The Baby Farmers

by Annie Cossins

  In the year the Makins were arrested and the Children’s Protection Act was passed, these discoveries show that mothers and baby farmers continued to practise underground. Although it was now an offence under the Act to fail to register the birth of an illegitimate baby, unmarried mothers continued to conceal their babies’ existence, since registration did not bring them any benefits—only state scrutiny.11 Baby farmers were also unlikely to advertise their existence by registering their homes. The business of birth and death remained hidden by women’s voluminous skirts and the furtive appearances and disappearances of baby farmers.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The first inquest: two babies called A and B

  14 October–28 October 1892

  Because of the Children’s Protection Act, the Coroner now had to investigate the suspicious deaths of children, particularly in the circumstances where on 12 October two surprised plumbers had discovered two infants buried in a backyard. These babies, a boy and a girl, were known only as Babies A and B because no-one came forward to claim them during the inquest into their deaths, perhaps because the discoveries did not attract much public attention. While they were the gossip du jour of quiet Burren Street, the local newspapers gave little space to the findings, with just a small paragraph squashed between other legal reports on the back pages.

  The inquest was opened by City Coroner Mr Woore two days after the babies’ discovery although he did not hear most of the evidence until 26 October.1 Unlike coronial inquiries today, a jury of twelve men was sworn in to consider the evidence and hand down a verdict as to the cause of death of each baby.

  On the morning of 14 October, John, Sarah and their daughters Blanche and Florence adjusted their derrières on the hard, polished cedar benches of the public gallery in a high-ceilinged, cedar-lined courtoom in King Street, Sydney. The Coroner sat at the judge’s bench directly in front of them while the twelve jurors were seated in two rows to their right. Constable Joyce took his place in the reserved seating for the police to the left of the Makins while two or three curious court reporters lounged on the benches in between Mr Woore and the jury.

  After taking the oath, plumber Patrick Cooney was the first witness for the day. As he stood, cap in hand, in the witness box, he told the court about his discovery of the female baby, Baby B, on Wednesday 12 October and how his boss had dug up a similar bundle the day before that they thought was a cat.

  Constable Joyce then entered the witness box to describe his arrival at Burren Street and his inspection of the two bundles. He also gave evidence about the black stitching found on a flannel worn by Baby B that was similar to the stitching on a pinafore owned by Blanche Makin. At the bench, Mr Woore scratched a note about this particular evidence with his quill pen.

  With a sense of the familiar, Dr Frederick Milford stepped into the witness box as the government pathologist. A man with a great, sweeping moustache which joined his broad sideburns, he was also known for his efficient and skilful surgical performances.2 He informed the Coroner that Baby B had been stillborn, although at a later inquest he revised this opinion, saying the child had been eight to fourteen days old when she died. Because she had been buried between three and six months earlier, the degree of decomposition of the body meant he was not able to give a cause of death. Neither could he do so in relation to Baby A, who he estimated had been buried for the same length of time. Initially, Dr Milford thought this child was about five to eight months old based on his examination of the thigh bones, an estimation he changed at a later inquest to eight to fourteen months. He stated that no trace of any poison had been found in the intestines of either baby, although Baby A had a fractured skull which could have been sustained before or after death.

  Mr Patrick Mulvey and Mr and Mrs Hill were the next witnesses called to give evidence. Mr Mulvey told the court the Makins had been the only tenants at 25 Burren Street while Mrs Hill testified she had only seen one baby in their care. It was a girl in long clothes, an indication of her young age, who, to her, looked healthy and well looked after. She had twice seen a man and a woman visit the house and was later told by the Makins they were the parents of the baby. Crucially, she said she had not seen any other babies taken into the house during the Makins’ stay.

  As Mr Hill stood in the witness box, he gave the tantalising evidence that John Makin had borrowed a shovel then a pick during his stay in Burren Street. He also mentioned the Makins had a baby in arms the night they arrived at Burren Street in their horse-drawn van.

  When Blanche Makin was called to give evidence, one can only guess at the emotions sweating the underarms of her parents as she swore ‘to tell the truth, the whole truth, so help me God’. Perhaps their shoulders gradually relaxed as Blanche confidently revealed that, when her family moved to Burren Street, they did not have any babies with them, contrary to what Mr Hill had told the court. Her mother had nursed one child, about a fortnight old, which was the only child she had ever taken in. In fact, Blanche lied that her mother had not taken in any children until they went to live in Burren Street. She also denied sewing the black stitches found on the flannel of Baby B.

  When Florence took the stand and gave identical evidence, the Coroner may have become suspicious that the two girls had been coached by their parents. He was disturbed by Blanche’s denials, particularly those to do with the black stitching on Baby B’s flannel. After obtaining unsatisfactory answers from Blanche, Mr Woore interrogated Florence about the black stitching on Blanche’s pinafore:

  Coroner: You see it is a peculiar stitch.

  Florence: She said she sewed it in a hurry . . . but she sews different sometimes.

  Coroner: Look at that child’s garment. Did you ever see that before?

  Florence: No, sir.

  Coroner: You see that the black cotton stitch is like that on the apron.

  Florence: It is something like it, but the stitches are longer.

  Coroner: Is that your sister’s sewing?

  Florence: I do not know.

  Dissatisfied, the Coroner brought the inquest to a close for the day, no doubt aware that there was insufficient evidence to implicate anyone in the deaths of the two babies. Despite the unsatisfactory day of evidence, the morning had been much more exciting, since Sarah Makin had revealed some of her many character flaws which became more alarming and entertaining for the public and the court reporters alike as more babies were found and more inquests held. On that morning, Sarah had intercepted Mrs Hill outside the court in a ‘great rage’: ‘I have a good mind to “ribbon” you, limb from limb. How dare you come up to give evidence against me? You don’t know me; you have never spoken to me. It was your child, and you put it there. You took drugs’. She then ‘raised her umbrella and attempted to strike Mrs Hill’.

  When the inquest resumed two days later, it was time to hear from Sarah and John Makin themselves. Every eye was on the intimidating Mrs Makin as she stepped into the witness box, her hair covered by a wide-brimmed hat, her thin-lipped expression avoiding the eyes of Constable Joyce. As the Coroner began to question her, he gradually realised that Sarah was someone who could deny that black was black and white was white:

  Coroner: What is your occupation?

  Mrs Makin: A ladies nurse.

  Coroner: Look at that printed card. Is that your name and occupation?

  Mrs Makin: Yes, but my husband had them printed. I don’t know anything about it.

  Coroner: But that is the card you had distributed.

  Mrs Makin: No, I never distributed any of those cards.

  In the face of further questions, Sarah admitted her family had moved to Burren Street at night because ‘we were poor, and were in arrears in the rent’. But she swore the only persons who moved on the night of 29 June were herself, her husband and four of her children. As a result of a newspaper advertisement, she had received a baby girl to wet nurse for the sum of ten shillings per week the evening after arriving in Burren Street.

  Sarah said she cared
for the child for three or four weeks before the parents, Mr and Mrs Wilson, returned to take the child away, although they left no forwarding address other than to say their destination was Melbourne. But Sarah was happy to be rid of it: ‘It was a very cross child, and I was very glad when the parents took it away’. When pressed further about whether she was in the habit of taking in children to keep, Sarah swore that the baby girl was the ‘first and only one’. Again the Coroner worried about the black stitching on Baby B’s flannel but Sarah replied she could not recognise Blanche’s sewing on it or her apron.

  When John was called into the witness box, he gave evidence identical to that of his wife. Giving nothing away, he swore that the baby girl they received on 30 June was the only one ‘ever kept by my wife or any member of my family’. Although the Coroner would not realise until later inquests, the Makins were highly practised in the art of deception, making it effortless for Sarah and John to craft the evidence they gave. But it was the only time they gave evidence, declining to do so at the next 11 inquests and their subsequent trial.

  When it was time to sum up the evidence, the Coroner informed the jury the case was ‘surrounded by suspicion’ because there was no doubt the bodies had been buried secretly. Besides that, the jury had little to go on. Evidence given by the Hills that John had once borrowed a shovel and pick had come with the innocent explanation that Mr Makin had wanted to plant some ferns. Apart from circumstantial evidence that a baby’s flannel found on one of the dead babies had black stitching on it that matched the stitching on an apron owned by Blanche, there was no other evidence implicating the Makins in the deaths and burials of the two babies. In any case, no crime had been committed if one of the babies was stillborn.

  Based on Dr Milford’s evidence, the jury returned a verdict that Baby B had been stillborn. Because they were not able to say when Baby A died or how his death came about, the jury returned an open verdict.

  By the end of the inquest, Constable Joyce had not heard any new information to direct his investigation. Baby B, apparently stillborn, and Baby A, a male child, could not have been the female baby the Makins had been caring for. Mrs Makin had testified that the parents had reclaimed the child while Mrs Hill confirmed she had seen a couple visiting the Makins. In this way, the Makin’s story appeared to stack up.

  The same day, an inquest into the death of another baby-farmed child, a two-month-old boy named Harold Bertram McLennon, also resulted in an unsatisfactory verdict.3 Because a doctor had given evidence that Baby Harold was thin and sickly with not long to live when he was adopted by Mrs Griffin, who lived in a brothel with her lover, the jury accepted that his ‘very much wasted’ body was due to ‘natural causes’. Both cases heard that day in the Coroner’s Court illustrated how difficult it was to gather enough evidence to lay charges against those involved in the baby-farming trade.

  Due to general ignorance about what caused young babies to die, together with a society used to high infant mortality rates, particularly those of illegitimate children, the Makins and Mrs Griffin were able to slip back into the dingy streets in which they lived to continue their surreptitious activities, dependent as they were on baby farming for an income. And there the Makins would have remained but for a 43-year-old senior constable from Newtown police station. What was driving Australia’s unknown James Joyce?

  Decomposition

  Decomposition is a grisly subject but a necessary part of this tale. Without the sophistication of DNA testing and with no other means of identifying the bodies discovered in the Makins’ former backyards, estimates of decomposition given by Dr Milford were used as evidence against the Makins in all subsequent inquests. A detective reinvestigating these deaths today would want to know how accurate these estimations were in 1892. If they were inaccurate, Sarah and John might well be innocent.

  While forensic scientists today use the degree of decomposition of a body to determine how many days, weeks or months a person has been dead, such estimations in the 1890s were based on a doctor’s experience rather than scientific studies. In the Burren Street inquest, Dr Milford had estimated that Babies A and B had been buried for three to six months.

  He would have known that decomposition takes place in stages and varies according to the time of year. The rate of decomposition will also differ depending on whether a body is left in the open or has been partially or fully buried, and on a number of interrelated factors including air temperature, access by insects, cause of death, a body’s size and build, the amount and type of clothing, as well as rainfall and ground water level.4 The most important factor is air temperature, since decomposition occurs much faster when a body is exposed to the air—about twice as fast than if a body is immersed in water and about eight times faster than a buried body.5 This means that decomposition occurs at different rates during summer compared to winter and in cold climates compared to the tropics. Aside from temperature, the other most important factor that slows decomposition is lack of, or decreased, insect activity. Burial slows decomposition by restricting the access of insects6 since most soft tissue destruction is caused by feeding insect larvae. If a body is buried, the degree of decomposition will also depend on the amount of moisture in the soil and its acidity, as well as the depth of burial.

  While the degree of decomposition of Babies A and B meant their facial features were no longer recognisable, their internal organs had not yet decomposed, since samples taken from the contents of the two babies’ stomachs and intestines were analysed by the Government Analyst. The relatively slow rate of decomposition of Babies A and B was due to the formation of a substance called adipocere, also known as grave wax, which, as strange as it may sound, is actually soap. Because adipocere is resistant to bacteria,7 its presence on a corpse decreases the rate of bacterial decomposition that causes the internal organs to liquefy, a process called putrefaction.

  Depth of burial affects not only the rate of decomposition but also the rate of formation of adipocere. It is more likely to form when a body is buried in some type of wrapping or clothing as was the case with the tightly bundled bodies of Babies A and B. Such wrappings reduce the access of percolating rainwater coming into direct contact with the body, which increases the conditions for soap formation.8

  Adipocere is a white-yellowish, greasy, waxy substance that forms on a dead body when moisture in the soil reacts with the fats on the cheeks, buttocks, chest, stomach and legs in the presence of bacterial enzymes, turning the fatty parts of the body into ‘a shapeless mass in which the original structure can no longer be discerned’.9 This means that Babies A and B had undergone a process called saponification, a chemical reaction that many people will have created in chemistry classes at school by making soap from fat. Dr Milford gave evidence that Babies A and B had been buried in clay soil which created a moist earth bath and the rapid formation of adipocere.10

  The amount of grave wax on a body provides clues about the rate of decomposition, while forensic scientists can tell if a body has rapidly or slowly decomposed based on the consistency of the adipocere. If there has been rapid decomposition the grave wax will be hard and crumbly while slow decomposition produces grave wax that is soft and paste-like.11 Generally, adipocere will form within a month after death, depending on the amount of moisture in the soil.

  Another factor that would have affected the rate of decomposition of Babies A and B was their time of burial. In the somewhat macabre discipline of forensic science, experiments have been conducted to compare the rates of decomposition of bodies buried in summer and winter. After six months’ burial, all the internal organs of a body buried in summer have turned into a thick, sticky mass compared to a body buried in winter, in which the internal organs are still discernible.12 Because some of the internal organs of Babies A and B were still intact, this suggests they had been buried in winter when the soil temperature was at its lowest, which coincides with the Makins’ residence in Burren Street. While a cause of death can be determined in cases of win
ter burial for up to a year, the method by which the Makins despatched their baby-farmed children eluded Dr Milford.

  The rate of decomposition of buried bodies is also related to the depth of burial because soil temperature fluctuates with depths up to 0.3 metres (one foot). At depths of 0.6 and 1.2 metres (two and four feet), however, practically no daily fluctuations occur due the insulating effect of the soil.13 Soil temperature is slightly higher at 0.3 and 0.6 metres compared with a depth of 1.2 metres, although soil temperature at all depths is lowest in winter.

  Because bodies are hotter closer to the surface, they decompose faster due to bacterial activity. This in turn causes the production of heat in the surrounding tissues which is higher than the surrounding soil. At a depth of 1.2 metres, a body buried for a year will show a remarkable level of preservation. Similarly, a body buried at 0.6 metres for a period of six months will also show little decomposition with skin and hair on the skull and moderate amounts of adipocere on the chest and legs. By comparison, a body buried at 0.3 metres for three months will be extensively decomposed, with arms and legs in a skeletal state, no skin or hair on the skull and no internal organs.14

  Paradoxically, a body that has been buried deeper and longer may show less decomposition that a body buried at a shallower depth for a shorter period of time. Thus, the depth of burial is crucial for linking the degree of decomposition with the time of burial. Because Babies A and B were in an adipocerous state with their internal organs intact, they were relatively well preserved. If they had been buried at a shallow depth of six inches, as estimated by the two plumbers who dug them up, they could not have been buried for very long. But if they had been buried closer to the depth at which later discoveries were found (18 inches), the babies could have been buried for up to a year.