by Janet Lee
Even yesterday she wrote a heartfelt plea to the Governor of New South Wales that he may yet spare her life, as he was in power to do.
Though she had no reply, Louisa continued to believe, even today, that she may be spared.
In the days before the execution, she would not have been able to see the scaffold but I have heard the banging of hammer into wood and the dull thud of the sandbags as they sampled the weight to ensure the correct drop length. I heard the hangman boasted he took extra care because he was hanging a woman, and was not in the way of killing them.
He still bungled the doing.
I went to Louisa early this morning and we prayed together. She spent her last hours in prayer and farewell, and though others were moved to tears, she was not. She walked boldly to the cell block which held the gallows. I have seen brutish men who have not held the same strength before death.
She did not stumble even when mounting the scaffold steps.
She stood on the scaffold in her rough prison dress, the hood over her head and the noose around her neck. She looked pitiful.
The trapdoor did not open at first, and I held my eyes upon Louisa. I saw a quiver run through her. She was determined that she should rely on a reprieve until the last breath left her body.
I knew when the door did not open immediately that this might give her some hope that she had been spared. I can only pray that this poor woman did not suffer too much in her last few anxious moments. I kept my voice low and constant, and prayed the Lord’s Prayer for her, even as the hangman shouted for his assistant to Pull, pull.
I prayed and thought surely God would intervene in her ending and permit her to hear my voice?
I have no way of knowing if He did.
The hangman, fool that he is, stepped onto the platform and tried to see why the trapdoor was not working and then indicated to his assistant that he should knock the pin out from below.
A mallet was used by one of the warders and with each devastating blow I saw Mrs Collins tremble anew. But even as the number of blows grew, still the peg did not move and even I began to believe that her death may be reprieved, for surely the State would not be so cruel as to allow this torture to continue.
When her fall finally came, Louisa fell through the trapdoor with considerable force.
I hope the sharpness of her fall meant that her death was instantaneous, for once the door opened there was a gush of bright blood which squirted from just under the neck and blood sprayed everywhere and within a moment the body hung prostrate.
Through the gap made by the trapdoor, I could see the hood and its contents suspended at an acute angle, and the head appeared to be connected to the body by only a small stretch of sinew.
I wanted to close my eyes from the horror, but I kept them open for Louisa.
I kept praying.
Those who had thought to jeer her at her last were now quiet and shocked at the raw brutality of what they saw. The flies swarmed thicker and thicker, until they covered the gash at the neck and you could hear their drone throb as the body hung for the required twenty minutes.
There had been the intention for the burial to take place immediately, but because the hanging had been so badly done, there shall be some sort of enquiry as to how this came to be such a botched execution.
A coroner’s jury may come and see the body as it lies in the prison morgue.
The phrenologist may feel her head, and determine through his science whether she was indeed a murderess.
9 January 1889
I went with Louisa’s coffin on the cart and train which took her to Rookwood cemetery. She is not to be buried within the walls of the Darlinghurst Gaol, as is the custom for those who are executed. She shall have consecrated ground.
Several police and Warders Anderson and Harper came with me, although Alice did not come in her uniform.
Alice brought three pink roses, and when the prayers had been said and the coffin covered over, she placed these upon the grave.
Behind the Bars
In the Shadow of the Scaffold
By ‘Ex-warder’
Louisa Collins was another specimen of the hoping condemned. ‘They will never hang a woman,’ she declared; ‘they will spare my life at the last moment.’ Then, when she saw it was all over … she faintly said: ‘And it has come to this?’
‘If you have a confession to make,’ urged the chaplain, ‘do so now, as you have only a few minutes to live.’
‘My confession will be made to God, before whom I shall appear to day,’ she firmly answered.
The Arrow19
Author’s Note
The Killing of Louisa is a work of fiction based on a true event. The real Louisa Collins was hung at Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney, Australia, on 8 January 1889 after being tried four times for the murder of one or the other of her two husbands.
This novel is perhaps another layer of that story, one that could possibly fit parts of the record, one that I hope causes no offence to any living relative of the historical figures on which some of the characters are based. I have imagined interactions and conversations, trying not to stray too far from known or reported events, but straying nonetheless. I have fictionalised the historical figure of Canon Rich, but the content of some of the conversations between this character and the fictional Louisa are based on court documents and newspaper articles.
I was intrigued by the court cases themselves, and also by the many newspaper articles, pamphlets and public meetings; the discussions in parliament; the petitions and the passionate public debate that surrounded her trials. The real Louisa Collins was indeed executed in a dreadfully botched hanging where the trapdoor did not immediately open. The pin had to be bashed out with a mallet.
Acknowledgements
I am indebted to contemporary newspapers and archive material. The true crime books Caroline Overington’s Last Woman Hanged and Carol Baxter’s Black Widow were invaluable resources and their extensive annotations also led me to other historical documents. Thank you to these authors. I consulted Deborah Beck’s Hope in Hell: a history of Darlinghurst Gaol and the National Art School; however, I also created details that differ from that text. Other works that I consulted include Steve Harris’s Solomon’s Noose, Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, Peter Carey’s True History of the Kelly Gang, Robert Drewe’s Our Sunshine, Geraldine Brooks’s Caleb’s Crossing, Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites, Graeme Macrae Burnet’s His Bloody Project, Angela Bourke’s The Burning of Bridget Cleary and Sarah Waters’s Affinity.
I would like to thank the National Art School, formerly Darlinghurst Gaol, for the tour and the glimpse of the (now closed) tunnels. Thank you to the Bayside Council, for allowing me access to the Bayside Libraries Community History Collection and the Louisa Collins file of former Local Studies Librarian Kathryn Cass, which contained documents from Rebecca Pettit, whom I thank as well. Thank you to the archivists, and in particular Gail Davis of the New South Wales State Archives, and to the Archives for granting me permission to publish items from their collection. Thank you to the librarians at the Mitchell Library at the State Library of New South Wales and the wonderful Trove collection at the National Library of Australia, which provided access to contemporary newspapers and from where all newspaper quotes were sourced. Thank you to Southern Midlands Council for granting me a writing residency in Oatlands.
A special thank you to the Queensland Literary Awards and to the judges for selecting this manuscript as the winner of the Emerging Queensland Writer – Manuscript Award 2017. Thank you to the Queensland Writers Centre for various workshops and for all you do for writers.
Thank you to my editor Julia Stiles for her attentive read and Lisa White for the cover. Thank you to the team at University of Queensland Press, who have all guided me with such care, especially Publishing Director Madonna Duffy, and the endlessly patient Senior Editor Vanessa Pell
att.
Thank you to special friends: Rowena, Nycole, Tania, Sandra, Tanya, Leanne, Angela, Kerry, Leith, Donelle, Belinda, Ginna, Julie, Hailey, Rose; to generous authors who grew my confidence, sometimes without even knowing it, including Gary Crew, Karen Foxlee, Kim Wilkins, Paul Williams, Gabbie Stroud, Aleesah Darlison, Angela Sunde and Robyn Sheahan-Bright.
I am grateful to my mum and dad for always taking me to the library, wherever we were living at the time. Thank you to my extended family, especially my sisters.
Most importantly, thank you to my TeamLee: Lionel, Jessica, Christian, Hannah, Damon, Callum and Thomas. You make my life beautiful.
Notes
1The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 December 1888, p. 5.
2Louisa Collins File, Bayside Libraries, Community History Collection, barcode 00894400.
3Evening News, 7 November 1888, p. 6.
4The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, 29 November 1888, p. 5.
5The Brisbane Courier, 6 December 1888, p. 5.
6The Sydney Morning Herald, 6 December 1888, p. 9.
7The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 1888, p. 16.
8Evening News, 8 January 1889, p. 3.
9The South Australian Advertiser, 10 December 1888, p. 5.
10Evening News, 8 January 1889, p. 3.
11New South Wales State Archives: NSW SA: NRS 2130, Register of Letters Received, 1888 Entry 2663 [5/1847].
12Evening News, 8 January 1889, p. 3.
13Ibid.
14The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 December 1888, p. 3.
15The Brisbane Courier, 25 December 1888, p. 6.
16The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 December 1888, p. 5.
17The Sydney Morning Herald, 21 December 1888, p. 5.
18The Sydney Morning Herald, 29 December 1888, p. 8.
19The Arrow, 25 February 1899, p. 5.
Additional notes: May Andrews testified on several occasions and her testimony was recorded in court documents and also reported in contemporary newspapers. I have drawn on parts of her testimonies including: ‘a box, I saw it … the week before he died. I had seen it in the kitchen it was a little round box, it had a lid – there was nothing on the outside of the box – there were pictures of rats on it – The picture was red, the rats were red, the rats were on their backs’; and ‘I said “look what I have found on the shelf” – it was “Rough on Rats” – I could read it’. These are quotes sourced from May’s August 1888 statement. In Chapter 1, I followed Overington’s method of amalgamating May’s statements, and presuming the questions that may have been asked in court. The reference to Michael Collins seeing green lights and stars is from Mrs Ellen Pettit’s statement. Chapters 53 and 54 contain material sourced from Louisa Collins’s inquest statement. ‘Pull, pull’ is from The Arrow, 25 February 1899, p. 5. The information for the description of Henry Hall was sourced through his convict record. The yellow-eyed dog and sleeping on the table are a homage to Henry Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife. I have used court statements and newspaper articles throughout this novel and many of the witness statements were also published in newspapers. I utilised the Louisa Collins File, Bayside Libraries, Community History Collection, barcode 00894400; various records at the State Archives of New South Wales including Central Criminal Court Papers, July 1888 Regina v Louisa Collins [9/6758]; and many contemporary newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Brisbane Courier, The Arrow and Evening News. ‘The Botany Poisoning Case’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 July 1888, page 4; ‘The Judge’s Summing Up’, Evening News, 10 December 1888, page 6; and ‘The Botany Murder Case’, Evening News, 8 January 1889, pages 3 and 4, were particularly useful.
First published 2018 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
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Copyright © Janet Lee 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Cover design by Lisa White
Author photograph by Photography by Bambi
Typeset in 12/16 pt Bembo Std by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Some of the names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while based on real historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
The University of Queensland Press is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
The University of Queensland Press is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
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