by Carol Baxter
Why?
‘Protection’ was the reason: protection not only against the actions of others, but against those she might inflict upon herself. She had broken society’s laws—so society must not be denied its right to kill her.
Chapter 33
Louisa Collins’ method of procuring a divorce by means of arsenic is open to serious objection.
Sydney Morning Herald
After four nail-biting trials and months of reportage, the press couldn’t let Louisa’s conviction pass without some editorialising. The Daily Telegraph applauded the verdict and also the Crown for its astute decision to introduce the evidence regarding Louisa’s first husband’s death. The Sydney Morning Herald found the evidence convincing and the verdict unsurprising and had no qualms about imposing a death sentence. ‘Hiding the fiendish purpose behind the sanctity of wedlock and dealing out slow and torturing agonies to one who believes the hand that is giving him poison is trying to preserve his life belongs to a species of crime for which death punishment hardly seems retribution enough.’
‘Murder by poisoning!’ It was always said in tones of outrage, as if the secrecy and duplicity of this largely ‘domestic’ crime, this predominantly ‘female’ crime, made it more iniquitous than any other. Indeed, the Herald roared that crimes of poisoning struck at the very heart of society. ‘If a man’s life is not safe in the hands of one who has sworn to love and cherish him, where shall there be safety?’
Parliamentarian Thomas Walker agreed that domestic poisonings should shock the instincts of even the most brutal man in the community, failing to recognise that brutal men should indeed be the most shocked—and fearful. Brutality wielded its mightiest fist in the domestic sphere, so a brute faced the greatest risk of having a poisonous cocktail served with his supper.
As it happened, the outrage voiced by press and politicians had its origin in ancient common law. Until a mere half-century previously, husband-killing had been deemed a more heinous crime than murder. In the medieval world, society had envisaged itself as a framework with each person having an appointed place. If a wife killed a husband or a servant killed his or her master, it was considered an act of betrayal that threatened the fabric of society itself. The Treason Act of 1351 codified this murderous betrayal of a superior as ‘petit treason’. Even though legislative changes had subsumed ‘petit treason’ under the broad ‘murder’ umbrella, social attitudes were little changed. The public still saw husband-killing as a form of treachery and duplicity to rival Judas’ kiss.
However, those railing against women and their choice of poison as a weapon failed to recognise that the ‘gentle sex’ had fewer options than men. Physical violence was rarely on the list. Any attempt to beat, strangle or stab an unwanted partner would likely incur physical violence, which was generally what the woman was trying to escape in the first place. A killer-for-hire? That required money and a broader social network than the domestic sphere inhabited by most women. In truth, poison was cheap, accessible and non-confrontational, making it the only weapon in an urban woman’s arsenal.
Nonetheless, the notion that poisoning was the most evil of crimes readily meshed with the view that women were the most evil of creatures. Biblical Eve, corruptible and corrupting, had long served as a metaphor for womanhood, so much so that many of the medieval church leaders had held the female gender in utter contempt. St Clement of Alexandria had opined that ‘the consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame’, while the Catholic Church’s witch-hunting manual, Malleus Maleficarum, stated, ‘All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman.’
Throughout history, the nexus between women and sex and death had horrified yet titillated. The siren of Greek mythology—half-woman, half-bird—who lured sailors to their deaths; the femme fatale of romantic poetry who sucked out man’s life-force. Witch, siren, sorceress, temptress. The Eve mythology proved persistent and deadly.
Women were expected to be more like Mary, pure and unsullied. Their place was in the home, submitting to a husband’s authority, breeding children and nurturing their family. But, even in the Victorian era, society still believed that Eve lurked within her modest robes, capable, like the black widow spider, of devouring her mate. And this particular black widow had eaten not just a single partner; seemingly, she had eaten two.
Colonial society fixed its gaze on Louisa with a malevolence rarely directed at male killers. She became the epitome of the corrupting Eve, the venal Jezebel, the witch whose evil could only be vanquished when she was burned at the stake. The press and public nicknamed her ‘Lucrezia Borgia’ because ‘there was no character more sublimely terrible, and more fiendish, than that of Lucrezia Borgia. Though her relatives were villains, they could not compare with her in her atrocities.’6
Even Louisa’s coolness during her court cases was seen as proof of her wickedness. ‘There is no reason to doubt,’ wrote the Daily Telegraph’s editor when offering a second reason for her conviction, ‘that the unfeeling indifference and complete callousness exhibited in the court by the prisoner throughout the four trials fitted her for the act of which the verdict convicted her.’
Meanwhile, the Crown’s strategy of linking the two deaths had slipped free from its courtroom confines. The press and public now accepted, in the main, that Louisa was guilty of two murders, even though she had only been convicted of one. In a democratic society, the voices of the people were heard by their political representatives and influenced their decision-making. Thus, the public’s belief that Louisa was guilty of multiple murders and should be treated accordingly could have a profound impact on the men who would raise their hands in judgement as to whether she should live or die.
• • •
On 13 December, the members of the most powerful body in New South Wales prepared to meet at Government House. The Executive Council was the official arm of government, granting legal authority to the decisions made by the people’s representatives. Among the matters under its purview were the capital cases: the judgments imposing the punishment of death. The law allowed the council a final say as to whether Louisa should go to the gallows or have her sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
As the council members headed to Government House, Sydney’s punters speculated as to how these men would vote. The Governor of New South Wales, Lord Charles Robert Carrington, would be the host. The young moustachioed aristocrat with liberal leanings and a kind, generous nature was immensely popular with the people and their representatives. He understood the conventions limiting his role as the Queen’s representative, yet he had also shown himself willing to grab the wheel of his supreme authority when he felt that the ship of state was steaming towards a dangerous abyss.
The New South Wales premier would also sit at the august table. Seventy-three-year-old Sir Henry Parkes was serving the fourth of five terms as premier. In these merry-go-round years of the early New South Wales parliament, when governments frequently rose and fell, he had risen above all others. ‘The wily knight,’ the Bulletin called him.
Parkes had found his political voice four decades previously. Then a young British-born radical, he had held loosely Chartist dreams of a broader franchise and representative government at a time when Britain still retained the autocratic hope of dumping its criminal refuse on New South Wales soil. His success in helping to thwart these imperial ambitions had fired his blood with the fever of political ambition. Soon afterwards, he had established the radical Empire newspaper, using it as his bullhorn to rally for change—for progressive reform, though, rather than revolution. When his dream of representative government was fulfilled, he had manoeuvred himself onto the political podium.
Capital punishment had long been one of his concerns. In the aftermath of an 1852 execution, he penned an Empire editorial declaring that it was time to consider the ethicality and efficacy of death sentences. As he saw it, the arguments in favour of capital punishment were threefold, being drawn from scripture, abstract justice and expediency. He d
ismissed the expediency argument as invalid because history’s example had already proven that death punishments were inexpedient as crime correctives. And the blindness of abstract justice was akin to the sin of retaliation, which was forbidden under the Christian code. All that was left were the biblical passages, yet their advocacy of the death penalty had been questioned—indeed impugned—by men of judgement. That being the case, he declared that it was both offensive and revolting to use such passages as the authority to take a life, particularly as a life wrongly taken could never be restored.
While philosophically a staunch abolitionist, Parkes’ political success had been founded on his pragmatism, so it was difficult to know what stance he would take regarding Louisa’s case. Two years previously, while a member of the Opposition, he had privately approached Governor Carrington to plead against the death penalty for the ‘larrikins’7 convicted of a brutal gang rape at Mount Rennie in the Moore Park area of Sydney. Among other reasons, Parkes argued that so many men should not hang for a single crime. Of course, their victim, sixteen-year-old Mary Jane Hicks, might argue that she was not the victim of a single crime—that, rather, nine discrete criminal acts of a similar nature had been perpetrated consecutively. Whether rapists should be hanged at all, however, was a different question. Indeed, it was a particularly troublesome one considering that England, the source of much of the colony’s judicial wisdom, had tossed rape’s capital statute into the legal fire some decades previously, as had other Australian colonies. That being the case, Parkes’ willingness to speak out against the death penalty in the Mount Rennie case could not be considered a litmus test for his likely response to Louisa’s case.
Against this plea for mercy must be set Parkes’ Machiavellian manoeuvring in the case of the Duke of Edinburgh’s would-be assassin two decades previously. Parkes had concealed evidence proving that the plot was hatched not by a Fenian anarchist, but by a mind addled with alcohol and insanity. Without this mitigating evidence—and despite Prince Alfred’s own pleas—Henry O’Farrell had been refused mercy and dispatched to the gallows.
So, would opportunism or expediency drive the premier when he cast his vote?
Parkes’ men—the members of his cabinet—would join him at the Executive Council table. Parkes usually focused on power and leadership rather than political scruples when he chose his cabinet but—according to widely accepted rumours—even baser reasoning underpinned this choice of ministers. Struggling as ever to keep himself above the quicksands of insolvency, Parkes had reportedly offered the cabinet’s prestigious and financially remunerative positions to men he owed money. He had won his huge majority on a ‘free trade’ platform with the slogan ‘good government and commercial freedom’, and one of his cabinet choices was the Freetrade Association president. Yet ministerial portfolios were also offered to three men who had recently advocated commercial duties to protect local industries from cheaper international or intercolonial prices. The critical Ministry of Justice portfolio, for example, was now in the hands of businessman William Clarke, a politician derided by the Australian Town and Country Journal as ‘the most personally disliked man in the Assembly’.
These men would not ‘toe the party line’, all the same, as party politics was still a distant dream. However, that dream was closer to fruition with Parkes’ government because the premier’s resounding victory had reshuffled political allegiances into party-like divisions, the first stage in the demise of the unstable faction-driven system that had dominated parliament for three decades. Factional alliances were based on loosely held principles pasted together with self-interest. With a support base about as resilient as a house of cards, some governments lasted only a matter of months—or weeks. And the issue that triggered their downfall could be as unexpected as it was catastrophic.
The question of appropriate criminal punishments had already proven deadly for a Parkes government. His first premiership had ended after the governor’s controversial decision to allow the early release of a bushranger—although Parkes’ downfall owed more to his own petulance at the government’s censure of his actions than any weakening of his support base. The fact that rash decisions could swell into a tidal wave capable of washing away a government would not be forgotten by these men—Parkes in particular—as they discussed Louisa’s case.
• • •
Lord Carrington convened the meeting and advised that the first matter on their agenda was the case of the capitally convicted prisoner, Louisa Collins. He tabled the report written by Chief Justice Darley and invited his companions to consider the matter.
The report was read to the members. Parkes thought it detailed and thorough, so much so that he would later declare: ‘It was the fullest and most careful report from a judge I have ever seen in my whole life.’ Even so, the council needed the most detailed information possible. Accordingly, Darley himself was called into the room.
In this type of situation, Lord Carrington recognised his place and took a back seat. The leader of the government was also leader of the council, so Parkes took charge. He questioned the chief justice on the quality of Louisa’s defence.
‘I think she had a very able defence,’ was the response.
‘Can you suggest any recommendation to enable the Executive Council to take a merciful view of the case?’
‘I can give none,’ Darley replied deliberately.
After Darley had departed, the council began its discussion. The council’s minutes are brief, providing no guide as to how long the exchange lasted or how readily the members reached agreement. When Parkes later referred to the meeting, instead of saying, ‘The council decision was unanimous,’ he spoke cautiously—‘I think I am justified in stating that the Executive Council was unanimous’ and ‘I think I am stating what I may be fairly pardoned for stating when I say that that was the decision arrived at’—as if, perhaps, such unanimity had not been easy to come by. Capital punishment was a contentious subject that divided the populace so it is likely that passions were aroused before a firm hand guided them towards a unified position.
If some council members wanted to reprieve Louisa despite the judge’s refusal to offer any grounds for doing so, Parkes made his own position clear. He probably expressed himself in words similar to those he would later use in parliament: ‘We did not hear the trial. We did not see the witnesses. We never had the responsibility attaching to the legal investigation and this solemn decision of a court of law. How can we, then, presume to set aside the solemn decision of a jury of Louisa Collins’ countrymen?’
The council members knew that the Westminster system of government stressed the importance of the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary in order to protect liberty and promote good governance. Yet, at the same time, the law permitted the executive to venture across the tightrope separating the two powers by requiring the council members to either ratify or veto the courts’ sanction of death. It recognised that despots could build thrones in judicial as well as political kingdoms. It also recognised that mitigating circumstances sometimes existed that the courts could not take into consideration.
So what should they do? The council members all knew Parkes’ personal views on capital punishment. Everyone did. Nevertheless, as he no doubt reminded his cabinet, the issue here was not the question of capital punishment itself; rather, it was the rights and obligations of the council in upholding and implementing the colony’s laws.
But to execute a woman? That question must have been asked by at least one of the men. Even among those who advocated capital punishment, the execution of a woman was often a moral and emotional stumbling block.
Again, Parkes no doubt reminded them that the law was blind to gender, perhaps also in the words he would later use in parliament: ‘Are we to bend down to the circumstances of the sex of the criminal? It is abhorrent to every feeling of humanity to see a woman hanged. It is abhorrent to mine. If it were in my power by any means possible to save the country from su
ch a spectacle, I would spare no pains to save it, but while the law remains in force must I save us from this spectacle at the sacrifice—the hanging—of justice itself?’
Certainly, this philosophical argument could be challenged on the practical grounds that no woman had been executed in New South Wales for nearly three decades—and it wasn’t because the fair sex had refrained from killing during that period. It was inevitable that someone would remind the council of the ‘Maitland murderesses’.
Mary Ann Burton and her stepdaughter, Sarah Keep, had been accused of murdering Sarah’s husband in November 1883 by means of strychnine poisoning. The case against the women was circumstantial because the women themselves said that Keep had committed suicide. A hung jury ended the first trial, however the second resulted in a death sentence. A month later, the Executive Council reprieved the women to life imprisonment. The council’s reasons for doing so were not published; however, the Maitland Mercury’s editor thought its decision was probably influenced by four factors: that the women might still have been innocent even though the circumstantial evidence suggested otherwise; that the first jury had been almost evenly divided yet the second jury, hearing little extra evidence, had reached a unanimous verdict; that the public strenuously objected to the hanging of women; and that, as murders by women were rare, the deterrent effect of capital punishment was unnecessary, so a reprieve to life punishment would satisfy the community that justice had been served and society protected against similar outrages.
Shouldn’t the Maitland case serve as a precedent? Weren’t the actions of the Maitland murderesses even worse than those of Louisa Collins? Not only had the women committed murder, they had conspired to commit murder—a serious criminal offence in its own right. So when they had been reprieved, the people had thought that a critical precedent had been set, that women would never again be executed. Yet here was the council, a mere three years later, arguing the merits of executing another woman.
