Execution of a Step-mother

Posted on February 23, 2007
Filed Under Australia - The land down under, Irony Anyone? |

For those that noticed that there is a female name on the below list of hanged prisoners at Fremantle Prison, I did a little research out of my own curiosity. I wanted to know why a woman was hanged and what form of murder she committed. (Why this is more interesting than what the men did… I don’t know.) In any case. this is what I found.

“Martha Rendell (c. 1871 – 6 October 1909) was the last woman to be hanged in Western Australia. She was found guilty of the willful murder of her defacto husband’s son, Arthur Morris, in 1908. She was also suspected of the killing of his two daughters, Annie and Olive. It was alleged that she killed the children by swabbing hydrochloric acid on the back of their throats. Martha however always protested her innocence, maintaining that she was treating the children for diphtheria. There was considerable public outrage at the time; the press portrayed her as a “Scarlet Woman” and “Wicked Stepmother”. There was some debate on the appropriateness of execution for a woman, but on 6 October 1909 she was hanged at Fremantle Prison. She is buried at Fremantle Cemetery, in the same grave where Eric Edgar Cooke was interred more than half a century afterwards.”

As I am, in fact, a stepmother to two beautiful teenagers, this struck me hard. Another woman portrayed as perpetuating the inherent evil-ness of step-mothers! I am curious as to whether her diphtheria treatment reasoning had any rational back then.

I think I may do a little more research…

Comments

One Response to “Execution of a Step-mother”

  1. Nicola on February 25th, 2007 4:48 am

    Lovely site, Christina!! Very pretty. :)

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