Lady Killers Interactive II

unravelLing the evidence

In this bonus Lady Killers content, you'll watch exclusive conversations between the presenters, hear the letters of Lady Killers brought to life, learn about how historians track down evidence, and find out more about the recovery of women's voices...

INVESTIGATE

Choose a case

Recover the voices of First Nations women

Find THE evidence in a case of infanticide

INVESTIGATE

HEAR The LoveLetters ofLady killers

INVESTIGATE

Video Content Inside

Audio Content Inside

Recovering the voices of First Nations Women

Let'S Go

Get started by playing the video, then tap the red icon to investigate. You can replay the video or revisit previous evidence at any point...

Recovering the voices of First Nations Women

Replay

Date: 1896Crime: ManslaughterSentence: Two years hard labour (suspended)

Recovering the voices of First Nations Women

Replay

Date: 1896Crime: ManslaughterSentence: Two years hard labour (suspended)

1) What happened at Myora Springs?

Recovering the voices of First Nations Women

Replay

1) What happened at Myora Springs?

Date: 1896Crime: ManslaughterSentence: Two years hard labour (suspended)

2) What was Bill North's role?

Recovering the voices of First Nations Women

Replay

1) What happened at Myora Springs?

Date: 1896Crime: ManslaughterSentence: Two years hard labour (suspended)

3) What did the women's voices tell us?

2) What was Bill North's role?

Recovering the voices of First Nations Women

Replay

1) What happened at Myora Springs?

Date: 1896Crime: ManslaughterSentence: Two years hard labour (suspended)

2) What was Bill North's role?

4) How authentic are these voices?

3) What did the women's voices tell us?

Recovering the voices of First Nations Women

Replay

1) What happened at Myora Springs?

Date: 1896Crime: ManslaughterSentence: Two years hard labour (suspended)

2) What was Bill North's role?

3) What did the women's voices tell us?

BACK TO START

5) What doesthis case teach us about Indigenous history?

4) How authentic are these voices?

Finding evidence in a case of infanticide

Let'S Go

Get started by playing the video, then tap the red icon to investigate. You can replay the video or revisit previous evidence at any point...

Finding evidence in a case of infanticide

Replay

Date: 1861Crime: InfanticideSentence: Imprisonment,two years

Finding evidence in a case of infanticide

Replay

Date: 1861Crime: InfanticideSentence: Imprisonment,two years

1) What historical evidence exists?

Finding evidence in a case of infanticide

Replay

Date: 1861Crime: InfanticideSentence: Imprisonment,two years

1) What historical evidence exists?

2) What could we find out from the surviving sources?

Finding evidence in a case of infanticide

Replay

Date: 1861Crime: InfanticideSentence: Imprisonment,two years

1) What historical evidence exists?

3) What did we find out about the family?

2) What could we find out from the surviving sources?

Replay

Finding evidence in a case of infanticide

Date: 1861Crime: InfanticideSentence: Imprisonment,two years

1) What historical evidence exists?

2) What could we find out from the surviving sources?

4) What happened to Jane and Ann?

3) What did we find out about the family?

BACK TO START

INVESTIGATE

Cases of female killing in the 19th and early 20th centuries present a unique opportunity to recover women’s voices from the past. The increasing professionalisation and bureaucratisation of the criminal justice process and the unprecedented expansion of print media meant that such cases produced an abundance of records. Statements from witnesses and the accused were written down by the authorities and filed. Courtroom testimony was reproduced – almost word for word – in the newspapers. Last minute confessions, or final speeches made on the scaffold, were printed and circulated. The process of evidence gathering in preparation for a prosecution could also unearth other key documents which featured the ‘voices’ of our female killers. Across the three series of Lady Killers, three of our cases featured love letters written by the accused and used as evidence by the prosecution. Their contents reveal crucial information about the private lives of women. The sensation created by these letters inside and outside the courtroom suggests that these women were as much on trial for their sex lives, as they were for murder.

The love letters of lady killers

SERIES 1:Madeleine Smith

SERIES 3:Alice Mitchell

SERIES 2:Edith Thompson

Although we have been able to use the archive and printed sources – the traditional tools of the historian – to recover the voices of First Nations women, there is another, equally important approach. Oral history, the stories handed down through the generations, about the Mission and its inhabitants, provides a different perspective, while foregrounding the voices of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

What does this case teach us about Indigenous history?

BACK TO START

Finally, the land on which this story unfolded adds yet another dimension to our understanding. The former Mission site, the flora and fauna which sustained life, the tidal spring with its historic middens, and finally

Myora Mission, Stradbroke Island, ca. 1891,State Library of Queensland.

the graveyard for Mission inhabitants where little Cassey was likely buried, all provide crucial insights into life for Indigenous women in late 19th century Australia.

What historical evidence exists?

On 26 October 1861, Ann Boyd, an unmarried teenager who had recently returned home to Ballykeel, Holywood, from her job as a domestic servant in Dundonald, gave birth to a little girl. Her mother, Jane Boyd, attempted to cover up what had happened, but was soon forced to seek medical assistance for Ann.The doctor’s suspicions, that Ann had delivered a child, led to a search and the discovery of the body of a baby buried at the foot of an elm tree in the garden. Following an inquest, Ann and Jane were both charged with murder.It was a compelling case, but there was very little historical evidence to go on. Elaine Farrell had cited just two reports from the Belfast Newsletter (a local newspaper): one on the inquest (31 October 1861) and one on Ann and Jane's trial at the Down (11 March 1862). Official sources, such as coroners' and court records for County Down from the 1860s - files which might have contained important evidence for our case - have not survived.

According to the prosecution, Edith’s letters contained evidence that she had conspired with and encouraged Freddy to kill her husband. Much of the evidence was flimsy, as the prosecution incorrectly interpreted euphemisms used between the lovers, and made wild assumptions from their discussion of a novel in which a woman plotted to poison her husband.

On 3 October 1922, Edith Thompson witnessed the stabbing of her husband, Percy, in the street near theirhome by her lover, Freddy Bywaters. However, when police discovered more than 60 letters from Edithto Freddy in his seaman’s box, Edith soon found herself arrested and on trial for her husband’s murder...

Series Two - the case of Edith Thompson

The letters also revealed the deep love that had blossomed in the relationship. Edith, stuck in a marriage with an incompatible husband, had found her soulmate, someone to listen to her accounts of plays and parties and to share her love of reading. The letters provide us with a window into the life of a young, modern woman in the early 1920s.But the letters also contained very graphic accounts of the intimate relations between Edith and Freddy. When the letters were read aloud in court, and extracts were printed in the newspapers, they changed the course of the trial and caused a dramatic shift in public opinion. Sympathy for Edith evaporated, and Freddy was recast as a young man led astray by an older woman – stylish, career-driven, and pleasure-loving. As historian Lucy Bland declares, this was the New Woman on trial, and she lost.

Edith Thompson, Wikimedia Commons

Edith, Percy and Freddy, Wikimedia Commons

Finding evidence of infanticide - the background

For assistance on how to handle this theme, I consulted Elaine Farrell’s excellent book, ‘A most diabolical deed’: Infanticide and Irish society, 1850-1900' (Manchester University Press, 2013). Among the many thousands of cases on which this study was based, I found one, the case of Ann and Jane Boyd, which grabbed my attention...

From about the mid 18th century, urbanisation and industrialisation loosened the regulatory functions of previously tight-knit, small communities. In the 19th century, the growth of the service industry meant that many young, unmarried women were sent away from home to jobs in domestic service. Reduced constraints around sex outside of marriage combined with a lack of reliable contraception and social stigma around illegitimacy led to a rise in infanticide (since 1922 defined as the killing of babies up to the age of 12 months) and especially newborn child murder.

Children often feature as victims on Lady Killers. For series 3, we wanted to include a case of newborn child murder, also known as neonaticide and sometimes referred to as infanticide. The reasons why cases of neonaticide or infanticide occur are highly complex. There are psychological explanations, but this crime also has a historical context.

There was never any doubt that Alice Mitchell had killed Freda Ward: Alice stabbed Freda in broad daylight in front of Freda’s sister and passengers boarding a steamboat on the Mississippi River. But why had she done it?

Series Three - the case of Alice Mitchell

Alice and Freda’s letters were read aloud at Alice’s lunacy inquisition in July 1892, convened to determine whether she was fit to stand trial for murder. The content of the letters – especially the detailed plans for elopement – was used to support the case for Alice’s insanity.The letters were also reproduced in the local newspapers, where they were referred to as ‘probably the most remarkable epistles to make their way to a court of justice’ (Memphis Commercial, 20 July 1892). White, male journalists and editors used layouts, headings, extracts and editorial content both to entertain readers and to reinforce social norms around femininity and heteronormativity. Despite this, as historian Lisa Duggan points out, the newspaper articles were still based on the stories that the women told about themselves: the women continued to have a hand in the shaping of the narrative.

Crayon portrait of Frederica Ward. Wikimedia Commons

The answer became clear when letters between the two teenagers came to light. And it was not what society in late 19th century Memphis, Tennessee, expected. The girls were much more than just friends. They were lovers, who used this private means of communication to sustain their relationship when Freda’s family moved from Memphis to Golddust. The letters contained more than just declarations of love too. They highlighted the difficulties of same-sex relationships at a time when society could not contemplate the idea of sexual relations between women.

1892 portrait of Alice Mitchell, Wikimedia Commons

The expectation was that both girls would marry, and when Freda began to entertain male suitors, Alice was driven mad with jealousy. The letters also revealed a plot concocted by the girls to elope and marry. Alice offered to live as a man, Alvin J. Ward, to make this possible, and she gave Freda an engagement ring. But their elopement was prevented by Freda’s sister Ada who, on becoming suspicious, read some of Alice’s letters.

What happened at Myora Springs?

On 14 September 1896, Marie Christensen, matron at the Myora Mission Reformatory and Industrial School on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island, Queensland), gave one of her charges, 5 year-old Cassey, a severe beating when the little girl refused to bathe in the tidal spring. Five days later, Cassey died of her injuries. Because the attending physician, Dr Joseph Patrick Maloney, refused to issue a death certificate, an inquest was held into Cassey’s death.

This was a rare event. According to legal historians Sean Gouglas and John Weaver, in 1896 there were 469 formal inquiries into sudden deaths in Queensland, and fewer than 1% of these investigated the deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Myora Springs, present day

Finding evidence of infanticide - the background

What did the women's voices tell us?

Budlo Lefu, even claimed to have challenged Christensen while she was beating the child: ‘Then I came to stop her and she told me I had nothing to do with it’.The unique circumstances of this Mission - it wasn’t as highly regulated or oppressive as other Missions, and the labour of the inhabitants was essential to the local economy – might have enabled the Indigenous women to speak out and to attempt to intervene. Still, their power to act was heavily circumscribed.

Several women speak to us from these inquest documents:

Budlo Lefu, an Aboriginal woman and herself a mother, who watched Christensen force Cassey to bathe in the spring, and then drag her to the top of the hill, where she beat and kicked her
Polly Roberts, another Indigenous Mission resident, who saw the matron kick and beat the child
and Evelyn Ellis and Topsy McLeod, two younger First Nations women, who also witnessed the beatings.

Inquest Statement, Queensland State Archives

What did we find out about the family?

What about the Boyd family? Where did they live? Census returns for 19th century Ireland do not survive, but we do have Griffith’s Valuation – a comprehensive household survey carried out by Richard Griffith between 1847 and 1864. The survey of Holywood and Ballykeel took place in 1861, the same year as our case. We were able to find William Boyd – Jane’s husband, and Ann’s father. He was described as the occupier of a small house leased or rented from Hugh Simms. The listing included a reference to a map, which helped us to locate where this house might have been.

We couldn’t find any trace of the house, and so we took the information we had to the Ulster Folk Museum at Cultra, near to Holywood. The staff there were able to show us a historic cottage which would have been very similar to the one occupied by the Boyd family. Being in the house gave us a better appreciation of the dynamics of the case, especially the cramped living conditions. There was very little privacy and it was easy to imagine the stress caused by the prospect of another mouth to feed and another body to accommodate.

Bill North found that Cassey had died under ‘Suspicious Circumstances’. The case was referred to the Attorney General and the Police Commissioner. Christensen was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and appeared before the Brisbane Police Magistrates’ Court on 29 September 1896.Some of the witness interviewed by Bill North were called to give evidence. When giving hers, Budlo Lefu claimed that North had left out key information when he took her statement: that Christensen had beaten the child with a cane. Budlo claimed she 'told Mr North that he had not put down about the cane, and he said he had forgotten about it'.This is a useful reminder that although we have these voices, they do not come to us unfiltered. It is our job as historians to expose the filters, and to read against the grain, to try to recover as much of their authenticity as we can. In this case, the words that these women were permitted to say were heavily filtered by the white men – employers, authority figures, journalists – who committed them to paper.

How authentic are these voices?

What historical evidence exists?

What was Bill North's role?

Elisabeth and Karen showed me an old photograph (reproduced here with permission) featuring a group of Indigenous people from the Mission, with Bill North at the back and his children at the front standing alongside their schoolmates.

The Justice of the Peace responsible for the inquest was a man called William (or Bill) North. Bill North was a grazier and ran cattle on Minjerribah. When on location, I visited the North Stradbroke Island Museum on Minjerribah to find out more about Bill North. Museum curator, Elisabeth Gondwe, and President, Karen Rylance, told me that Bill North was closely connected to the Indigenous people who lived on Myora Mission. He employed some of the men, built houses for the people on behalf of the government, and even sent his own children to the Mission school.

The nature of Bill North’s relationship with the Mission residents might have prompted him to take testimonies from the First Nations women who witnessed the events on 14 September.

What happened at Myora Springs?

Myora Springs, present day

Recovering the voices of First Nations women - the background

Criminal justice records are a good place to look for evidence relating to the lives of marginalised groups in history. Some marginalised groups were more likely to encounter law enforcement agencies because of the types of work they did, because they were more likely to be in public places, or because deep-seated prejudices or racism encouraged greater surveillance or more frequent accusations of wrongdoing. Even then, recovering the voices of individuals from these communities remains difficult, especially when social elites worked hard to suppress them, as they did in 19th century Australia.

The case of Marie Christensen was unique in providing access to the voices of women from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Aboriginal children at Myora Mission Station, North Stradbroke Island, 1896, State Library of Queensland.

Recovering the voices of First Nations women - the background

The case of Marie Christensen was unique in providing access to the voices of women from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Aboriginal children at Myora Mission Station, North Stradbroke Island, 1896, State Library of Queensland.

Recovering the voices of First Nations women - the background

The case of Marie Christensen was unique in providing access to the voices of women from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Aboriginal children at Myora Mission Station, North Stradbroke Island, 1896, State Library of Queensland.

The pile of letters delivered to the prosecution were in a mess. Some letters had become separatedfrom their envelopes, and so it was difficult to date and order them accurately. Because Madeleinecrossed and recrossed her letters – that is, wrote horizontally, vertically and diagonally on the same page,creating layers of text – the letters were hard to read. The prosecution selected, transcribed and printed for trial about 60 letters which they believed provided evidence of Madeleine’s guilt. To her shame, these letters were read aloud in court, and excerpts were printed in the newspapers. True crime writers and some historians who have used this collection have been convinced of Madeleine’s guilt.

In the weeks before Emile’s death, Madeleine had been eager to retrieve the letters. Madeleine and Emile, who were from different social classes, had been engaged in a secret love affair.The letters revealed the extent of intimacy between the pair and referred to Emile’s attempts to use the letters as blackmail when Madeleine tried to end the relationship. One letter suggested a reconciliation, a meeting, supposedly on the very night that Emile became gravely ill.

Series One - the case of Madeleine Smith

In the case of Madeleine Smith, around 250 letters were discovered in the drawer of a desk used by Madeleine’s alleged victim, Pierre Emile L’Angelier, following his death from arsenic poisoning in March 1857.

According to historian Mary Hartman, these letters show that Madeleine was a rather silly girl, who used Emile as her plaything, while she waited to find the right man to marry.

However, historians Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair, who read all 250 letters for their book, Murder and Morality in Victorian Britain (2009), present a rather different picture, of a young lady who was sincerely in love with a manipulative man hell-bent on improving his station in life. Moreover, their book shows how these letters provide us with an almost unrivalled account of life in Glasgow in the mid 19th century, as experienced by a young lady, from the wealthy classes, on the verge of marriage.

What was Bill North's role?

The nature of Bill North’s relationship with the Mission residents might have prompted him to take testimonies from the First Nations women who witnessed the events on 14 September.

Finding evidence of infanticide - the background

What historical evidence exists?

What happened at Myora Springs?

Myora Springs, present day

Finding evidence of infanticide - the background

How authentic are these voices?

The newspaper report on the inquest, however, was rich in detail. Key witnesses were called to give evidence, and from this we were able to build a picture of the community in which the Boyds lived. While Jane Boyd spoke at the inquest, Ann was too ill to attend. This did not matter too much, as it turned out that it was most likely Jane who had killed the baby and buried the body under the tree. We had the words of our lady killer.Still, we needed more. We wanted to set the scene. What was life like in Ballykeel (the townland), and Holywood (the parish), in the 1860s?

What could we find out from the surviving sources?

Some help from local historians, and evidence from some local history sources, gave us what we needed. The Belfast and Province of Ulster Directory for 1858-59 and 1863-64 provided vital information about the parish of Holywood. The town, with its coastal views and rail link to Belfast, was desirable and prosperous. Further inland, tenant farmers and farm labourers scratched a living from the land. The directories also included the names of people who featured in our case, such as Dr Dunlop, who had been called by Jane to attend to her sick daughter.

What could we find out from the surviving sources?

Recovering the voices of First Nations women - the background

The case of Marie Christensen was unique in providing access to the voices of women from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Aboriginal children at Myora Mission Station, North Stradbroke Island, 1896, State Library of Queensland.

What did the women's voices tell us?

Several women speak to us from these inquest documents:

Budlo Lefu, an Aboriginal woman and herself a mother, who watched Christensen force Cassey to bathe in the spring, and then drag her to the top of the hill, where she beat and kicked her
Polly Roberts, another Indigenous Mission resident, who saw the matron kick and beat the child
and Evelyn Ellis and Topsy McLeod, two younger First Nations women, who also witnessed the beatings.

Inquest Statement, Queensland State Archives

What historical evidence exists?

What happened at Myora Springs?

Myora Springs, present day

What was Bill North's role?

The nature of Bill North’s relationship with the Mission residents might have prompted him to take testimonies from the First Nations women who witnessed the events on 14 September.

What was Bill North's role?

The nature of Bill North’s relationship with the Mission residents might have prompted him to take testimonies from the First Nations women who witnessed the events on 14 September.

What did we find out about the family?

What could we find out from the surviving sources?

Recovering the voices of First Nations women - the background

The case of Marie Christensen was unique in providing access to the voices of women from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Aboriginal children at Myora Mission Station, North Stradbroke Island, 1896, State Library of Queensland.

Finding evidence of infanticide - the background

After the inquest, Jane and Ann Boyd were sent to Downpatrick County Gaol to await trial. After their conviction for concealment of birth, both served sentences of imprisonment (Jane 2 years and Ann 6 months) at the same prison.Records from the prison which might have directly referenced Jane and Ann (such as prison registers) do not survive. However, we were able to get a sense of their experience of imprisonment using floorplans of the prison along with accounts of the discipline and regime included in the annual reports of the prison inspectors . From these reports, we know that Ann and Jane would have been confined in separate cells, put to work in the prison laundry and perhaps attended school where reading and writing was taught.

What happened to Jane and Ann?

‘Six females were committed for concealing births or deserting infants during 1861, and four in 1862. On my inspection I found nine women under various sentences of imprisonment, who had been tried at assizes or quarter sessions; four of these had been convicted of concealment, which happily is a rare offence in many parts of Ireland, and some had received sentences of two years’ imprisonment’.

BACK TO START

The inspector’s report for 1862 also contained an indirect reference to Jane and Ann:

The research of historians like Elaine Farrell, which suggests infanticide was a weekly event in mid 19th century Ireland, contradicts the assumptions of the male inspector. This was a society in which many were prepared to turn a blind eye to preserve the status quo.

What happened at Myora Springs?

Myora Springs, present day

Recovering the voices of First Nations women - the background

The case of Marie Christensen was unique in providing access to the voices of women from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Aboriginal children at Myora Mission Station, North Stradbroke Island, 1896, State Library of Queensland.

What did the women's voices tell us?

Several women speak to us from these inquest documents:

Budlo Lefu, an Aboriginal woman and herself a mother, who watched Christensen force Cassey to bathe in the spring, and then drag her to the top of the hill, where she beat and kicked her
Polly Roberts, another Indigenous Mission resident, who saw the matron kick and beat the child
and Evelyn Ellis and Topsy McLeod, two younger First Nations women, who also witnessed the beatings.

Inquest Statement, Queensland State Archives

Lady Killers Interactive II

More creations to inspire you

SLYCE DECK

LET’S GO TO LONDON!

ENERGY KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

HUMAN AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT KEY

CULTURAL HERITAGE AND ART KEY ACHIEVEMENTS

DOWNFALLL OF ARAB RULE IN AL-ANDALUS

ABOUT THE EEA GRANTS AND NORWAY

Transcript