by Carol Baxter
The newspapers reported that Parkes would return around midday on Tuesday, 8 January so as to attend the parliamentary meeting to be held that afternoon.
Midday on Tuesday? George Dibbs and his men knew that this was not good news for Louisa. Parkes would not reach Sydney until a few hours after she was scheduled to be hanged, which meant that he would be travelling on the morning of her execution—and also the day before. There would be no way of communicating with him in the event that there were any new developments in her case.
• • •
Soon, Sydney would hear further evidence of Parkes’ willingness to manipulate the law to serve his own ends, although the news wouldn’t break until after his return from Melbourne. During the Chinese agitation six months previously, Parkes had strongly urged the colony to maintain the £100 poll tax on any Chinese entering the colony. Yet accompanying him on his journey from Melbourne was a Chinese merchant from South Australia whose tax had been waived by Parkes himself—thus depriving Treasury of a significant piece of revenue. When challenged, Parkes would try to deflect some of the responsibility towards the Leader of the Opposition, claiming that Dibbs had agreed with his action. Outraged, Dibbs responded that he had suggested the passing of a private bill to deal with these special cases. Parkes pleaded that he had misunderstood Dibbs’ letter, adding, ‘It is but an innocent breaking of the law.’
The Clarence and Richmond Examiner thought this the ultimate hypocrisy. ‘Is it permissible for offenders against law and order to so plead in extenuation of their crime?’ Since the answer was obvious, why should such an excuse be accepted simply because Parkes was the premier? The editor reminded his readers that, during the parliamentary debate about Louisa’s case, Parkes had claimed that he could not find a single opening that would allow him to suspend the law to save her life. Yet he could suspend the law to benefit a wealthy Chinaman! ‘Louisa Collins may certainly be a depraved specimen of life, but still it is a life which, set in the scale of humanity, is of far more value than a Chinaman’s £100.’
Chapter 43
The ministrations of religion are conducted at breakneck speed to make up for lost time in past life—shut her up with a Bible and a warder and a parson, and it’s all right for the next world. So demands justice.
Australian Star
Canon Rich had seen the signs of mental strain appearing on Louisa’s face as the days turned into weeks. Christmas Day passed, then Boxing Day. Soon, the new year dawned: 1889. Would she live to see another? Before long, he had to tell her that she wouldn’t. This was especially troubling considering his own concerns about her case. Still, it was his duty as Louisa’s spiritual comforter to help ease her anguish.
‘She was for a time a good deal broken down,’ he would later report, ‘but not in the way you would ordinarily receive the expression “broken down”. Rather, it was that she became her natural self and not her artificial self, for I consider—and I have had many opportunities of judging, both before and since her conviction—that she has all along felt her position keenly.’
• • •
Louisa raised her head and straightened her shoulders and tugged on her cloak of fortitude. It was wearing thin now from overuse. Then she reached for a piece of paper.
For weeks she had told herself that they would never hang a woman. Now Canon Rich had made it clear that she was wrong.
She had things to do, decisions to make. Did she want the Geehans to adopt May? James and Mary Ann Geehan, farmers of Wilberforce, were already caring for the child and had asked permission to make the arrangement permanent. She also had to decide how to distribute her possessions. And there was one more thing she had to do.
Dipping her pen into an inkwell, she began a letter to the governor of New South Wales. ‘Oh my Lord, pray have mercy and pity on me and spare my life,’ she began.
She had two days only to change his mind. If Lord Carrington the son and husband wasn’t horrified by the thought of hanging a woman, perhaps Lord Carrington the father might be willing to exercise his royal prerogative.
‘I beg and implore you to have mercy on me for my children’s sake. I have seven children, the youngest two only seven and five years old. Spare me, oh my Lord, for their sake.’
There was no point raising any of the other concerns about her case. Frederick Lee had already covered them at length.
‘If you show your mercy to me by so doing you will spare my poor children the awful disgrace which must ever cling to them to their life’s end,’ she continued. ‘Oh my Lord, my life is in your hands. I must again implore and humbly beg you to spare me my life.’
She handed her petition to the gaol authorities. There was nothing more she could do.
Chapter 44
The unfortunate woman’s crime may be the outcome of an unequal cerebral development which has produced an imbecile mind and an unstable virtue.
P. Besomo, The Botany Poisoning Case
Signor Pasquale Besomo knew that he was supremely fitted to assist Lord Carrington in making the right decision. His own special abilities—his scientific skills—had allowed him to see through Louisa Collins’ inscrutable exterior to the core of her being.
He had long been interested in her case. Female criminals—particularly poisoners—intrigued him. He had watched her closely during her trials, noting that she was a good-looking woman with a polite and courteous manner. Far from coming across as evil, she was a comely woman indeed. However, his knowledge of physiognomy had allowed him to assess her personality and character. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get close enough to her physical being to use most of his phrenological skills, to actually feel her skull or to measure the regions that denoted certain mental characteristics. Even so, he had reached some conclusions that Lord Carrington should find most beneficial.
Her broad, bony, medium-high forehead revealed a capacious memory and an ability to plan and manage, but it also suggested rapaciousness. Her sharp, penetrating eyes reflected a quick perception while their rather large shape suggested a sanguine, optimistic streak; yet their dimensions also spoke of a choleric temperament—a quick temper—which was confirmed by the flush on her high cheekbones. The deep lines that ran down from her nose and turned in at her mouth indicated a greed for power and money. Her lips were voluptuous but, combined with the shape of her chin, demonstrated a secret determination.
These features suggested a character and personality driven by false ambition and moral obliquity, one that was innately crafty and cold-hearted, that endeavoured to gain confidence by flattery then rewarded such confidence with betrayal. Her penetrating eyes were not those of a wise woman, but rather a jealous, suspicious storyteller, or a coquette who clandestinely made mischief. While she could appear mild and docile and pliable to others, this manner was merely the product of artful simulation.
‘Had the circumstances of Mrs Collins’ life been different,’ he wrote in his self-published pamphlet The Botany Poisoning Case, ‘say in some business that would have kept her mind constantly engaged, having money constantly and liberally passing through her hands, the understanding and watchfulness and self-interest so clearly portrayed in her eyes and eyebrows would, probably, have placed her in some affluence.’ He felt that she should have married an ambitious businessman, one she could have helped scale the social and political ladder. Instead, her marriages to unassuming men had contributed to her downfall.
Continuing his assessment, he reported that her hard features were characteristic of famous female poisoners, as was her skull structure. From such a physiognomic and phrenological assessment, he could only conclude that she was suffering from a poisoning monomania—that is, a psychosis that caused a single-minded obsession. This was a product of her cerebral development, which had led to a predisposition of mind that placed her beyond the pale of ordinary responsibility.
‘I have no doubt in my mind of Mrs Collins’ obliquity of mind,’ he concluded, ‘and if she had been set at liberty, we would proba
bly have heard of her having committed similar crimes before she was a year or two older.’ Not that such an assessment justified breaking the woman’s neck on a scaffold. Rather, she should have the same claim on society’s benevolence as the deaf, the blind and the insane. Since she was away from society now, and since there was no possibility of her committing further crimes, he begged the authorities to dispense with the death portion of her sentence. This would allow the true spirit of English law to take force and offer her the benefit of the doubt by virtue of the hereditary tendencies that might have spurred her murderous actions.
He decided against signing his pamphlet ‘Professor Besomo’ as he sometimes called himself. The title was an affectation, of course, but it impressed the crowds—indeed, helped draw the crowds—when he used his phrenological and physiognomic and mesmeric (hypnosis) skills to entertain. These days, he no longer engaged in palm-reading or fortune-telling. Instead, he devoted himself to science alone, to assessing personality and character, and to curing disease with his homeopathic medicines.
With his published pamphlet in hand, he headed to the Domain to seek signatures for his attached petition to the governor. There, for over a week, he and other like-minded souls talked to the people relaxing and picnicking and wandering through the grassy area lying between the State Library of New South Wales to the west and the eastern ridge on which the Art Gallery of New South Wales now stands. More than a thousand people added their names. At three pm on the day before Louisa’s scheduled execution, he led a deputation to Government House to beg for mercy.
• • •
Lord Carrington read Mr Besomo’s pamphlet and petition. The pamphlet’s description of Louisa Collins wasn’t enough to persuade him to commute her sentence, even though it was followed by the details of cases in which the criminal’s actions had later been shown to result from deformity or cerebral disorder. As it was, her personality seemed little different to that of many successful businessmen.
The remarks on the final page carried the most weight, though. The petition reminded him—reminded them all—that the principal witness against Louisa was her young daughter. At a future time, the child’s mind might become seriously disturbed when she realised, if she hadn’t already, that her own testimony was instrumental in causing her mother’s death. Moreover, warned Besomo, if the governor failed to commute the woman’s sentence, he risked having the whole world point the finger of scorn and disgrace at their colony for allowing a mother to be hanged on the evidence of her own child.
Chapter 45
When in doubt, don’t.
English proverb
William Clarke, the Minister for Justice, was worried. In a letter published in the Daily Telegraph that morning, one day before the scheduled execution, barrister Archibald Nugent Robertson had written that he hoped the community wouldn’t think him filled with maudlin sympathy for a criminal when he suggested that there were grounds for Louisa’s reprieve even at the last moment. But the question of the admissibility of the Andrews evidence had not been satisfactorily settled, and many evils would ensue if the correctness of the court’s decision was challenged at a later date.
Robertson quoted the rule governing the admissibility of such evidence and made the same point that Lee and others had made: that the Collins evidence was admissible in the Andrews trial, however the Andrews evidence was not admissible in the Collins trial because there was no way of proving that Andrews had died from arsenic poisoning. That being the case, the chief justice ought to have withdrawn this evidence from the consideration of the jury, which had undoubtedly been heavily influenced by it. While the law prevented the point from being argued before the full court, this did not debar it from the governor’s consideration.
The Minister for Justice accepted that the opinion of this respected barrister carried considerable weight. He would need to discuss the matter with the chief justice.
Then a package arrived from Louisa’s solicitors containing letters and newspaper cuttings that raised questions about the poison found in the two bodies. One letter was from a chemist who reported that bismuth—one of the medical preparations given to both husbands—sometimes contained arsenic, so it might have been the doctors themselves who had administered the arsenic. ‘Even the best maker of the solution (Schacht) distinctly specifies on the label that the preparation is guaranteed perfectly free from corrosive sublimates,’ the chemist reported, ‘so the inference to be drawn from such an advertisement is that other preparations of bismuth are liable to contain poison.’
The letter directed the authorities to two respected medical texts. The first, the Note-Book of Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics by R.E. Scoresby-Jackson, reported that there had been fatal cases connected with bismuth’s use, though the deaths had not been caused by the bismuth itself but rather by arsenic impurity. Alfred Swaine Taylor’s The Principles and Practice of Medical Jurisprudence made a similar claim. Taylor also noted that he had found comparatively large proportions of arsenic in bismuth samples obtained from three respectable retail druggists, with only two specimens out of five being free from arsenic impurity. That being the case, chemists needed to be especially careful in reaching their conclusions when they found traces of arsenic in those who had ingested medical bismuth.
Could such an impurity explain the minuscule trace of arsenic in Andrews’ body? If so, it would upset the ‘double murder’ argument that was largely responsible for Louisa’s conviction.
Clarke gathered up the correspondence and set out to obtain the advice of the medical authorities.
• • •
Medical practitioners knew that adulterations causing illness and death were regularly reported in the newspapers and journals. In one case, a Londoner kept falling ill after eating Gloucester cheese. Tests showed that the cheese contained red lead. But how had it got there? The man questioned the cheesemaker, who said that he had mixed the innocuous dye annatto in the cheese to give it a more intense colour. When the dye-maker was tracked down, he admitted that he had added vermilion, a compound of mercury, to improve the colour of that particular batch of annatto. When the druggist who had produced the vermilion was questioned, he revealed that he had added the less expensive red lead to his vermilion to increase his profit, thinking that it would only be used for the production of house paint.
The cheese-eater survived this cascade of adulterations; however, others were not so lucky. Arsenic was often the culprit. In 1858, a British confectioner killed two dozen and caused sickness in hundreds after he used what he thought was plaster of Paris in place of the more expensive sugar. Coloured confectionery—green, most often, but sometimes red and yellow—was also responsible for many arsenic-induced illnesses and deaths. And so much arsenic was added to British wine in the early 1800s that one writer estimated it was enough to kill over three million people annually. Under the circumstances, how many people wouldn’t have tiny traces of arsenic in their system?
• • •
When Clarke spoke to the government’s medical adviser, the man suggested that they question Hamlet, the government analyst. Hamlet reiterated his comments from the trial that arsenic had once been common in bismuth, as mentioned in the cited sources, but that it was now rare to find such an impurity. Moreover, the brand used by the pharmacist in question was renowned for its purity. That being the case, it was highly unlikely that the bismuth was responsible for the two men’s deaths.
The Minister for Justice asked Hamlet to put his comments in writing so he could apprise the governor. Then he took Robertson’s letter to the chief justice.
• • •
William Bede Dalley had been wise to argue that a convicting judge should not be allowed to sit on an appeal—or, for that matter, to be the first port of call when questions were asked about his rulings. Not surprisingly, the chief justice dismissed Robertson’s concerns.
Others, however, agreed with Robertson. There wasn’t enough rat poison in Andrews’ body t
o kill a mouse, so where was the ‘proof ’ that arsenic had killed him? It was merely a matter of opinion—and belated opinion at that. Evidently, the chief justice was determined that nothing would overturn Louisa’s conviction. Was a ‘spirit of unreasoning vengeance’ driving the judiciary as well as the government in the pursuit of the death penalty for Louisa?
Letter-writer William Hogan wasn’t going to let the chief justice’s decision stand uncontested. He informed Lord Carrington that he had served as an adviser to the governor’s predecessors and that, if he were asked to do so in this instance, he would suggest that the authorities reprieve Louisa for a week. During that period, the defence would prepare a short precis of the four trials and of the chief justice’s summation, covering his references to the Andrews evidence. The chief justice would also provide his own reasons for his summation while the attorney-general would remark on the legality or otherwise of the Andrews evidence. This material would then be sent by telegram to the Secretary of State in London to allow England’s great luminaries to consider the case. If they ruled that the chief justice was correct, the law could take its course. However, if they decided otherwise, Lord Carrington could refuse to sign the death warrant on those just grounds. Louisa Collins would be respited and incarcerated for life, the possibility of a constitutional crisis would be averted, and the governor would have the gratification of establishing a point of law that seemed to have been misunderstood.
Could this be the lifeline the community needed?
Chapter 46
Properly carried out, execution is a painless extinction of life; but, apparently recognising this, the law, from the date of the sentence to its being carried into effect, interposes a period of not less than three weeks . . . in which, under the guise of preparing for another world, the prisoner may undergo a sufficiency of mental torture to make up for the absence of bodily torture.
