The Killing of Louisa

by Janet Lee

  I tried to hide my disappointment, but, I admit, I was sorely sorry for where I would be living.

  Mr Andrews spoke to me of his plans for the shop and as he did so, he took off his suit and hung it over a nail right there in front of me, with no heed, and went and climbed into his work overalls. He told me he needed to go into the shop and open, for he might have lost business already having closed for the morning, and he did not expect me to serve today as it was my wedding day, but I was to make myself comfortable and then I could start tomorrow.

  He bent and kissed me on the cheek and then he opened the door and closed it behind him, and I heard him commence to open the shop.

  I sat upon one of the stumps and I cried for the pretty house that I had lived in with the Missus, and all the precious things I had dusted and cleaned and picked up and pretended were mine.

  I had just turned eighteen years old.

  21.

  Even though Alice has told me that I have permission and may have visitors on any day, none have come again.

  I do not spend very much time out of my cell, as there is no place for a condemned woman to walk and I may not join in the exercise circle in the yard of the female cell block. I am sick of these dull blue walls.

  Flora has not called out to me for the last few days, which she has been in the habit of doing, and I think perhaps she has been released.

  My daily visits to the chaplain give me some time from my cell, and I enjoy his calm company.

  This afternoon when I arrive at the vestry, he says he has received word that most of my children will be coming to visit me soon; that Herbert will see to it that they are brought in.

  The chaplain asks if I would like to tell him about my children, and I begin to. But after only a little time, I find I am not able to speak. I lower my head and think of May giving her evidence against me.

  I tell him I do not want to speak of the children.

  Of course, he says. It was not very thoughtful of me, Louisa.

  There it is again; he has called me Louisa.

  The butcher shop, Louisa, he says. Perhaps you can tell me more of the time you spent in the butcher shop.

  Louisa, my own name.

  The words feel heavy in my mouth. I do not feel like talking.

  So he opens the Bible and reads.

  When he finishes, we sit quietly.

  After a time, I say to him, Well, sir, from that first day I hated everything about the butcher shop.

  Oh, how I missed my pretty little white apron, and all of the lovely things I cleaned. And now I was a shopgirl in a butcher shop and had on a heavy apron and spent my day handling meat and blood. When I went home from a day’s work in the shop, I did not climb the stairs to my own room with a window that looked out over the roses; I merely walked through the door to the next room, and the smell and the filth came with me.

  No matter how much water I pumped from the well I could not get the smell of meat from me and I would sit on the ground and cry at the pump and Charles would try to soothe me and say it would be all right and that I would get used to it. I told him I missed the Missus and my mother, and he said he understood my missing my mother, but I shouldn’t be getting airs about myself that I was anything more to the Missus than just a servant.

  Now I have never forgotten those words he said because I had always thought I was more to the Missus than just her domestic and I wanted so much to believe it, but as it turned out, he was probably right.

  By the end of the third week, I told Charles that I could not go on living in the hut he called a home and it was then we had our first row.

  I had said I wanted him to tidy up the shop and make a proper home out of the cottage, and he said that I should be grateful for what I had, and we both of us said some unkind words. But when we had stopped rowing he said that he had got in the way of living as a single man on his own and using stumps for chairs and bathing under the pump and he would make more effort now he was a husband.

  And I said we could start by keeping the door of the butcher shop shut from our home, and we would walk around the side of the building to get into the shop each morning. I said that we needed to have some furniture, such as a decent bed and chairs and a table, and a bathtub that I might wash properly at the end of the day. And I said he needed to fix the well so that I might get the water easier and to stop the blood running there from the slaughter area. He did make an effort to please me and give me some comfort, and was willing to do so, sir, but I think it was that he did not know how to go about it. He made the lean-to kitchen quite nice. Not fancy, mind you, and we still had to keep the flour and the cool safe in our room away from the rats and possums, but he put in shelves and a proper table and we used to enjoy eating out in the kitchen. We used some timber to make a garden bed where we might grow tomatoes and had onions out the side and later, when Bert came, he helped me move the soil and we gathered the manure from the yard. He would stroll past on some Sunday afternoons to see the progress of the little garden, and he always made a point of saying what a good man Mr Andrews was.

  I cleaned the butcher shop properly and scrubbed the screens, for the well was a good one and we had plenty of water. And I made some curtains out of plain calico, although I have never been known for my sewing, but they looked pretty enough. We swept and put fresh sawdust on the floor, and in that way made the place look more agreeable.

  Charles put some more nails in the walls of the cottage and I hung up my dresses, the white one and the pretty print, and these added some colour to the room, and I put my quilt on the new bed.

  He also put up two lengths of timber so I had some shelves and could put my shoes and things on them to keep them up off the floor. Within a few weeks the room looked very homely and even Charles said how much brighter the place looked, though he was not a man to be in the way of noticing such things.

  And he built me a proper clothes line, just out beyond the kitchen, away from the slaughter area and near the herb bed that I was making, so we could hang our clothes in the sun and remove some of the smell. The herbs Bert had given me for my wedding were useful and before long I had quite a garden at the back of the kitchen, growing well as they received the blood from the slaughtering. I found if I dried our clothes upon the basil and rosemary, the smell would be more pleasant and mask some of the butchering odour, but only some, mind. I would say that when I washed our clothes there would be so much meat in the water that you could throw in an onion and call it soup, and I was only half in jest.

  Later, as the garden beds became more established, Charles moved the rough stumps which he had used as seats and put them out near the vegetable garden so we could sit out on a warm evening, and the herbs would counter the smell of the cattle yards, or go some way to it. And Charles planted some orange seeds, although we did not stay long enough to see them grow into trees. It was a lovely spot to sit and made me feel as though the house were bigger than it was. When it was raining I missed that little area and I used to think we would trip over each other, we were so close in our one room.

  In those early days of our marriage, Cook visited often and she sometimes brought me a tablecloth or an old towel or something from the house which she said the Missus had sent for me to have as she knew it was hard to set up a new home and this would perhaps make do until we were on our feet with something better. She took to calling me Mrs Andrews but I never did get in the habit of calling her Mrs Roberts. She did not come to the cottage itself, but came to the front of the shop when she ordered her meat.

  And one time when Bert came he gave me a cutting off one of the roses for, he said, if I was to plant it out the back near the slaughter pen, it would grow well. I said I would cherish it, and that he was to be sure to tell the Missus that whenever it bloomed I would think of her.

  But the Missus herself did not visit, not that I really expected her to, but I had still hoped t
o see her, all the same.

  I planted the rose in the ground so that it got all the run-off from the pen and so it grew very well and often had roses upon it.

  Everyone tried to say nice things about the cottage and Mr Andrews and told me I looked happy being married, living at the back of the butcher shop, and with my own home. And I tried to believe them.

  Then Cook came one day and she said she missed me and she knew how much I did not want to be married but that I was a good girl because I had done it to obey my parents and look how well it had all turned out.

  I enquired after the Missus as usual, and was she well, and Cook relayed that the Missus had replaced me with a new young girl who had come in from a large property and Cook was needing to train her as she had done me.

  Well, sir, I was sad to think of someone else polishing all those pretty things in the Missus’s home, and dusting my face in the silver picture frame, and that I had exchanged all that for a husband and a smelly butcher shop, even though we had made improvements.

  And it was about that time that I first began to like a drink.

  Case of Louisa Collins

  The following petition to his Excellency the Governor in favour of the condemned prisoner Louisa Collins has been handed to us for publication:—

  ‘To his Excellency, &c., &c., &c. The petition of the undersigned female inhabitants of Sydney and its suburbs showeth, —That Louisa Collins is now a prisoner under sentence of death in Darlinghurst Gaol for the murder of her husband, Michael Peter Collins. Your petitioners pray that mercy may be extended to the prisoner on the following grounds:— 1. That it is abhorrent to every feeling of humanity and a shock to the sentiments in this 19th century, both here and in other English speaking communities, that a woman should suffer death at the hands of a hangman, and at the hands of one of the opposite sex, so long as imprisonment can be substituted. 2. That the prisoner having been tried three times for the same offence, but practically four times, is (your petitioners are informed) contrary to the practice in the mother-country. 3. That there is no positive proof of the prisoner’s guilt – it has rather been assumed upon suspicion only, supported by circumstantial evidence. 4. That the fact that three juries, consisting of 36 men of intelligence, were each in deliberation many hours and during one night, and were unable to agree as to the prisoner’s guilt, your petitioners consider is strong and convincing proof that the case is not free from doubt, and your petitioners conceive to be good grounds for not inflicting the extreme penalty. 5. That innocent individuals have frequently been executed on circumstantial evidence, and your petitioners entertain a just horror at the possibility of a mistake occurring by which a punishment can be inflicted irrevocable and irremediable. 6. That in the case of two women condemned to death at West Maitland for not alone having deliberately conspired to murder, but having actually murdered by poison the younger prisoner’s husband – a much more heinous case than that of Louisa Collins, and one in which their guilt was proved beyond doubt, yet these two prisoners had mercy extended to them – your petitioners can see no just ground why a similar mercy should not be extended to the prisoner Louisa Collins. 7. That no execution of a woman has taken place in New South Wales for the last 28 years; and your petitioners believe that the substitution of imprisonment would act as a greater deterrent. Your petitioners, therefore, pray that your Excellency will exercise your Royal prerogative of mercy … which is a sacred trust solely in your Excellency’s hands, and which your petitioners pray you will graciously be pleased to exercise. And your petitioners will ever pray. Sydney, December 22, 1888.’

  The Sydney Morning Herald14

  22.

  There is no denying that I like a drink of beer, for who doesn’t when they need some cheering, except perhaps you, sir, on account of the religion. The hotel was a lively place and had lots of noise and fun and, of course, something to drink.

  Charles would go on occasion and have a few drinks of beer as he said it was good for business for a man to be seen drinking, although not to excess, and he would often pick up word of cheap cattle.

  So it was that one Saturday night I went with him.

  I liked the taste of the beer the first time I ever had it and, even more, I liked the warm glow of joy it gave me. Right then, I felt I was in need of some joy in my life.

  Mr Andrews was quite kind to me, and we were never in want of food, what with him being the butcher, but I missed my little room in the attic and the roses and I hated the thought of someone else living there. And I hated being always surrounded by meat and smell.

  So it became a regular Saturday habit with me to go to the hotel whether Charles was going or not, although I do not know that I was of the age that it was proper for a girl to go, but I went anyway and no one ever stopped me. And when Charles said he did not like me drinking, I said I worked hard in the butcher shop and I should be able to have a bit of fun, and if that came in a glass, so be it.

  I told him I needed to have some excitement in my life before I grew up. I was still only a slip of a lass then, and though I was married, I was still very young.

  But I did grow up very soon thereafter, because one morning when I woke I needed to run out to the privy and there I was very ill, and being from a large family I knew what it meant. And it is the same which happens with most young women when they marry.

  I was unwell for some time and did not serve in the shop as the smell of raw meat turned my stomach. Although I could not escape the smell entirely, it was not so bad in the cottage as it was in the shop. Cook came to the house and brought me some ginger she had taken from her own ginger plant, for she had heard it was very good for women who felt such in my condition. She had visited the shop before, but had never been into the room behind, and though I had tried to make the best of it, I looked about me and I saw where I lived as though through her eyes: shuttered windows, one room, little furniture, clothes on nails.

  I did not see my mother for all of that time, although we did exchange letters and Mr Waldock called to the shop to deliver them.

  I particularly missed her, for a girl will begin to value her own mother more than ever when she knows she is to be a mother herself. For it is then we begin to realise what it was that our own mothers went through to give us life. I wrote to my mother and said a child was on the way and my mother wrote back and said she would like to come and visit, and she would do that soon because my father had taken work at a property further up the Hunter Valley and she would like to see me before they left.

  When my child was born the pain came so quickly that I did not rightly know what to do, but I was lucky in my way and I will leave the description at that, sir, for it is women’s business and a delicacy which should not be shared with a man, even if he is a chaplain.

  My boy was bonny and healthy, and hungry. I named him Herbert. I was so happy to have him that I did not look on the cottage as small any more, for it was filled with my child. For a time, Mr Andrews would sleep out in the kitchen on a low bench we had there – the lid of the woodstack box – for he wanted me to have time with the baby, and Herbert slept in the bed with me. Charles no longer expected me to work in the shop as I had the baby to care for, and he was a good father from the very start.

  My mother and father and my younger siblings all came to visit, and I was able to show them my beautiful boy, and my mother was pleased to see for herself the improvements I had made in our cottage, as I had written to her of these. She thought the shop and the cottage all very well and we spent a nice afternoon out near the herb garden. My father and Charles got along very well and my mother admired Herbert and said he was a fine boy and we spoke of babies and the new property they were moving to. And I thought I should be happy enough to be married to a hardworking husband and have a handsome baby, and a shop and a house, although a small one.

  I felt very sad when my parents left.

  I was standing with the bab
y at the front of the shop, and Charles had his arm across my shoulders, and we would have looked the perfect young family. But I was thinking of my parents and that they were leaving me at my house, and I never would again be their little Louisa, and I was not my parents’ child any more, and I was not the Missus’s domestic; I was now my husband’s wife, and a mother.

  And I would never again be just Louisa.

  Or perhaps, sir, it was simply that I missed my mother.

  23.

  In the afternoons, I used to swaddle Herbert in a shawl and walk with him down the street. I wanted to take him to see Cook, but did not know if it would be the best thing for the Missus, and also, sir, I did not want to see the girl who had replaced me.

  We arranged to have Herbert baptised in church and I stood at the altar in the white dress and held up my beautiful baby boy. Mr Andrews stood beside me and everyone clapped and said what a grand happy family we made. I nodded at the Missus and smiled at her but she did not smile back and afterwards, when everyone crowded to see the baby, the Master and the Missus seemed to head off home quickly.

  Cook came to see me the next day and said that the Missus’s spirits were not good and the Master had asked for me not to show off my baby to her like that again, and he sent five pounds for me to put away for Herbert for his schooling.

  I said I had meant no harm, we were just proud of our baby and showed him to all at church, and Cook said she thought I would have more sense than to do this in front of the Missus, and I should have sent word that I would be taking the baby to church as I knew how the Missus might be, seeing a baby. I told Cook that I thought it was high time the Missus snapped out of her melancholy and got back among the living and, well, sir, our visit did not end happily.