Black Widow: The True Story of Australia's First Female Serial Killer

by Carol Baxter

  Coffey called Johannah Bartington as his next witness. She reported that she too had been present when Jeffes began collecting the items from the bedroom, although she hadn’t been able to see everything he was doing. Coffey asked if she had noticed Mrs Collins’ reaction.

  ‘She seemed to get up, stand up, when he took some things. She seemed not to want him to take them.’

  During his cross-examination, Lusk asked where Louisa had been standing. Johannah said that Louisa and Jeffes were standing almost side by side, a few feet apart. ‘I didn’t see any struggle,’ she added pointedly. ‘If she had tried to pull him off his feet, I’d have seen it. There was nothing like that.’

  Coffey recognised that it was a recovery of sorts—thanks in part to Louisa’s own counsel—but would it be enough to convince the jury?

  • • •

  In presenting its case, the Crown had scheduled its witnesses as if focusing on narrowing regions of influence. First, Sydney’s medical profession, whose territory covered vast swathes of Sydney, then the narrower sphere of the Botany constabulary before contracting to the tiny world of Pople’s Terrace. The bullseye was inside the Collins’ house itself: Louisa’s children.

  Louisa’s sons Fred and Arthur reported that Collins and their mother had lived together happily and had never quarrelled. Then their younger sister, May, was called to testify.

  The fair-headed girl walked across the courtroom and climbed up the stairs to the witness box, which was positioned on the right side of the judge’s bench. Like the other witnesses, she was told that she would need to swear an oath on the Bible, an oath declaring that she would tell the truth ‘so help me, God’. Before she did so, the court needed to make sure that she understood the significance of this part of the court proceeding, the meaning of the oath she had to swear. By holding her hand on the Bible and calling on God as her witness, she was telling the court that she knew God was watching her. If she told the truth, God would be happy, but if she lied, God would punish her.

  When her oath was sworn, Coffey stood up and asked her age.

  ‘I am eleven years old,’ May told him. (She wasn’t really, not yet anyway; not for another two-and-a-half months.)

  Coffey questioned her about her home life then asked about the night Mick died. May said she’d been dusting the kitchen shelves and that her mother had been in the same room.

  ‘How do you recollect that particular night?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said with confusion.

  Coffey reminded her about her stepfather’s death and she remembered that she had seen Collins’ dead body on the table. ‘That night, I missed off the shelf a little packet, a box,’ she told the court. She added that she had previously seen it on the weekend before Mick died, on the Saturday.

  What did it look like?

  ‘It was a little round box with a lid.’

  What was on the outside?

  ‘There was nothing on the outside.’

  Coffey reminded her that there was in fact something on the outside: the pictures . . .

  ‘There were pictures of rats on it,’ she agreed. ‘The rats were red.’

  He asked what the rats were doing. She said that they were on their backs.

  ‘What did you do with the box after you found it?’

  ‘I don’t know what I did with it.’

  When asked if she had perhaps opened it, she said that she had. It had contained a dark blue powder. Some had been taken out—about a spoonful.

  What happened next?

  ‘I put the lid on again.’

  And then . . . your mother?

  ‘I showed it to my mother.’

  What did you say?

  ‘I said, “Look what I found on the shelf.” ’

  Then came the question the man seemed to think was really important. Did she know what the box was?

  ‘It was Rough on Rats,’ she stated.

  The word ‘arsenic’ reverberated around the courtroom as if carried on the air itself.

  Coffey asked how she knew that the box was Rough on Rats?

  ‘I could read it.’

  Coffey asked about her mother’s response when she mentioned finding the box. What exactly had her mother said?

  ‘I don’t know whether she said anything to me about it.’

  So what had she done with the box after showing it to her mother? Had she put it back?

  ‘I don’t know whether I put it back or not.’

  The questions kept coming, one after another, a relentless and exhausting barrage. Coffey tried to get her to remember what she had done with the box. She said that she couldn’t remember if she had put it back on the shelf or if she had done something else with it. She didn’t think her mother had taken it. All she could remember was that she had never seen it afterwards.

  He asked if she would know such a box if she saw it again. When she said ‘yes’, he enquired if she had seen such a box previously. She agreed that she had. He asked when.

  ‘I saw it first on the very top shelf in the house. It was when we lived in the paddock about a year ago.’

  The judge broke into the stream of questions, asking what was on the lid.

  ‘Two rats,’ she reported.

  Coffey asked if she could remember when she found the box.

  ‘It was before my own father took sick.’

  • • •

  Behind her inscrutable mask, Louisa was reeling. Horror stabbed at her like a hot poker, provoking feelings she would later put down on paper. She had just watched her only daughter saying things that could send her to the gallows. Before her own eyes, her little girl had stood in the witness box with a Bible in her right hand and had sworn to tell the truth, then she had said all those terrible things in such a straightforward manner that the words must surely have come from someone else’s head and mouth.

  Still, pride wouldn’t let her reveal her anguish. She kept her face blank as if this profound betrayal caused her no pain.

  • • •

  Knowing the sensational nature of May’s testimony, Coffey had kept the government analyst waiting in the wings. Now he called him to the stand. What could he tell the court about May’s discovery?

  ‘That box is Rough on Rats,’ Hamlet confirmed. Questioned about the colour of the powder, he explained, ‘It is a slate-grey colour because arsenic must be sold only when coloured with soot or indigo.’ The populace was aware that colouring had been introduced in an attempt to prevent accidental poisonings. ‘It contains between ninety-six and ninety-seven parts of white arsenic with three parts in a hundred of indigo.’

  Could this be the source of the arsenic that killed Collins?

  ‘What I discovered might be caused by that,’ Hamlet acknowledged. ‘It is sold all over the colonies in grocery shops. Restrictions have recently been placed upon its sale, but they have not yet properly come into force.’

  A juror suggested that the odd colouring might deter someone from drinking a mixture containing Rough on Rats.

  ‘A small quantity, large enough to be poisonous, put into a tumbler with milk would not discolour the milk,’ Hamlet replied. ‘It would not be perceptible.’

  Louisa’s counsel didn’t ask the scientist if he had actually conducted such an experiment so he could make such a bold statement with certainty.

  The prosecution recalled Dr Milford and asked for his medical opinion.

  ‘That preparation, the Rough on Rats, would produce all the effects I saw in Collins’ body,’ he advised the court, ‘the effects of arsenical poisoning.’

  • • •

  Lusk had known he was facing an uphill battle when he accepted Louisa’s brief. Although she had compiled a list of people who could be called to testify in her defence, he couldn’t subpoena those he couldn’t find, particularly as he lacked the financial resources to search for them. One located witness was Walter Hayes, a fellmonger who had boarded at the Collins house for a couple of months earlier that year. Hayes’
testimony might undermine the Crown’s case to some extent. While the law declared that the Crown didn’t have to provide a motive in order to secure a conviction, the public—the people from whom a jury was drawn—struggled with that principle. If they couldn’t comprehend why someone would commit a crime, how could they decide that the person was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, especially when the only evidence laid against the accused was circumstantial?

  When asked about Louisa and Mick’s relationship, Hayes told the court, ‘They appeared to get on well together. I never saw any unpleasantness while I was there. Collins was a sober, respectable man and a pleasant man in the house.’

  Lusk enquired about Collins’ work situation. The court had already heard about his employment problems because the prosecution had read out Louisa’s inquest statements. Hayes said that Collins was initially out of work but had obtained employment soon after he joined their household. He remembered Collins taking a trip to the Illawarra and coming back the same day saying that he couldn’t find work. He hadn’t heard anything about a lost or pawned watch, though.

  Under cross-examination, Coffey asked about the other relationships within the family. How was May treated?

  ‘She was not ill-treated while I was there.’

  What about arguments in the household: between Collins and his wife, perhaps?

  Hayes said that the couple hadn’t argued, however Collins’ relationship with his stepchildren was a different matter entirely. ‘There was a row between Collins and Arthur while I was there, not between him and his wife. It had reference to a name Arthur had called Collins.’

  It was a reminder that Arthur had shown no concern for Collins’ wellbeing while he lay on his sickbed, only venturing into the bedroom at Louisa’s behest on the day before his death. Clearly, there had been tension between the pair—triggered perhaps by Louisa’s haste in marrying the man who had caused so much unhappiness between his own parents.

  Another boarder, Augustus Nordgren, confirmed Hayes’ remarks about the Collinses’ relationship. Nordgren had lodged at the Collins house for three months over the summer period, departing in January that year. ‘I always saw them live happy together. They seemed fond of one another. I did not hear any of the family ill-treated.’

  Lusk changed his line of questioning when he called the body-washer, Ellen Price, to the stand. He asked her about Collins’ attire at the time of his death. She testified that he was dressed in a shirt, trousers and socks. ‘I took the trousers off,’ she added. ‘They were in a very soiled condition.’

  Under cross-examination, Coffey asked about the contents of Collins’ trouser pockets. Ellen said that she hadn’t noticed anything. ‘If there had been anything in the pockets, I would have felt it.’

  When Lusk attempted to call additional witnesses, he discovered that they had left the courthouse, apparently by mistake. Legally, he couldn’t call Louisa as a witness. New South Wales criminal law followed centuries of British tradition in refusing to allow accused criminals the right to offer sworn testimony in their own defence; not only would it be an invitation to commit perjury, it would reverse the burden of proof and would allow prosecutors to question defendants about past behaviour that was discreditable without being relevant. Louisa could, however, make an unsworn ‘dock statement’—which could not be cross-examined—as most accused criminals chose to do. This would allow the court to see her as more than just a wooden lump sitting in the dock. It would allow the jury to hear her voice, to feel the passion in her declaration that she was innocent of the charge against her, that she hadn’t done such a thing, that she couldn’t have done such a thing because she loved Mick. But she was not going to do so.

  The courtroom regulars noticed the omission and wondered about it.

  With no one else to question, it was time for Lusk to address the jury. However, it was six pm and he didn’t want the jurors thinking about their rumbling stomachs while he was giving the speech that would help them decide Louisa’s fate. He asked the judge if they could adjourn for tea. Foster agreed to a forty-minute break.

  At six forty-five pm, Lusk began his closing address, homing in on the weakest link in the Crown’s case: ‘The Crown has failed to show any motive for Mrs Collins to commit the terrible crime with which she was charged.’ He reminded the jurors of Louisa’s anxiety to assist her husband throughout his illness, that among her many caring actions were her repeated trips to seek the doctor’s assistance. Even the Crown’s witnesses had shown that she had been kind and attentive to Collins and had been reduced to tears on a number of occasions. Their relationship had clearly been affectionate and her husband had shown no signs of suspicion regarding her treatment of him.

  He admitted that there was no doubt that Collins had died from arsenical poisoning. ‘But whilst there is no evidence of his having administered the poison himself; still, it was quite possible for him to have committed suicide.’ He asked the jurors to recollect that Collins rarely volunteered any information about his health problems and that, despite the seriousness of his illness, he had continued to wear his trousers while in bed. Thus, it was possible for him to have hidden the arsenic in his trouser pocket as Louisa had suggested. Moreover, Collins had a motive for committing suicide as he was in and out of work and was struggling financially.

  After speaking for over an hour, Lusk concluded, ‘In view of the very grave responsibility cast upon you, I ask you to carefully consider these facts, and to give the accused the benefit of every reasonable doubt. If you find her not guilty, no irreparable injury would be done.’

  Coffey attempted to undermine Lusk’s defence by declaring that the medical evidence was not consistent with the suggestion of suicide. ‘The doctors’ evidence showed that the poison had been administered in small doses on different occasions, that the deceased was in great pain for days and continually vomiting. It would be absurd to suppose that he would, in committing suicide, submit himself to a week of torture.’ He finished by stating, ‘The evidence points in only one direction, and that is to the guilt of the accused.’

  It was nine pm by the time Coffey finished, too late for the case to be wrapped up that night. Foster adjourned the case until nine-thirty the following morning when he would begin his own summation. Afterwards, the jury would have the rest of the day to consider their verdict. Louisa Collins should know her fate by nightfall.

  Chapter 20

  There is no such thing as an impartial jury because there are no impartial people.

  Jon Stewart

  When the Evening News pressman reached Darlinghurst Courthouse early on Wednesday morning, long before the usual hour of business, he was astonished at the size of the crowd huddling under its portico, particularly in view of the inclement weather. The rain that had threatened on Monday had commenced falling early on Tuesday and had continued throughout the day and night. Sydney had awoken to a gloomy morning, with cloudbursts at regular intervals. Not that cloudbursts would confine its sensation-loving citizens to the warmth of their blazing hearths. After the breakfast newspapers had reported that Louisa Collins’ daughter had provided the most incriminating evidence against her, Sydney’s men and women wanted to see for themselves the face of this accused murderer.

  The doors opened at twenty past nine. The crowds pushed through. Three minutes later, every seat in the public gallery was taken. The courtroom itself was soon packed as well.

  When Louisa appeared in the dock, the Evening News reporter noticed that she was dressed in the same hat and cloak and blue dress as on the previous two days. His female readers would be interested in those details. And what about her expression? Extraordinarily, that too was unchanged. She wore a look of unruffled coolness despite the fact that she would soon hear the verdict of the jury. Then the judge’s voice drew the pressman’s attention away from Louisa.

  ‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ Justice Foster began, ‘the case which has occupied your attention during the past two days is one of very great impo
rtance, not only to the person who is charged here with the terrible crime of poisoning her own husband, but also to the public at large.’ Foster commended the jury for having listened closely to the evidence, and also the Crown and defence for ably conducting their cases, although he had concerns about the defence’s statement that no irreparable injury would be done if Mrs Collins were found not guilty. An irreparable injury would indeed be done if the jury made a mistake when reaching its verdict. ‘In a case of this sort a mistake either on one side or the other cannot always be rectified. I once heard Sir Alfred Stephen say, in a case of murder, that he could not acquit the jury of a large share of responsibility, who had, on a previous charge of murder, improperly acquitted the prisoner.’

  The scales of justice had just become a deadweight resting on the jurors’ shoulders. Serving in a capital trial was a daunting responsibility. If they convicted the woman, they would forever have her death on their consciences. Yet if they failed to convict her and another person died, they would be forever burdened with the sense of their own complicity.

  Foster reassured them that this burden of guilt would apply only if they reached an improper verdict. He explained the legal requirements in cases comprising circumstantial evidence alone: that the circumstances must not only be consistent with the prisoner’s guilt, they must also be inconsistent with any other rational conclusion.

  This was helpful advice for the jurors who had little experience of the judicial process.

  Foster continued by saying that both the Crown and defence agreed that Collins had been killed by arsenical poisoning. ‘This is a question of paramount importance,’ he told the jury, ‘because otherwise the prisoner must be acquitted.’ If they were satisfied that Collins had been poisoned with arsenic, they would have to decide whether the evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Louisa was responsible. He said that the Crown had shown that Louisa had ‘means’, reminding them of the Rough on Rats evidence provided by Louisa’s daughter. She also had ‘opportunity’, both because she had lived with and cared for Collins during his illness and because she had stated on several occasions that she alone had given him his medicine. ‘This strikes two ways. It shows that the prisoner had a better opportunity of doing this than any other person but, on the other hand, that she had not endeavoured to conceal it in any way.’