by Carol Baxter
‘Then you simply drew the inference that it was possible in this case,’ accepted the judge and directed the question back to the witness.
Sayers agreed that while workers’ hands could become soft and swollen from the wool friction, Collins did not suffer in that way. His skin was firm.
When James Law was called to testify, Lusk under cross-examination asked about the Collinses’ relationship—apparently happy—and Botany’s opinion of Louisa.
‘Until the death of her first husband, she was very much respected in the neighbourhood,’ Law replied.
What about afterwards?
‘Her remarriage very close upon the death of her first husband was talked about,’ he said primly.
Aware of Law’s equivocation, the prosecution prompted him for a direct answer.
‘Since the death of her first husband, her reputation was not so good.’
• • •
The first suggestion that all might not have been rosy in the Collins household came a few witnesses later. Rosetta Mapstone reported hearing a man and woman wrangling and someone vomiting when she visited Catherine Mudge one Saturday night in mid-June. Mrs Mudge’s sister, Mary Ellen Cavanagh, also testified to hearing Collins vomiting at night on several occasions around that period. They were certain that it was mid-June and not later in the month as they were helping Mrs Mudge with her ailing baby who died on 22 June.
To the more percipient in the courtroom, these testimonies were a source of confusion rather than clarity. If the vomiter was indeed Collins, why hadn’t he mentioned his earlier health issues on the numerous occasions he was questioned about his illness by the doctors and police officers?
When young Fred Andrews was called to testify, he assured the court that there had been no rows between his mother and Collins. His brother Arthur agreed that the couple lived on good terms, although he admitted that her drinking was a problem. ‘Mother was sober a few months before Mick died. I saw her drinking about a month before Collins died. He often said he would have it stopped.’
The prosecutor asked how often she drank.
‘She could be under the influence once or twice a week, sometimes not that.’
Lusk asked about her degree of intoxication. Arthur said that he had never seen her drunk. Nor had he heard any arguments, except about her drinking, and he’d never seen Collins use physical violence against her.
Then May Andrews was called to testify. Clothes rustled and chairs scraped as spectators shifted to catch a glimpse of the young girl. Few were unaware of her previous revelations. Did she have more startling information to communicate?
May repeated her tales about seeing Rough on Rats in the house, more confident in her testimony on this second occasion. The prosecutor asked what her mother had said when she mentioned the discovery.
Those who had attended the previous trial knew that the girl had been adamant that she couldn’t recollect what her mother had said or what had happened to the box, except that her mother hadn’t taken it. Now, three months later, she had an answer. ‘She asked me where I found it. I said, “Under the big basin on the shelf,” and I showed her the place.’ The prosecutor asked what had happened next. May said, ‘She went away then and I think she took the box with her.’
The Evening News reporter happened to glance around the courtroom at that moment and noticed that some of the jurors were crying, horrified that the girl was being asked to condemn her own mother. He looked at Louisa and was startled to see that her mask of inscrutability had vanished, washed away by her tears. Was her misery caused by her sense of betrayal or because she saw a vision of her daughter’s future horror when she realised what she had done? Because May wasn’t just repeating the incriminating information from the previous trial. There was more.
‘Once, when Collins was ill, Mother said if I went to get a pint of beer, she would give me two pence. She said we were going to live in Waterloo, that the money was no use to her whilst Mick was alive, that she was going to get some money from Mick when he died.’
Money from Mick? Had his life been insured? No previous witness had suggested such a thing.
The prosecutor asked when her mother had made the comment.
‘I think the doctor had been there before she said this.’
Asked if she had fetched the requested beer, May said that she hadn’t as her brother told her not to. The prosecutor enquired if beer was her mother’s normal drink. May replied, ‘Sometimes I saw Mother drink beer and brandy. I sometimes fetched it for her sixpence worth at a time. I went about once a day for that.’
What was Collins’ reaction to her drinking?
‘I heard Collins speak to my mother when he came home about her drinking. Sometimes he would speak cross. This happened once or twice a week.’
When Lusk took over the questioning, he enquired about the jug May had mentioned, the one that held Mick’s milk.
‘I remember having a jug of milk in the kitchen that night. It came off the milkman. It was the jug the milk was usually kept in. My little brother was taking some of the jug of milk to put in his tea. He took a little drink and mother said it was for Mick and she did not let him have it and he put the jug back on the side table.’
What about the condensed milk?
‘She boiled some condensed milk for Mick and put it in another jug. This was on the Saturday afternoon before the milk came from the milkman. What came from the milkman she put on another table for our tea.’ Then May realised that she had made a mistake in her previous statement. ‘What she would not let my brother have was the boiled condensed milk,’ she corrected. ‘That was what she said was for Mick.’
Hamlet was recalled to the witness box and questioned about condensed milk in general. He explained that it comprised milk and sugar—thirty-three per cent sugar—as well as maize and starch, the starch being added to make up bulk. He reported that the constituents of condensed milk tallied with what he had found in the arsenic-filled tumbler.
The prosecution was delighted. Not only had May hammered another nail into her mother’s coffin, she had been helped by none other than Louisa’s defence counsel himself.
Chapter 24
Of all kinds of murders that by poison is the most dreadful, as it takes a man unguarded, and gives him no opportunity to defend himself.
Counsel for the Crown, R v. Mary Blandy, 1752
As country New South Wales baked under a scorching sun and drought gripped the western regions, the courtroom attendees were grateful for the cooler Sydney temperatures and the breeze that stirred the courtroom air. With only the defence and prosecution’s closing addresses and the judge’s summation to be heard, the fate of the poker-faced woman sitting in the dock should be known by day’s end. Would her barrister succeed in keeping her from the noose’s deadly embrace?
‘We have now been engaged for three days in considering what on the face of it appears to be a very difficult case,’ said Hugh Lusk as he commenced his closing address at ten am on Wednesday, 7 November. ‘But when we divest it of a large amount of suspicion, it is found to be not such a difficult case.’ He asked the jurors to listen carefully as he examined the facts of the case and distinguished them from matters of opinion that were not, properly speaking, part of the case itself. He said the facts revealed that Mrs Collins had shown great anxiety for her husband’s wellbeing and would not benefit in any way by her husband’s death. Furthermore, the medical texts revealed that arsenic often failed to take effect for days, so if Collins had absorbed the poison before he saw the doctor, there was nothing to connect his wife with his death.
He accepted that the arsenic found in the tumbler played a large part in the Crown’s evidence, but queried if the jurors should place so much weight on this evidence because of the discrepancies between the various testimonies. ‘The liquid in the glass had diminished in quantity between the time it was found by the constable and when handed over for analysis. Is it not fair to assume that it might have been tam
pered with in other ways?’
Evidently since the previous trial Lusk had realised that the discrepancy between the quantities mentioned by Hamlet and Jeffes was an important point he could use to undermine the prosecution’s case.
As for the box of Rough on Rats: was it reasonable to suppose that Mrs Collins would simply hide it under a basin on a kitchen shelf rather than carefully conceal the existence of such a well-known poison, if she had indeed used it to commit such an awful crime? The same could be said for the liquid in the tumbler. If she had put it there, why hadn’t she later thrown the contents away?
There were other ways Collins could have been poisoned. He might have purposefully committed suicide or even accidentally poisoned himself (an allusion to arsenic-eating). He might have absorbed poison into his body by handling arsenic-treated skins while working at the wool-wash. ‘In conclusion,’ Lusk said, ‘there is no evidence whatever upon which you would be justified in convicting Mrs Collins of the crime with which she has been charged.’
Naturally the prosecutor disagreed—at length.
• • •
Louisa’s expression was alert as she waited for the judge to begin his summation. She had listened to two days of testimony, some of it extraordinary and unexpected. What approach would the judge take when he summed up her case?
Others were wondering the same thing. Would Windeyer’s directions to the jury reflect evenly weighted scales of justice or would he place a greater weight on one side or the other? With a reputation as ‘the hanging judge’, his likely leaning wasn’t hard to surmise.
‘Of all forms of murder that by poisoning is one that most shocks us, by reason of the treachery, the falsehood, and danger that necessarily surrounded it,’ the judge began. ‘But you are required to be careful in investigating it so as not to be hastily carried away in arriving at a conclusion which ought only to be arrived at after due and deliberate inquiry.’
It was an impartial beginning.
Windeyer explained that circumstantial evidence alone was often the only evidence available in poisoning cases because those who were cunning enough, cruel enough and calculating enough to bring about a person’s death by poisoning did so in such a manner that others could not see the fatal dose being mixed and administered. Therefore, it was necessary to view all of Mrs Collins’ actions with the utmost caution. ‘You will have to consider whether her acts of kindness and consideration might have been part of the scheme to bring about Collins’ death,’ he counselled.
Regarding the evidence itself, he said that the jurors could accept that Collins died from arsenical poisoning because the testimonies from the government analyst and doctors proved it to be so. It was the jurors’ role to determine how the arsenic had been absorbed into his body. Had Collins committed suicide? Windeyer asked if it were feasible to believe that a man so young and so healthy would destroy himself, particularly when there was no evidence to show that he had lost control of his reason. Moreover, most who attempted suicide did so as speedily as possible. In fact, he had never heard of a man destroying himself by inches. It was his opinion that the theory of suicide could not be supported. Nevertheless, if the jurors had any doubts, they must give Mrs Collins the benefit of those doubts.
Could Collins have absorbed arsenic while carrying out his work? ‘That proposition arose in consequence of a question put by one of the jurymen and not by the counsel for the prisoner,’ he reminded the court, while conceding that, in a case of such importance, they should explore all possibilities. He said that the evidence showed that Collins had not suffered in this way as no arsenic had been used in his workplace and as he had been engaged only in carting untreated green skins in the weeks before his death. The medical evidence also showed that it was impossible for such a large quantity of arsenic to have found its way into Collins’ stomach by absorption through the skin. ‘However, if you feel that death was brought about in this way,’ he advised the jury, ‘there would, of course, be an end of the case.’
If they could not adopt the theories of suicide or absorption, they were brought face to face with the likelihood that Collins was poisoned by another person. The Crown’s case was that Collins’ wife had the opportunity and the means for doing so. Windeyer repeated the evidence supporting the Crown’s case, then concluded, ‘If, after having considered the facts, any doubt remained in your minds as to the guilt of the prisoner, it is your duty to give her the benefit of that doubt. But if, on the other hand, no doubt exists in your minds, it is your duty to find the prisoner guilty.’
• • •
The jury’s retirement allowed the spectators a welcome break from the increasingly hot and stuffy courtroom. Many an eye had drifted closed as the judge repeated the evidence presented. Still, they couldn’t remain outside in the fresh air for long in case the jury reached a speedy verdict. Listening to a murder case unfold was exciting, but there was nothing better than hearing the verdict for themselves.
By suppertime, however, some of the spectators had decided that their empty stomachs triumphed over their need to hear the verdict firsthand. Others hung on until nine-thirty pm, when the foreman announced that the jurors hadn’t yet reached a verdict. After the judge ordered the jurors’ sequestration, the spectators spilled out of the building, making plans to be present when the trial resumed at ten am the following day.
• • •
Men, women and children swarmed into the courtroom on Thursday, 8 November, buzzing with excitement. The foreman hadn’t said that the jurors were unable to reach a verdict, just that they hadn’t yet done so. There would be a resolution this time—wouldn’t there?—one way or the other.
The spectators sought out Louisa, desperate to see how she was reacting. Astonishingly, she wore the same air of indifference as on the previous days of her trial.
At 10.08, the jury filed into the witness box. As the atmosphere tensed, the judge’s associate asked, ‘Gentlemen of the jury, are you agreed upon your verdict?’
Not a murmur; not a rustle.
The foreman replied, ‘No, we are not agreed.’
A moan of disappointment swept through the courtroom.
‘Swear him in the usual way,’ said the judge resignedly. He then asked if there was any chance they would reach an agreement.
After the abortive first trial, no one was surprised at the foreman’s reply. ‘There is not the slightest probability of our agreeing, Your Honour.’
‘Then, gentlemen, you are discharged.’
Turning to the prosecutor, Windeyer asked, ‘What course do you propose to take in regard to the accused?’
‘I apply, Your Honour, that she should be remanded to her former custody until I consult with the attorney-general.’
• • •
The smile that had begun to tweak Louisa’s lips when she heard the foreman’s announcement turned radiant after she had spoken with her counsel. Two hung juries. The law officers wouldn’t bring her to trial on the same charge for a third time, surely. Such a situation would be unprecedented.
Chapter 25
We have a criminal jury system . . . [whose] efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don’t know anything and can’t read.
Mark Twain, Fourth of July speech, 1886
‘As the judge who tried the case,’ Justice Windeyer wrote to Attorney-General George Simpson soon afterwards, ‘I think it right to inform you that, in my opinion, there has been a miscarriage of justice.’
Windeyer was annoyed at the hung verdict. He reported to Simpson that a plainer case of poisoning was hardly possible to conceive, and that there were circumstances connected with the trial that made the verdict most unsatisfactory. He wanted to alert the attorney-general officially—to begin with, at least. ‘If you care to inquire into it, I will communicate it to you personally,’ he added.
No doubt the attorney-general agreed to meet this important judicial figure; however, the reason for the requested meeting
and the result of any such meeting was kept out of the official records. Did Windeyer want to discuss the impact of the juror’s intrusion, or to recommend changes in court procedure or in the Crown’s handling of Louisa’s case so as to minimise the possibility of a future hung jury?
Meanwhile, prosecutor Henry Cohen was preparing his own letter to the attorney-general, in which he revealed that the breakdown of votes in Louisa’s second trial was reportedly ten for an acquittal, one for a conviction, and one undecided. Louisa had almost walked out of the Darlinghurst courtroom a free woman—on the charge of killing her second husband, at least.
Cohen also offered his opinion about the Crown’s future course of action. He remarked that the facts certainly pointed to Louisa having administered the poison that killed her husband; yet there was evidence that raised doubts about her guilt: namely, her persistence in seeking the doctor’s assistance, her failure to dispose of the contents of the arsenic-filled tumbler, and her insistence that she alone had given Collins his nourishment. ‘As I am asked whether she should be tried again for the offence of murdering the deceased Michael Peter Collins, I beg to state that, in my opinion, she should not be put upon her trial again to answer this charge, two juries having now disagreed upon the question of her guilt in this case.’
• • •
The public wasn’t privy to the breakdown of the jurors’ votes although it wasn’t hard to comprehend the lack on unanimity in this second jury’s deliberations. While motive remained a problem, another weapon had been added to the ‘reasonable doubt’ armoury. The juror’s questions had been dynamite.
No doubt the ‘not guilty’ voters included the juror who had expressed scorn at the establishment for its ignorance about arsenic’s use in the wool industry. Indeed, anyone associated with the industry knew of its uses and benefits—and the horrors of working with it. The juror might have explained to his brothers-in-sequestration that sheep needed to be ‘dressed’ at regular intervals; that is, they were immersed for a minute or two in a vat of liquid in the hope of eradicating ticks, lice and other skin-irritating parasites. While the liquid sometimes comprised carbolic acid or mercury salts or lime-and-sulphur or even tobacco, most shepherds and flock-masters praised arsenic as the most effective ingredient, not only because of its deadliness as a pest eradicator, but because enough arsenic might be absorbed through the sheep’s skin to improve its fleece and increase its value. The benefits of arsenic-eating had penetrated even into the pastoral industry.
