by Carol Baxter
Notes
1 A ‘grain’ represents the weight of an average grain of wheat; that is, around 65 milligrams or 0.0002 ounces.
2 Many publications claim that Louisa was born at the Belltrees property in the Scone district of New South Wales; however, this is not necessarily correct. Louisa was born on 11 August 1847, nine years prior to the commencement of the civil registration of births, deaths and marriages in New South Wales, so birth certificates did not exist at that time. All that survives is her baptism entry, which records that she was born on 11 August 1847 and baptised three months later on 7 November, at which time her family was residing in the Township of Scone. While her parents had once resided at Belltrees—they were living there in May 1845 when their eldest two daughters were baptised—they left Belltrees at some point in the thirty months between May 1845 and November 1847 never to return.
In later records, Louisa and her husband sometimes noted that she was born at Belltrees and sometimes Scone (or elsewhere); however, this information is hearsay as we cannot remember our own births. No direct evidence of her birthplace has survived, so we must resort to probability. There is only a 10 per cent chance that her parents were still residing at Belltrees at the time of Louisa’s birth. Whatever the case, the Hall family had left there by the time she was three months old and had settled at the Thornthwaite estate near Dartbrook before she was two. They continued to move around the Hunter Valley district in the years that followed.
3 Louisa’s parents, Henry and Catherine Hall (née Ring), were married on 17 August 1842 and had the following children:
• Elizabeth, born 22 March 1843; parents residing at Belltrees (father a labourer) when baptised on 5 May 1845.
• Margaret, born 28 April 1844; baptised same day as sister Elizabeth.
• Charlotte, born 12 September 1845; parents residing in the Township of Scone (father a labourer) when baptised on 7 November 1847.
• Louisa, born 11 August 1847; baptised same day as sister Charlotte.
• Samuel, born 15 July 1849; parents residing at Thornthwaite near Dartbrook (father a shepherd) when baptised on 23 July 1849.
• Sarah, born 2 January 1852; parents residing at Thornthwaite (father a shepherd) when baptised on 12 July 1852.
• Ann, born 27 May 1855; parents residing at Sandy Creek near Kayuga (father a shepherd) when baptised on 29 August 1855.
• Richard, born 18 November 1857; parents residing at Mr Cox’s Well station (near Muswellbrook) when baptised on 13 April 1858.
• Maria, born 29 May 1862 at Hall’s Creek (father a shepherd).
Henry Hall died in November 1880 at Owen’s Gap, Scone. His widow died on 28 May 1904 at the Newington Asylum on the Parramatta River.
4 Charles and Louisa had the following children:
• Herbert, born 1 June 1867 at Merriwa; died 26 December 1935 at Newcastle Hospital.
• Ernest, born around March 1869 at Merriwa; died 27 October 1872 at Muswellbrook.
• Reuben, born 27 August 1871 at Muswellbrook.
• Arthur, born 15 October 1873 at Hunter Terrace, Muswellbrook; died 14 June 1919 at Sydney Hospital.
• Frederick William, born 25 August 1875 at Forbes Street, Muswellbrook; died 26 January 1962 at Royal Newcastle Hospital.
• May, born 16 October 1877 at Bridge Street, Muswellbrook; died 10 October 1911, Killingworth.
• Edwin, born 1880.
• David, born 2 October 1881 at Botany; died 13 October 1881 at Botany.
• Charles, born 29 May 1883 at Botany.
5 The baby was registered as ‘William Collins’ in his birth certificate but as ‘John Collins’ in his death certificate.
6 Sometimes her nickname was spelt Lucrezia Borgia and sometimes the press and public anglicised it to Lucretia.
7 A ‘larrikin’ in the late 1800s was the equivalent of today’s gang banger.
8 Ten women were executed in New South Wales between 1788 and 1888, seven for murder. Only four executions took place after the major changes to the criminal laws in the 1830s, all for husband-killing. In 1842, Lucretia Dunckley and her ‘fancy man’ died on the Berrima Gaol gallows for the axe-murder of Lucretia’s husband. Another love-triangle murder, a poisoning, sent Mary Thornton and her lover to the Newcastle gallows in 1844. Mary Ann Brownlow, the infant-suckler, was the next—in 1855. Ellen Monks was executed in 1860; she had used a hammer to bludgeon her constantly drunk husband then had ensured his death by burning his body. Meanwhile, all female child-killers (mostly convicted of infanticide) escaped death along with husband-killers Mary Ann Perry (1859) and the Maitland murderesses, Mary Ann Burton and Sarah Keep (1885).
9 James Whorton, The Arsenic Century, p. 315.
10 Correspondence with Professor Emeritus James Whorton, 31 July 2012.
11 Conversations and correspondence with Judge Gregory D. Woods, July 2014.
12 Queensland was the first state to abolish the death penalty—in 1922. It was followed by Tasmania in 1968, Northern Territory in 1973, Victoria in 1975, Tasmania in 1976, the Australian Capital Territory in 1983, Western Australia in 1984 and New South Wales in 1985.
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MITCHELL LIBRARY, SYDNEY, NSW
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REGISTRY OF BIRTHS, DEATHS & MARRIAGES, SYDNEY, NSW
Original certificates
Andrews, Arthur: Birth 1873 [73/14890]
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Transcriptions by Joy Murrin
Andrews, Arthur: Birth (certificate listed above); Marriage 1896 [96/26257]; Death 1919 [19/5087/31437]
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15]
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