The Makins’ lawyer complained to the Coroner that Jordan had been told by police that John was a baby farmer and to get as much out of him as possible. Williamson was suspicious because Jordan already knew a lot about the baby-farming John Makin before he entered Makin’s cell. But Jordan explained he had overheard the police discussing the case and decided to tell Constable Joyce about the confession because he ‘considered he would be quite as bad as [Makin] if he concealed’ it.
The one hint that John’s confession was real, rather than manufactured, is the third search of the Burren Street backyard by the ‘energetic’ Constable Joyce, as a result of the information that there was an eighth body yet to be discovered.22 On the other hand, John was a talker who loved to brag and was probably a shrewd assessor of people’s character. He may have summed up the snake-like Jordan, feeding him lies in order to send Joyce off on a ‘wild baby hunt’ which would have given him a small amount of pleasure.
If Jordan’s evidence was true, John’s admission that ‘no doctor can say he had poisoned any of the children’ suggests that Godfrey’s Cordial was the Makins’ preferred treatment for ‘cross’ babies. Although the stomach contents of Babies 2, 3 and 5 had been tested, no traces of poison were found. Without modern techniques for chemical analysis, opium would have been undetectable by the time the babies were discovered because of its rapid breakdown in the body when administered, as well as further breakdown after death.
Although Joyce had hoped that Jordan’s evidence would persuade the jury to find the Makins guilty of the deaths of Babies 2, 3 and 5, the jury did not agree. Warned by the Coroner that ‘the case was simply one of suspicion’, the jury followed the Coroner’s instructions by returning open verdicts. With no cause of death and no evidence to identify the bodies, there was little else they could do.
The Makins’ luck was holding out.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The longest, saddest inquest: clothing and other complications
10–15 November 1892
Since the inquests conducted by the Coroner had been fruitless in sheeting home responsibility to the Makins, various members of Parliament became concerned about the police investigation. On 10 November 1892, Mr Carruthers questioned the Attorney-General, Mr Barton, in Parliament about the failure of the Coroner to elicit ‘anything that would enable the Government to fix the guilt for those acts on any person’. He reminded Mr Barton of a case in Parramatta where four or five children had met their deaths but ‘the guilt had not been sheeted home to anyone’. Casting doubt on the adequacy of the police case he argued that a special public prosecutor was needed to assist the police in gathering evidence.1 But Mr Carruthers need not have worried since it was the sixth and longest inquest—which investigated the death of Baby 4—that was to cause a sensation in what was now being called the ‘great baby-farming case’ and ‘the most extensive and brutal system of baby farming ever heard of in Australia’.2
Despite having survived the inquisitive eye of five inquests so far, the sixth was to be the first nail in the coffin of John Makin and a permanent iron bolt in the gaol door for Sarah. Out of all the parents of the seven Burren Street babies, it was 17-year-old Minnie Davies and 19-year-old Mr Horace Bothamley who could not let go of their baby girl, Mignonette. Born on 10 June 1892, her birth was registered more than once and in different names, suggesting an anxious need to disguise her birth. The first registration stated that her name was Mignonette Lavinia Wilson and her father’s surname was Wilson. She was finally registered in the real surname of her father, W H Bothamley.3 Nonetheless, when the Coroner’s inquiry was over, she was named Mignonette Lavinia Davies in the Register of Coroner’s Deaths.
As Mr and Mrs Wilson, Minnie and Horace paid the Makins ten shillings each Saturday when they visited Burren Street. It is possible they did not marry when Minnie discovered she was pregnant because both were under the age of 21 and needed parental permission to do so. Since Minnie was a domestic servant, she would probably have lost her position upon marriage. While Horace worked for The Daily Telegraph, at the age of 19 he earned a wage that would not have covered the cost of rent and three mouths to feed. Whatever the reasons, it was essential that no-one should find out about the birth of their illegitimate daughter.
With each inquest, the public’s fascination had grown. When the inquest was opened on Monday 14 November 1892, a large crowd waited outside the courthouse hoping to grab a seat in the public gallery, with spectators besieging the court throughout the day and gathering at the gates each afternoon to catch a glimpse of the Makins.4 In a time with no movies, television or playstations, this was a murder mystery that people in the twenty-first century rarely witness—a real life tragedy which had its own Acts I, II and III.
The sixth inquest made up the end of Act I. While the jury had to produce a verdict, everyone in the public gallery would hear all the evidence as it unfolded and make their own judgments. The prisoners, Sarah, John, Florence and Blanche, were present. It was to be a long ordeal with more than 12 witnesses called to give evidence. Sarah appeared to be in ‘ill-health’ and had to be assisted into the court by John, with one report observing that she ‘bore a very sullen look’. As had become her habit, she was dressed in black and kept her eyes cast down with either a shawl or handkerchief to her face, ‘so that beneath her hat very little of her features’ could be seen.
Those who could not fit into the courtroom gathered at the doorway. When Constable Joyce began his evidence the crowd pushed forward towards Blanche and Florence, who were seated near the door. Spooked, they jumped up and refused to sit until the police cleared the court. Sarah, who was seated in the dock, hid her face with her shawl ‘as if she was crying’ and fell to the floor in a faint. As she was carried out of court, Florence and Blanche ‘cried bitterly’. The Government Medical Officer, whose office was located next door to the court, rushed to help, pronouncing that Sarah was suffering from ‘general debility’ as she was in ‘an excited and nervous state’ and unfit to attend court. He ordered her removal to Darlinghurst Gaol Hospital. The proceedings continued without her.
Constable Thomas Conran told the packed court how he had dug up the remains of an infant at 11.30 on the morning of 3 November in the backyard of 25 Burren Street. The infant had been buried at a depth of about eighteen inches and was wrapped in a piece of flannel. It was the fourth baby discovered by the police. From the lengths of the thigh bones, Dr Milford estimated that Baby 4 was six to ten weeks old when she died, an age similar to that of Minnie’s and Horace’s daughter. He thought the decomposed body was that of a girl since if ‘the child had been a male there would have been some traces of the male organs’.
When Constable Brown testified, he said that portions of a shawl found wrapped around the bodies of Babies 3 and 5 had been identified by Minnie Davies as part of a shawl she had given to Mrs Makin. As the Coroner asked the jury to make a note of this particular evidence, Mr Williamson scraped back his chair and announced:
I object to this being regarded as evidence. It has nothing to do with the body (No.4) upon which the inquest is being held.
He argued that the evidence about the other babies would ‘have the effect of prejudicing his clients’. But the Coroner was unconcerned:
I knew you would object to all this. . . . But [i]t is my duty to get out every scrap of evidence that I possibly can.
The inquest carried on, with the Makins’ anxiety increasing.
The descriptions of the clothing of each dead infant found in Burren Street had been published in the daily newspapers and had generated results even though the police investigations were said to be hampered by a rumour that they intended to prosecute the mothers of some of the children.
Joyce produced the clothing found on Baby 4, including a pair of pink and white woollen bootees. He had shown these bootees to a Mrs Sutherland, who had contacted the police and said she had been the midwife to an unmarried woman named Agnes Todd (whose evidence was heard in
an earlier inquest). Since Mrs Sutherland had handed Miss Todd’s baby to the Makins, she was able to identify the bootees from Baby 4 and the clothing found on Baby 1 as belonging to Agnes’ baby.
When day one of the inquest came to an end, it left the chattering public curious but also unsure about how events would unfold in the following days. As the spectators shuffled out of court, they would not have recognised the Makins’ youngest children, Daisy and Tommy, who had been brought to court by Sarah’s married daughter, Minnie Helbi, for a visit. Taken into the jury room with the rest of the family, they ‘cried very bitterly’ when Florence, Blanche and John were taken back to Central police station.
Outside the court, the crowds had increased as the afternoon wore on, becoming excitable when the case was adjourned for the day. The police waited for the crowd to disperse but the spectators were more patient than the police. Eventually, the officers were forced to clear the courtyard and escort John, Blanche and Florence through another gate, away from the waiting hordes. But the crowd spied them as they crossed into Hyde Park. With more and more people from the surrounding streets attracted to the procession, the gawking, chattering crowd followed them all the way to the police station on the other side of the park.
Day two: the Makins’ nosey neighbours
On day two of the inquest, Sarah had recovered sufficiently to take her seat in court alongside her husband and daughters even though she cried several times during the proceedings, hiding her face in her handkerchief. She heard Patrick Mulvey give the same evidence he had given in previous inquests but she did not even raise her eyes as two of her neighbours, Mrs Hill and Mrs Jane Parry, were called, one after the other, to take the stand.
Mrs Parry, who lived at 23 Burren Street, confirmed Mrs Hill’s evidence when she testified she had only seen and heard one baby at the Makins’ house, a baby girl whom John had described as ‘sickly and cross’. Mrs Parry had also seen children’s clothing drying on the line at 25 Burren Street that, in her opinion, was too much for one child. Given the ten foot high fence surrounding the yard at 25 Burren Street, Mrs Parry had been a keen observer of the goings-on in the Makins’ backyard, perhaps between the palings of the fence. She had taken careful note of pieces of woollen shawl hanging on the line, including a piece that was burnt at the edge, as well as little flannelette shirts, petticoats and several pairs of bootees, including a pair of pink and white ones.
For the first time, evidence about the babies’ clothing was beginning to implicate the Makins in the deaths of not only Baby 4 but other babies as well. Despite this, one court reporter was bored by the proceedings, commenting that the inquest ‘was monotonously uninteresting’, protracted and ridiculously slow. As if tempting fate, he was in for the time of his court-reporting life the next day. For the Makins, day two had been bad. But worse was to come.
A daughter turned Crown witness
The day before this inquest began Constable Joyce had discovered that John and Sarah had two other daughters, Daisy, aged 10 or 11, and Clarice, aged 14, both of whom were staying temporarily with Sarah’s married daughter, Mrs Minnie Helbi, at 61 Garden Street, Alexandria. Perhaps through the gentle art of police persuasion, Joyce managed to convince Clarice to talk, although Daisy was so ‘frightened and alarmed that little information could be obtained from her’ after Florence had warned her at Newtown police station, ‘You know nothing whatever about this business’.
After questioning Clarice and Daisy, Joyce was able to trace the movements of the Makin family and concluded they had been baby farming since they lived in Harbour Street, Darling Harbour at least three years earlier.
When Clarice gave evidence on the third day of the inquest, the court was ‘densely crowded in expectation’ that she would reveal all. She told the court she was a domestic servant at 128 Cleveland Street where she lived-in. During Clarice’s examination, Blanche and Florence ‘were much agitated, and were continually muttering’ while ‘Mrs. Makin turned her head away, and sobbed convulsively’ as betrayal hung in the air. They were being forced to watch as their statements to the police were exposed as a confection of lies. This emotional display did not stop Clarice from timidly informing the court she had lived with her parents at 109 George Street in June 1892 and that her mother took children into care.
Coroner: Shortly before they moved did your mother take in a baby to care?
Clarice: Yes, sir . . .
Coroner: Well, did your mother get one before that?
Clarice: Yes. She had one then.
Coroner: Was it a boy [or] a girl?
Clarice: They were both girls . . .
Coroner: Have you any idea how old [the first one] was?
Clarice: About 6 or 7 months.
Coroner: Do you know how your mother got that baby?
Clarice: My father got it from a woman.
Coroner: Do you know the lady?
Clarice: Yes, sir.
(Mrs Sutherland [the midwife of Miss Agnes Todd] was here brought into court.)
Coroner: Is that the person?
Clarice: Yes.
Clarice remembered that another female baby about two weeks old had also turned up in George Street. This was a healthy looking baby who had been visited by Horace Bothamley. Although Clarice said she accompanied her parents on the late-night move to 25 Burren Street, she left three days later to take up her live-in position as a servant. The next part of her evidence was damning:
Coroner: Did your father take any other children to Burrenstreet?
Clarice: They took two altogether.
Coroner: Were they in the house when you left?
Clarice: Yes, sir.
When she visited her parents a week later the two babies were still in the house, including Minnie’s and Horace’s baby who ‘seemed to be quite well’. Although she saw the two babies again the following week, that was the last time she saw them. On this occasion, Clarice told the court she remembered that Baby Mignonette was wearing ‘a little pink dress’ and pink and white bootees. When she was shown this clothing, Clarice turned away and ‘burst into tears and it was some time before she could resume her evidence’.
As Clarice continued her tearful testimony, she said she could not remember seeing the particular bootees shown to her nor other any clothing found on Baby 4. The Coroner then asked, suspiciously:
Coroner: Has anyone said anything to you about the case?
Clarice: No, sir, nobody.
Coroner: Has Mr. Williams spoken to you?
Clarice: No, sir . . .
Coroner: Will you swear that?
Clarice: Yes, sir.
A curious juror then interrupted:
Juror: Had you any particular object in not visiting your parents very often while in Burren-street?
Clarice: No, sir. I was not very fond of home.
Clarice’s evidence was explosive because it was the first crack in the cone of silence surrounding the Makin family. During the luncheon break, Sarah, John, Florence and Blanche were held in the jury room, from which ‘sounds of continued wailing and sobbing could be heard . . . and occasionally the voice of Mrs. Makin rose shrilly above the weeping anathematising some one’. Attracted by this racket, a crowd gathered outside the jury room window, where Clarice was seen talking to some of the women in the crowd. On catching sight of her disloyal daughter, ‘Mrs Makin rushed to the window and exclaimed, “A mother’s curse! A mother’s curse on you! You’ve all been swearing lies”’.
After lunch, when Sarah was led into the courtroom past Clarice, who was seated in a passageway, she raised her hand and ‘hissed’, ‘May the curse of God Almighty rest upon my child’. This was a prelude to more dramatics. As Sarah, Florence and Blanche took their seats, they put on such a performance and ‘sobbed so hysterically’ that the inquest was delayed for a considerable time until they calmed down. Although they intended to send a message to Clarice, ‘her evidence was not shaken’. She told the court that ‘her mother had cursed [her] terri
bly, all because she had told the truth, and added passionately “I came here to tell the truth and I am going to tell it”’. While a few of the jurors called out, ‘Hear, hear’, Blanche ‘burst into violent sobs, and repeatedly shrieked out that her sister was telling lies’.
No doubt the Coroner, the jurymen and even the Makins’ lawyer had never seen anything like it. One journalist described it as ‘one of the most remarkable scenes that has ever taken place in a court in the colony’.5 But the Makin family was standing on the edge of an abyss. Desperate measures were called for. Because Mr Williamson had been unsuccessful in restricting the evidence that could be heard in the inquest, these tactics were the only defence the Makin family had at its disposal.
Despite her mother’s threats and her sisters’ sobbing and shrieking, Clarice bravely continued her testimony, although she cried throughout, determined to tell the truth. When she was shown the clothing found on Baby 3, she recognised the napkin by the letter ‘F’ in the corner and revealed she had seen it and the baby’s shirt in her mother’s possession in George Street, along with the piece of shawl in which Baby 3 had been buried.
Mr Williamson rose to his feet to begin what was to become a highly emotional cross-examination.
Clarice: On Sunday morning last . . .
Mr. Williamson: Did he make any promise or hold out any inducement that he would see that you be all right?
Clarice: No, he did not. He simply told me to tell the truth and not tell lies, and I have spoken the truth.
Sarah and her daughters again descended into tears, with Sarah ‘moaning painfully’ while Blanche cried out that Clarice was a liar. Clarice sobbed, producing a ‘most painful’ scene. A juror, disturbed by what he saw, spoke up:
The Baby Farmers Page 13