. He was young and handsome and I thought so from the very first. And that was how I met Michael Collins, the man who would become my husband. The man they want to hang me for murdering.
I stop here.
Hang me, I think, will they really hang me?
Are you all right, Louisa?
I think I might like a drink of water, sir.
I would actually like to have something stronger, I think, but then there is no hope of that.
The water comes and I take a sip.
And so you met Michael Collins? the chaplain says.
Well, yes, sir, I say. I did. I asked Mary how she had met this new friend and she said she had met him on the tram coming out from Sydney. He had been at the races and was thinking of moving to Botany. Mary had been in to the fish market that morning, and he had come by way of the hotel to share a drink and meet her husband. Mary still had the fish wrapped and on the ground in her basket and nodded to the basket by means of showing me the fish. She need not have bothered, for fish from the market have a way of letting you know they are there without you having to see them.
I had been drinking my beer while she told me this story for I was mighty tired and thirsty after the long week, as I have told you. Presently, Michael Collins turned to me and noticed my glass was empty, and he asked if he might be permitted to stand me a drink, for, he said, he had had a good day at the cards and he was of a generous mind.
I said I had thought he had come by his winnings at the races and not at cards.
He told me he had winnings at both that day.
I said I would not have the means to repay him in turn and buy him a drink, for I had spent the last of my coin on medicine for my sick children, and he would be moved on before I had more money. And he said that it was a good woman who would forsake her own pleasure for the sake of her children and that such action was worthy of his generosity.
He said he would be buying Mary and her husband a drink as well.
I said I was a married woman and he should have no expectations and he would do well to remember that.
Then I let him buy me a drink.
30.
I am melancholy the next day because of Michael. I have been thinking back to the time we first met, and thinking of his face. He was so young and handsome that night.
31.
A doctor has come into my cell and says he will examine me.
I think it is a doctor who works at the prison hospital, but I cannot be sure. I am glad it is not one of the doctors who attended Michael or Charles, for I place no store by their medicine; none of their powders worked.
I do not know why this doctor has come, or how he will examine me. I wonder if the Female Governor has requested he come and visit, and give me some laudanum for my nerves. It might pass the time.
But he is not visiting me to give me laudanum.
When he arrives, Alice and I are sitting on the chairs, and Alice is reading aloud from the Bible.
I am too downhearted to read it myself. I can barely bother to listen. It is just droning.
We hear the key in the lock of the cell door, and the Female Governor comes in and a man is with her. I am a doctor, he says. I am here to examine you so please lie down, Mrs Collins.
For a moment, I do not understand him, and then he says again, Lie down, Mrs Collins, and the Female Governor gestures to the bed and so I lie down.
I am thinking of the Missus because she would lie down when the doctor came to visit, and he would give her laudanum. So I am still thinking this might be what he is going to do, and then I hear the doctor tell Alice to hold me down. Alice looks puzzled and the Female Governor says that she does not think this is needed, and the doctor says that he is the doctor and he will decide. And so Alice comes over to the bed and kneels down and places her hand upon my shoulder.
The Female Governor stands at the end of the bed.
The doctor asks me if I have had relations with any man since I killed my husband.
I am confused for a moment, and I cannot think of what he means – since I killed my husband?
He says, Have you, woman? I shake my head.
He tells Alice to hold me firmly and he kneels down on the floor. He reaches over and undoes the cord around my prison dress and lifts up the skirt. I think to protest but know I cannot and so I close my eyes and put my hands over my face. He pulls down my underthings and pokes and prods my stomach, and near that area of mine which is most personal. He puts his hands there in an intimate way.
I cannot see, and I do not want to, but I hear someone else enter the room through the open door. I know they are there for I hear the doctor speak to them.
As you can see, he says, she is not with child. I hear a few murmurs, and make out the word ‘enough’ and then I hear the Female Governor say,
Have you finished yet, sir?
Her voice is shrill.
Then the doctor says he will leave me to the guards, and he gets up, and I hear footsteps leave the room.
Someone covers my modesty and pulls down my skirts.
I keep my eyes closed.
Then the Female Governor says, It is done now, Louisa.
I hear the cell door close, but I know Alice will remain, to sit on the chair and watch me.
I turn my head to the wall.
That Alice might not see my shame.
The Botany Murderess
Visited by Her Children
She is under the immediate charge of the female warders, who never relinquish their watch night or day, and all interviews with outsiders are carried on in her presence. The murderess eats, drinks, and sleeps remarkably well, and is chatty and affable to those around her to a degree. The Rev. Canon Rich, chaplain of the gaol, is unceasing in his visits, and in the care and solicitude he displays for the welfare of the unfortunate woman, and the many calls he makes appear to form pleasurable breaks in the monotony of her present existence. Up to the present time she has made no statement as to her guilt or otherwise, and occupies the whole of her day with reading and talking. Her children have already visited her since her condemnation, and the terrible position in which her mother is placed is most acutely felt by the fair-headed, tiny girl, May. This little thing wept most bitterly on her first visit, and was with difficulty removed from the cell and the termination of her interview … Some few days ago a rumour was current to the effect that Louisa Collins was likely to become a mother. She was yesterday examined by the gaol surgeon (Dr. O’Connor), who has reported on the subject to the authorities. So far the result of his investigations has not been made known, but it is extremely probable that the conclusion arrived at will be a negative one. From the day on which sentence of death was passed upon Louisa Collins, her hopes for a reprieve have remained unaltered. She refuses to believe that the last dread punishment of the law will be carried into effect, and lives on, buoyed up by the most sanguine of hopes.
The Brisbane Courier15
32.
Canon Rich has asked me to visit with him this evening, and has said he might come to my cell, but I have told Alice I will not be able to attend him.
I find myself very low.
I ask Alice that she tell the chaplain I require my privacy in my cell.
Alice steps from my cell into the corridor and speaks with someone. I hear their voices, but I cannot make out the words.
There is no one guarding me in my cell. I may cause bedlam, given the freedom of being on my own.
But I do not. I lie upon my bed and I think back to that first meeting with Michael, and though I would not tell anyone this, that day was one of the happiest days of my life. I had left the confines of noisy chaos and sick children and I had walked into the hotel just a few steps along the road and yet it seemed as though I had walked into another world.
In meeting Michael I was Louisa once more – not a mother or a landlady or a wife – and it was as though the years of children and work and cooking and poverty had slipped away. A young, handsome man was offering to buy me a drink. And he was fancy with the words and used them to charm. I think I saw something in him that reminded me of Harry from my childhood. I knew from the first that Michael was a rogue with a smooth tongue, but on the night I met him I did not care, for I thought I would never see him again. Later, when we married and he was mine, I forgave him being a rogue because he had chosen me, above all others. This young, handsome man had chosen me.
I have wondered, since I have so much time to do so, how I came to be in this place, in this situation, and I know it is because of Michael. And I look back to the moment when we met and I ask if I had known how it would end, would I have done any differently, would I have said no to that drink?
I doubt it.
That first drink Michael bought me turned into several more, as Michael seemed to have plenty of money in his pocket.
Mary and William and Michael and I sat at the table for some time and we talked and laughed. Then my son Arthur came into the pub, looking for me, and I knew that Charles had sent him, for this was something he would do when he thought I had been too long away from the children. Arthur came to the table and said that Pa had told him to come and get me for it was time I should be getting dinner. Michael said what a fine strapping lad this boy of mine was, and I must have had him when I was very young, as I did not look old enough for such a son.
I laughed at his flattery and said for Arthur to tell his father I would be home directly and Arthur left. Then Michael said he wished he could have a woman like me to come at his beck and call, but I acted that I paid him no heed for I thought it to just be his way. Then he placed his hand upon mine, there, right at the table in front of the whole room, and he said I should have one more drink before I went. And so I did. Then, when I left, he said he hoped he would meet me again and would I be going to the hotel tomorrow night, for he thought he would seek lodgings nearby. I gave Mary a kiss and we giggled like young girls and then we parted in good company. As I left, Mary and William commenced singing, the fish long forgotten in its basket under the table.
When I got home Charlie was crying and the other children were wanting their supper. I put potatoes on and while they were boiling I took my little Charlie into the bedroom and sat with him on the bed and gave him some milk.
I sat feeding the baby and listening to the other children squabbling and Charles in the sitting room complaining that he should not have to do the work of a woman, occasionally placing his head around the door to tell me how disgraceful I was to be drunk and leaving a sick baby, and that I had no shame.
I sat on the bed, my head thumping, and all I thought upon was the time I had just spent in another world, as Louisa.
With Michael.
33.
If I am not reprieved, I know I will have few enough days left and so I tell myself I should not lose them being melancholy. The next day I visit with the chaplain. He comes to my cell.
I say, I have a picture of Michael for you to see, sir, for I have been thinking of him a great deal.
I keep the picture of Michael and me as it is the only photograph I have of him. I had to write to the Prison Governor specifically for permission to have the photograph. And when I had permission I asked someone familiar with my house if he might collect the photograph for me, and I told him exactly where he might find it.
I cannot see what harm it would be to have a photograph with me, can you, sir?
The chaplain says he cannot, particularly if the Governor has approved this.
Michael is handsome in his suit, although the trousers are the ones he would later wear in bed when he had his sore leg. I am shy at the camera.
We had married in St Silas’s Church, the church near Waterloo station, and I had treated myself to a new dress and hat. And then when we decided to get a photograph taken, we wore our nice clothes from the wedding. I wore my gloves and a pair of small gold earrings and I had a parasol, so I did feel like a grand lady. And Michael wore his watch, although you can only see the chain in the photograph, but it was a very nice watch, sir.
I look at the photograph and think I must appear very different in the prison photographs, for here I have pretty hair and a lovely gown and hat. I had taken time with my appearance and worn warm rags in my hair to bed. I had greased my hands, as I used to do with the cattle fat back when Charles and I were in the butcher shops, so they were quite soft, although not as soft as I should have liked. I was careful to wash my face well and apply a bit of soot from the fire to heighten my eyelashes and some flour upon my skin to ease off the brown. When I look at this photograph, it belongs to another time for they are all gone – my Michael and his watch, my hat and gloves, my dress.
Perhaps I should have been in mourning bl
ack for a year after the death of my husband Charles, but I chose not to wear full mourning for him as I have never worn full for my children when they died. I had no money for such a luxury when my Ernest died and so it did not feel proper to wear mourning for David, and in any case I had a great dislike of mourning and wearing black on account of the Missus.
And I am told they have talked about this in the papers, about my not wearing black and how it was unseemly. But then they would not know the half of it, would they?
I mourned for my husband Charles in my own way, although in truth our marriage was not a happy one and I cannot pretend otherwise. Charles was joyless, as some men can be. We did not get off to a good start, for he did not court me, and there was not much effort on his part, and I always resented that.
It is true that I cannot say I miss his laugh or wit, sir, for he rarely shared these with me. But now, when I think back on Charles, I remember as how he was a good father, and tried to be a good provider, and how he worked hard. And I think upon the trip we shared on the road to Sydney. That was a happy time between us and full of possibilities for the future.
No, sir, I do not have a photograph of Charles.
34.
I do not tell the chaplain that the first night I met Michael I thought the night would pass and that I would not see him again, and so perhaps I had felt free to laugh with him and enjoy the warmth of the beer and the company, for what harm could come of it?
