by Carol Baxter
Still, it had been years since New South Wales had been disgraced by the execution of a woman, so why was it happening now? He wouldn’t stop to argue the question of capital punishment generally—which he didn’t believe in—except to say that he didn’t see what good would be achieved by executing the woman when she could be adequately punished by substituting life imprisonment for death. He believed that if an appeal was made to the government by a representative of the people, one that covered the concerns he had already mentioned, that appeal would be grounds enough to reconsider the case.
‘To put the discussion in order,’ he concluded, ‘I move that the item “Minister for Justice £1500” be reduced to £500.’
Parkes picked up the gauntlet. He chastised Melville for embarking on such a course of action, saying that it would have no good effect on Louisa’s fate or, more importantly, on the policy of capital punishment. He declared that if it were ever justifiable to take away a person’s life, it would appear to be so in Louisa’s case. She had been tried by one of the most capable judges in the colony, a man who had personally told him and the council that the woman had been ably defended and that there were no grounds for mercy. ‘If the conviction is complete,’ Parkes continued, seemingly unaware that his use of the word ‘if ’ revealed a doubt as to whether her conviction was truly ‘complete’ or not, ‘it is one of the most cruel, inexcusable, terrible murders ever perpetrated in the world’s history.’
Of course, the members could think of a few worse murders in world history; nevertheless, they wouldn’t interrupt their leader’s flight of hyperbole.
Parkes admitted that he didn’t believe in the deterrent effect of capital punishment; however, the legislature remained obdurate in its refusal to give up its hold on human life. That being the case, neither the members of the executive nor those of parliament had any other option than to uphold the law—a law that saw no difference between man and woman. And why should it see any difference when the lessons of history—of French streets running with blood during the time of the Revolution, for example—showed that women who forgot their sex were responsible for the worst of humanity’s crimes? (The Echo’s political correspondent noted that the premier revelled here in painting a picture of the horrible things women had done: ‘And yet the Premier wishes to make them members of Parliament!’)
Parkes agreed that it was abhorrent to hang a woman; however, it was also abhorrent that a woman could commit such an unwomanly crime, so why shouldn’t she suffer the dread sentence of the law? And if the other members thought that the death statutes were wrong, they could remedy the evil by putting forward a bill to abolish capital punishment and he would give it his support. Meanwhile, they could act as citizens and petition the governor about Louisa Collins. Royal instructions decreed that the governor should be hesitant to pardon or reprieve anyone condemned to death unless the Executive Council advised that it was expedient to do so. Nonetheless, in all cases, the final decision was the governor’s irrespective of whether the council agreed with it or not.
‘I do not know what course could be wrong, or what place could be wrong, if it were possible to save our colony from disgrace, and to save a human life,’ countered member Thomas Walker, a close friend of Ninian Melville. ‘We are now upon the eve of that period of the year when all humanity indulges in rejoicing, in making merry and in gladness, and we are about to perpetrate an act which, in the opinion of those who do not believe in capital punishment, is nothing short of national murder. Let the woman swing from the gallows and let us behold her as we rise from our Christmas dinners at this season of goodwill towards mankind.’ He added that if one iota of good could be achieved by executing the woman, then they should let the death penalty take its course. If it could bring back the murdered husband, then let it be done. But it wouldn’t. He suggested that Parkes consider using his large majority to bring in a law to abolish capital punishment.
‘Hear! Hear!’ shouted other abolitionists.
Walker said that, in the meantime, the law permitted the premier and his cabinet to advise the governor to exercise the prerogative of mercy—as had happened in the case of the Maitland murderesses. Why withhold similar advice in this instance? Louisa Collins had already suffered considerable punishment in the anticipation of her own death, and she had endured what no other man or woman had endured by being put to trial four times. Moreover, the fact that special arrangements had been made before her fourth trial to change the judge so as to increase the likelihood of a conviction made it all the more reasonable that mercy should be offered her.
Other parliamentary voices were also determined to be heard. Thomas O’Mara, the member for Monaro, disputed Parkes’ claim that there was no distinction in law or kind between the treatment of men and women in terms of criminal punishment. He reminded the House that men were still flogged, yet women were not. ‘Is there any man who, because flogging is a recognised punishment under our criminal code, would dare to advocate the flogging of a woman?’
‘Yes,’ said Parkes obstinately. ‘Women, unfortunately, are flogged in many countries of Europe, and plenty of men in the world advocate it!’
‘Not in New South Wales!’ was the appalled response from all over the House.
‘I regret exceedingly that this debate has taken place,’ declared James Garvan, the member for Eden. An intelligent, thoughtful, principled man, he was well liked in the House and was praised by political commentators as being unafraid to run clear of the ruck. ‘If there was a hope that mercy might yet enter into the counsels of ministers in their final decision, this inopportune and early discussion has almost compelled ministers to assume an attitude from which it will be almost impossible for them afterwards to deviate.’
‘Hear, hear,’ muttered a few voices.
Nonetheless, he could offer some insights from a constitutional perspective. The governor’s rights and responsibilities had been reviewed in the aftermath of bushranger Frank Gardiner’s release so the governor would abide by whatever decision the executive made. ‘Suppose after due consideration the government should decide that the wretched woman ought not to be hanged, would one suppose that the governor would dare to carry out the death sentence? The thing would be impossible. It is not in the power of the governor to enforce the carrying out of the sentence.’
‘I am obliged to say that I think the governor could act in direct opposition to the ministry according to the present law!’ Parkes countered, knowing that he had personally entreated the governor to do so only two years previously—with some success.
‘The ministry has the power to remove the only officer who could carry out the sentence,’ was Garvan’s simple response.
The colossus, John Neild, with his Garibaldi beard and fiercely curled moustache, could have played the villain in a children’s pantomime. Instead, the member for Paddington was one of the few trying to communicate the horror of the Crown’s treatment of Louisa’s children. ‘Almost the chief witnesses for the prosecution at the many trials—witnesses without which her conviction would have been impossible—were her own little children,’ he reminded the fathers and grandfathers in the House. ‘These ill-educated, uninformed, trembling little creatures were brought up no less than four times, the evidence was practically the same on each occasion, and on the fourth occasion it convicted her—why?—because they had been put through the mill time after time until, unhappily for their mother, they learned their lesson of evidence too well.’
Parkes was affronted. ‘That really ought not to be said!’
‘I never meant to imply that the officers of the Crown had in any manner tutored the children,’ Neild clarified. ‘What I desired to convey was that little children could not be brought up time after time to give certain evidence without the matter being impressed on their minds and without the effect of making their evidence gradually more and more important.’
‘In what way?’ Parkes demanded. ‘Against their mother?’
‘There
is an old saying,’ said Neild, ‘that if a man told a lie often enough, he would credit his own lie at last.’
‘How does that apply to the children?’ Parkes asked, refusing to comprehend Neild’s meaning.
‘It is disingenuous on the honourable gentleman’s part to interrupt me in this manner, because he must know the line of argument which I am following—that the more often a story is repeated, the more perfect that story becomes.’
For a short time, the debate descended into bitter sniping, with members accusing Neild of suggesting that the Crown law officers had tutored the children to tell lies. Others grumbled about the introduction of the subject in the first place and the amount of time they had already devoted to discussing it.
‘Then do not discuss it!’ exclaimed Opposition Leader George Dibbs.
A discussion began about not discussing the subject. Dibbs eventually joined in, using the opportunity to take a swipe at Parkes for making such an impassioned address when he could simply have pointed out the gravity of the question and the fact that the House should not be talking about it.
Parkes, however, was in full flight. He reiterated that the House made the laws and had emphatically declined to abolish capital punishment. He mentioned the case of Mary Ann Brownlow, who had been sentenced to death for the stabbing murder of her adulterous husband while in a fit of jealous rage during her pregnancy, and said that the judge, a man still held in high esteem, had refused to say a word in her favour even though the whole colony had implored him to show mercy. ‘That unfortunate woman took her little child and suckled it on the steps of the scaffold, and then walked up and was hanged.’
Cries of ‘Shame!’ and ‘Outrage!’ and ‘A disgrace of civilisation!’ rang around the House for some time.
Digging his heels in, Parkes declared that many women had been hanged in this country, ignoring the fact that the Brownlow case had occurred thirty-five years previously, that no woman had been executed in New South Wales for twenty-eight years and that most laws fell into disuse long before the legislators abolished them. ‘The law remains,’ he repeated stubbornly. ‘Abolish the punishment of death tomorrow if you like, but if you maintain it, let the punishment be justly dealt out to whoever perpetrates the dreadful crime, whether man or woman, rich or poor, favoured by circumstances or utterly unfavoured by circumstances.’
‘Why not hang the man who hangs her?’ Walker interjected.
Parkes slid past that challenge by saying, ‘I did not hear what the honourable member said.’
Thomas Hassall piped up, ‘The premier has said that he was in favour of the abolition of capital punishment. Let him close an honoured career by bringing that about.’
‘That has nothing to do with this case!’ Parkes expostulated.
‘It has a great deal to do with this case.’ Hassall argued that it would be too late to wait until after the woman was hanged before saying anything about it and that, if she were hanged, it was this parliament that would be responsible. ‘I believe that it is the will of parliament and the people that this woman should not be hanged.’
‘I believe that the women of the country would vote for her being hanged!’ declared Parkes.
‘The women of Australia are not so depraved as to desire anything of the sort!’ Hassall cried. ‘I am astonished at a man like the premier uttering such a slander on the women of Australia.’
‘They do not approve of wives poisoning their husbands!’ Parkes snapped back.
‘I do not think that ten per cent of the women of the colony would sign a petition in favour of hanging this woman,’ was Hassall’s indignant response.
Ninian Melville took the floor again, saying that, hopefully, his appeal would give rise to a movement outside the House so that the public’s opinions could be brought to bear on the executive in the proper way. Then he directed a stream of vitriol at their ‘Shylock’ premier, ranting about Parkes’ willingness to violate the law in other instances, in particular in his treatment of the Chinese.
Melville’s diatribe was beginning to alarm some members of the House. One called out, ‘That is not the way to gain your object.’
‘I am not going to be mealy-mouthed or cowardly in order to gain my object,’ Melville declared.
‘You will hang her!’ cried another.
Eventually, Melville announced that he was withdrawing his amendment to the justice department estimates and sat down.
• • •
Did Melville realise what he had just done? Some of his colleagues were horrified. They knew enough about their premier to recognise how he might react when one of the House gadflies challenged his authority. Parkes the progressive deplored capital punishment; indeed, he was a man who, in his younger days, had seen his nobility in his pursuit of the moral high ground. Parkes the pragmatist, however, had been forced to adopt positions that were at odds with his philosophies. And Parkes the petulant was known to let his vain, overly sensitive nature triumph when his authority was publicly undermined. So when one particular gadfly—a man labelled by the premier himself as ‘the veriest charlatan that ever lived’—claimed the moral high ground during a political debate and forced Parkes to retreat to a position he was morally opposed to, it raised the alarming possibility that the premier might so entrench himself that he would refuse to budge even if a lifeline were offered to him, one that might not only save the premier’s face—and Louisa Collins’ life—but the New South Wales community from the horror of executing another woman.
Chapter 38
While loathing the crime for which Louisa Collins has been condemned, we regard the punishment of death as a barbarous method of executing justice, and as demoralizing both to the individuals who have to perform the execution, and to the Society by whose sanction the sentence is carried out.
Petition of Women of Victoria
How dare the premier announce to parliament that the females of Australia would vote for Louisa Collins to be hanged! Women in Sydney and Melbourne were incensed. They began preparing petitions to the New South Wales governor, petitions that were to be signed only by women.
The Sydney petition could be signed at the Market Street grocery store of abolitionist and temperance advocate, Henry Prior Palser. Seemingly drafted by his long-term abolitionist ally, Frederick Lee—who would lead the deputation that delivered it—the petition begged for mercy on many of the grounds already argued in parliament and in Lee’s correspondence with the press and politicians. It also raised a new subject of concern, an issue that would never have occurred to the men who were largely driving the debate. Not only was it abhorrent to every feeling of humanity that a woman should suffer death by the noose, it was even worse that she should suffer death at the hands of a man.
The women’s complaint was a reminder of the many indignities they encountered in their dealings with men, including the sexual foundation underpinning much of the brutality inflicted on them. Who could forget the reminiscences of the loathsome hangman in Charles Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge? His words intimated that he was revisiting pleasurable sexual conquests when he spoke about killing young women. While the law might see hanging as a gender-blind form of punishment, the reality of its enforcement was a different matter entirely.
The Victorian women’s petition—which coincidentally was to be signed in Melbourne’s Collins Street—focused on the impact of capital punishment on society as a whole. It also questioned whether death sentences were a greater deterrent than punishments that allowed the possibility of reformation.
The editor of Queensland’s Brisbane Courier was shocked that the southern women should petition for mercy. He declared that a hasty act, even when the results were terrible, could still appeal to the latent sympathy in our hearts; however, Louisa’s actions had drawn nothing from the community’s hearts but revulsion and hatred. Her skill and precaution in administering small doses of arsenic, along with the average man’s incredulity that such a Lucrezia Borgia could live in Sydney’s suburbs, had
led the juries to disagree, until unimpeachable evidence at last secured the conviction of the ‘most cruel and cold-blooded criminal who has outraged the name of woman’. Yet it was women who were agitating for the mitigation of her sentence. Why?
The editor concluded that they and their unsophisticated friends had failed to grasp the true nature of the beast. ‘Too often women seem to puzzle our stupid logical male intellects by aberrations of a perversity, charming no doubt, but sometimes a trifle trying,’ he declared, dismissing the progressive arguments included in the women’s petitions, the same arguments that had already led some of the world’s countries to abolish capital punishment and would ultimately drive their own to follow suit.
Some southern women were also horrified at their sisters’ appeals for mercy. A Married Woman declared, ‘Never was there a case which called for the death sentence to be carried out so completely as this one. Unless such conduct be made an example of, no man’s life would be secure if his wife should happen to transfer her affections to another.’
Was she suggesting that any married woman who fell in love with another man was stepping onto a slippery slope that led to homicide?
Other letter-writers—male and female alike—provided similar ‘example’ arguments. If Louisa was not hanged, society would be giving women a licence to commit murder, to become even greater criminals than men. If Louisa was not hanged, every other instance of capital punishment inflicted on men as well as women would have been unmerciful and unjust.
Of course, the latter argument suggested, by extension, that society should continue to execute people for whatever crimes had historically incurred the death penalty, a notion supporting the abolitionist’s contention that capital punishment was unfair rather than offering a solid foundation for the advocates’ justifications.
