Murderess or Miscarriage of Justice? A Case of Husband Poisoning in Early Federation New South Wales

Abstract

Scholarship on women and homicide has focused increasingly on the ways in which race, class, ethnicity, and sexual identity intersect to produce patterns of severity and leniency toward women accused of murder. However, prosecutions of individuals rarely hook neatly into such matrices. This article uses an alleged instance of husband poisoning in early Federation New South Wales to illustrate the capacity of case studies to illuminate the contingencies of capital justice. Far from an instance of women's lethal violence springing from male abuse, or a straightforward example of the patriarchal legal system at work, Jane Hetherington's conviction was a likely miscarriage of justice.

Amy Thomas, Bianca Vecchio and Fiona Fraser provided research assistance. The referees' critiques were helpful, and I especially appreciate the advice and encouragement the journal's editors offered.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 There is no transcript of the murder trial of Jane Hetherington.

2 The Constitution Act 1902 defined the Executive Council as Ministers of the Crown. The Crimes Act, 1900 (under the heading of ‘Commutation or Mitigation of Sentences’), authorised the Governor to grant mercy ‘if he thinks fit so to direct’. An Act to Consolidate the Statutes relating to Criminal Law, s. 459.

3 Punishment registers in the New South Wales State Archives and Records Authority (hereafter NSWSA) for the prisons where Jane Hetherington was held show no entries for her name. She entered Goulburn Gaol on 4 December 1903 (NRS2234 19/1764); was sent to Darlinghurst on 12 December 1903 (NRS2234 19/1764); returned to Goulburn 12 January 1904 (NRS2234 19/1764); remained there until her commutation; was sent to Bathurst 2 June 1904 (NRS2234 19/1764); arrived at Long Bay ‘from Bathurst via Darlinghurst’ 26 August 1909 (NRS2491 5/2258); was discharged to Darlinghurst Gaol 12 January 1914 (NRS2491 5/2258); arrived (undated) at Darlinghurst in 1914 (NRS2135 5/1733); was sent back to Long Bay on 30 January 1914 (NRS2142 4/6391); and was released on 25 October 1915 (NRS 1870 5/1788).

4 Under s. 463 of the Crimes Act prisoners could be at large during the unexpired portion of their sentences, ‘subject to such conditions indorsed on the license as the Governor shall prescribe’.

5 David Hamer, ‘Wrongful Convictions, Appeals, and the Finality Principle: The Need for a Criminal Cases Review Commission’, University of New South Wales Law Journal 37, no. 1 (2014): 270–311.

6 Mary S. Hartman, Victorian Murderesses: A True History of Thirteen Respectable French and English Women Accused of Unspeakable Crimes (New York: Schocken Books, 1977). On religious and moral condemnation of the female poisoner, see Sara L. Crosby, Poisonous Muse: The Female Poisoner and the Framing of Popular Authorship in Jacksonian America (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016), 5–9; on the association of women poisoners with witchcraft, see Giovanna Fiume, ‘The Old Vinegar Lady, or the Judicial Modernization of the Crime of Witchcraft’, in History from Crime, eds Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 65–87; on Medea and Circe as archetypes of the sorceress and female poisoner, see George Robb, ‘Circe in Crinoline: Domestic Poisonings in Victorian England’, Journal of Family History 22, no. 2 (1997): 176–90.

7 Randa Helfield, ‘Female Poisoners of the Nineteenth Century: A Study of Gender Bias in the Application of the Law’, Osgoode Hall Law Journal 28, no. 1 (1990): 53–101; Victoria Nagy, Nineteenth-Century Female Poisoners: Three English Women Who Used Arsenic to Kill (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 98–102; Katherine Watson, Poisoned Lives: English Poisoners and Their Victims (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004), 140–6.

8 Elizabeth Rappaport, ‘The Death Penalty and Gender Discrimination’, Law and Society Review 25, no. 2 (1991): 367–83; Victor L. Streib, ‘Rare and Inconsistent: The Death Penalty for Women’, Fordham Urban Law Journal 33, no. 2 (2006): 609–36; Shani D’Cruze, Sandra Walklate and Samantha Pegg, eds, Murder: Social and Historical Approaches to Understanding Murder and Murderers (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), chs 3 and 7; Anette Ballinger, Dead Woman Walking: Executed Women in England and Wales, 1900–1955 (London: Taylor and Francis, 2017 [2000]); Lizzie Seal, Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women Who Kill (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

9 Helfield, 90.

10 Roger Douglas and Kathy Laster, ‘A Matter of Life and Death: The Victorian Executive and the Decision to Execute’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 24, no. 2 (1991): 144–60.

11 Jane Hetherington was admitted to the gaol hospital of the State Reformatory for Women on 16 August 1915 and discharged from hospital on 25 October 1915, the day she was released from gaol. NSWSA, NRS 2502, Record of cases treated in Gaol hospital, State Reformatory for Women, Long Bay, 1909–26, container 5/2249.

12 Baby farmers were treated more harshly than women who killed their own infants. Kathy Laster, ‘Frances Knorr: “She Killed Babies, Didn't She?”’, in Double Time: Women in Victoria, 150 Years, eds Marilyn Lake and Farley Kelly (Melbourne: Penguin, 1984), 138–56; Judith A. Allen, ‘Octavius Beale Re-Considered: Infanticide, Baby-Farming and Abortion in NSW, 1880–1939’, in What Rough Beast? The State and Social Order in Australian History, ed. Sydney Labour History Group (Sydney: George Allen and Unwin, 1982), 111–29; Shurlee Swain with Renate Howe, Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Annie Crossens, The Baby Farmers (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2013).

13 Wendy Kukulies-Smith and Susan Priest, ‘“No Hope of Mercy” for the Borgia of Botany Bay: Louisa Collins, the Last Woman Executed in NSW, 1889’, Canberra Law Review 10, no. 2 (2011): 144–58. The last woman executed in South Australia, Elizabeth Woolcock, was also convicted of poisoning her husband. See David Plater, Joanna Duncan and Sue Milne, ‘“Innocent Victim of Circumstance” or “a Very Devil Incarnate”? The Trial and Execution of Elizabeth Woolcock in South Australia in 1873’, Flinders Law Review 15, no. 2 (2013): 315–80.

14 Nancy Cushing, ‘Woman as Murderer: The Defence of Louisa Collins’, Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies 1, no. 2 (1996): 147–57.

15 Statistics from the Prosecution Project, https://prosecutionproject.griffith.edu.au/ (accessed 19 May 2019). Cases were searched under ‘poison’ and then sorted by sex of offender. Searching for ‘murder’ turned up prosecutions for murder and attempted murder. Trove newspaper searches were conducted based on these data.

16 Dean's lawyer, R.D. Maegher, argued that Mrs Dean had attempted suicide to spite her husband. Maegher was disbarred and Dean was subsequently convicted of perjury and sentenced to fourteen years. Carleton Kemp Allen, ‘R. v Dean’, Law Quarterly Review 85, no. 1 (1941): 85–111; ‘George Dean and Friends’, in Gregory D. Woods, A History of Criminal Law in New South Wales: The Colonial Period, 1788–1900 (Sydney: Federation Press, 2002), 408–21.

17 Over the same period, seventeen people were prosecuted for poisoning offences, including attempted murder by poison, and fourteen of these defendants were men. Statistics derived from the Prosecution Project.

18 ‘A MOTIVELESS MURDER. The Coonabarabran Crime. The Condemned Woman's Eccentricity’, Australian Star, 25 April 1896.

19 ‘Tamworth’, Armidale Chronicle, 27 May 1896.

20 ‘Coonabarabran Poisoning Case. The Death of Thos. Miller’, Sydney Evening News, 10 April 1896. On gender's significance to interpretations of insanity in murder cases, see Georgina Rychner, ‘Temporary Fits, Animal Passions: Insanity in Victorian Capital Trials, 1890–1935’, Health and History 20, no. 1 (2018): 28–51, 43–6.

21 Kathy Laster, ‘Arbitrary Chivalry: Women and Capital Punishment in Victoria, Australia 1842–1967’, Women and Criminal Justice 6, no. 1 (1994): 67–95, 70.

22 The last execution for attempted murder in NSW occurred in 1902. Carolyn Strange, ‘Discretionary Justice: Political Culture and the Death Penalty in New South Wales, 1890–1920’, in Qualities of Mercy: Justice, Punishment and Discretion, ed. Carolyn Strange (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1996), 130–65, 139.

23 ‘WITHOUT LEAVING THE BOX. A Kind-Hearted Jury’, Sydney Evening News, 13 October 1900; ‘POISONING PROSECUTION: A “Tub-Puncher” and a “Scrubber”’, Sydney Truth, 19 August 1900.

24 W. Keith Hancock, Discovering Monaro: A Study of Man's Impact on His Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 8–18.

25 Suzannah Plowman, Thematic History of the Cooma-Monaro Shire, 1823–1945 (Cooma: Cooma-Monaro Shire, 2007), 10–13.

26 The Monaro Pioneers’ family history incorporates local and state records. See www.monaropioneers.com/TNG/index.php (accessed 9 March 2019).

27 Most women in the mid- to late nineteenth century bore seven children, and women who married at sixteen or under bore an average of ten. John C. Caldwell and Lado T. Ruzicka, ‘The Australian Fertility Transition: An Analysis’, Population and Development Review 4, no. 1 (1978): 81–103, 83–4. The trend toward smaller families began in NSW in the 1880s. Hugh Jackson, ‘Fertility Decline in New South Wales: The Mackellar Royal Commission Reconsidered’, Australian Historical Studies 23, no. 92 (1989): 260–73.

28 Michael Young, The Aboriginal People of the Monaro: A Documentary History, 2nd edn (Sydney: New South Wales Department of Environment and Conservation, 2005); W. Keith Hancock, Discovering Monaro: A Study of Man's Impact on His Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), 8–18.

29 Jean Gittins, The Diggers from China: The Story of the Chinese on the Goldfields (Melbourne: Quartet Books, 1981); Barry McGowan, ‘The Economics and Organisation of Chinese Mining in Colonial Australia’, Australian Economic History Review 45, no. 2 (2005): 119–38; Fei Sheng, ‘Creating the Threatening “Others”: Environment, Chinese Immigrants and Racist Discourse in Colonial Australia’, in Environmental History of Modern Migrations, eds Marco Armiero and Richard Tucker (New York: Routledge, 2017), 140–58.

30 Lindsay M. Smith, The Chinese of Kiandra, New South Wales: A Report to the Heritage Office of the NSW Department of Urban Development and Planning (Sydney: Heritage Office, NSW. Department of Urban Affairs & Planning, 1997), 49.

31 Monaro Mercury and Cooma and Bombala Advertiser, 21 October 1876.

32 Patrick White, Happy Valley, introduction Peter Craven (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, [1935] 2012).

33 The Hetheringtons were married on 4 September 1877, registration number 2631/1877, NSWSA. Clara Hetherington's birth certificate (11223/1878) indicates she was born on 15 July 1878.

34 In 1860, the population was approximately 7,000. By 1891, it had slumped to 170, but it had rebounded to 350 by 1900. It hovered around 300 in the early 1900s and had dropped to 100 by 1921. Smith, 49.

35 George Yan was the son of a prominent Cantonese shopkeeper and a German woman. The couple had eleven children. ‘Yan, Clara Jane (1878–1962)’, Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/yan-clara-jane-1678/text1801 (accessed 1 May 2019); ‘Yan, George (1871–1952)’, Obituaries Australia, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/yan-george-1679/text1802 (accessed 1 May 2019).

36 Smith, 49; Heritage Office and Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, Regional Histories of New South Wales (Sydney: Department of Urban Affairs and Planning, 1996), 122.

37 Barry McGowan, ‘Dust and Dreams: A Regional History of Mining and Community in South East New South Wales 1850–1914’ (PhD dissertation, Australian National University, 2001), 80–3.

38 Norman W. Clarke, Kiandra: Gold Fields to Ski Fields (Sydney: Kiandra Pioneer Ski Club, [1870] 2011); Klaus Hueneke, ‘Bent-up Pailings, Leather Footholds: Kiandra 1861 – Where Skiing Began’, Canberra Historical Journal 2 (September 1978): 9–14.

39 ‘Kiandra Progress Committee’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 February 1895.

40 In 1900, for instance, snow drifts impeded travel from Cooma to Kiandra from late September to early October. ‘Kiandra Snow Record’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 October 1900.

41 White, 215.

42 ‘The Kiandra Mystery. Result of the Inquest’, Monaro Mercury and Cooma and Bombala Advertiser, 30 November 1903.

43 ‘THE KIANDRA SENSATION’, Monaro Mercury, 4 December 1904. William's mother remarried after his father's death. She and her second husband paid for a memorial announcement: ‘You are not forgotten, Willie dear / Nor will you ever be: As long as life and memory lasts, We will remember thee’. Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 23 October 1903.

44 ‘THE KIANDRA SENSATION’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 1903.

45 ‘Local and General News’, The Tumut and Adelong Times, 20 November 1903.

46 David Roberts, ‘Bells Falls Massacre and Bathurst's History of Violence: Local Tradition and Australian Historiography’, Australian Historical Studies 26, no. 105 (1995): 615–33.

47 There is no record in newspaper accounts or Hetherington's prison files to indicate whether the family paid the lawyer. He likely defended her pro bono.

48 ‘Kiandra News’, Monaro Mercury and Cooma and Bombala Advertiser, 30 March 1899. Several men who later served as jurors at the inquest had served with Hetherington on the Progress Committee. ‘Kiandra Progress Committee’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 February 1895.

49 ‘THE KIANDRA SENSATION’, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 1903. The police magistrate was F.H. Galbraith of Cooma.

50 ‘THE KIANDRA SENSATION’, Monaro Mercury, 4 December 1903. Rose Burgess claimed the shares were worth £100 but this was never confirmed.

51 The Melbourne Argus used this headline on 4 December 1903, as did many other papers.

52 ‘Goulburn Court House and Residence’, NSW Office of Environment and Heritage, www.environment.nsw.gov.au/heritageapp/ViewHeritageItemDetails.aspx?ID=5001370 (accessed 10 May 2019).

53 Australian-born Henry Emmanuel Cohen (1840–1912) studied law at Middle Temple in London in 1868 and returned to practise in NSW in 1871. He served as Minister of Justice from 1883 to 1885. In 1895 he was appointed a justice of the Supreme Court. ‘Henry Emmanuel Cohen’, NSWSA, www.records.nsw.gov.au/person/66 (accessed 1 May 2019).

54 ‘ALLEGED MURDER’, Maitland Daily Mercury, 7 April 1904.

55 Walter Edmunds (1856–1932) was one of fourteen barristers appointed on 30 March 1904 to serve as Crown prosecutors in the upcoming circuit court sessions. Government Gazette Appointments and Employment, Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales, 187, 31 March 1904, 2735. On his career, see E.J. Minchin, ‘Edmunds, Walter (1856–1932)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/edmunds-walter-6091/text10435, published first in hardcopy 1981 (accessed 13 March 2019).

56 ‘University Exams’, Sydney Freeman's Journal, 31 March 1894. O’Reilly (1868–1925) also frequently prosecuted. ‘Mr. H. de B. O’Reilly. Ex-Judge's Death’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20 January 1925.

57 The ‘post mortem examination [was] made by Doctors Payton and Ganders’. ‘Local and General News’, The Tumut and Adelong Times, 20 November 1903; ‘Dr. G. Handy’ appears in ‘CHARGE OF POISONING’, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April 1904.

58 Ghandy was born in 1859 and studied at the Grant Medical College in Bombay prior to qualifying as a licensed apothecary in 1881 through London's Society of Apothecaries. He received his licence as a physician and surgeon in 1882, after studying at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow. Australian Medical Journal, 15 December 1889, 593. His earlier qualifications were confirmed by Janet Payne, archive officer, Apothecaries’ Hall (15 January 2019 email correspondence with Janet Payne in author's possession).

59 ‘Accused on Trial at Goulburn’, Monaro Mercury and Cooma and Bombala Advertiser, 29 April 1904.

60 In 1898, two Indian medical practitioners faced trial for manslaughter in Victoria. Nadia Rhook, ‘The Balms of White Grief: Indian Doctors, Vulnerability and Pride in Victoria, 1890–1912’, Itinerario 42, no. 1 (2018): 22–49.

61 William Boericke, Pocket Manual of Homœopathic Materia Medica, 2nd edn (San Francisco: Homeopathic Publishing Company, 1903), 591. Another American authority, James Tyler Kent, recommended nux vomica specifically for spinal meningitis. Repertory of the Homoeopathic Materia Medica (Lancaster, PA: Examiner Printing House, 1897), 864.

62 Lancelot H.D. Hale, ‘Poisoning by the Tincture of Nux Vomica: Death in Two Hours’, The British Medical Journal 2, no. 2009 (1 July 1899): 10.

63 ‘ALLEGED POISONING CASE AT KIANDRA’, The Tumut and Adelong Times, 29 April 1904.

64 Kent's Repertory referred to ‘nux-v’ as an effective treatment for all forms of erectile disfunction (864).

65 ‘CHARGE OF MURDER’, Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 26 April 1904.

66 In 1909, eleven years after he registered in the state, Ghandy was still one of few doctors listed as ‘travelling’. New South Wales Medical Board, Register of Medical Practitioners for 1909, in Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales, issue 168, 29 December 1909, 6979.

67 ‘Goulburn Circuit Court’, Scrutineer and Berrima District Press, 30 April 1904.

68 The eighteen-year-old, Elizabeth Paterick, had a baby that died in July 1903. After the trial she stayed in the Hetherington household and later married George Hetherington in Adaminaby. NSWSA, Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages, registration number 3198/1904.

69 The ‘Criminal Law and Evidence Amendment Act’, effective 14 December 1891, introduced the provision. The Accused Persons’ Evidence Act of 1898 introduced the prohibition of commenting on the failure to take the stand. Woods, A History of Criminal Law in New South Wales: The Colonial Period, 367, 373.

70 Reporters who attended the trial covered it in detail. ‘Alleged Poisoning Case at Kiandra’, The Tumut and Adelong Times, 29 April 1904, and the Goulburn Herald, 27 April 1904.

71 ‘ALLEGED MURDER OF A HUSBAND. ACCUSED FOUND GUILTY’, Geelong Advertiser, 28 April 1904. Two other men, a younger brother of Jane Hetherington, and an elderly man from Lobb's Hole, likely a friend of the family, testified briefly for the defence. Very few papers referred to their testimony and Justice Cohen did not record it in his detailed case book.

72 ‘GOULBURN CIRCUIT COURT. CHARGE OF MURDER. ACCUSED FOUND GUILTY’, Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 28 April 1904.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Kukulies-Smith and Priest, 154–5. The principal ground of the appeal was that Justice Darley had improperly admitted evidence from Collins’ previous trials.

76 ‘It is refreshing to find there are gentlemen in the profession … who, in a charitable cause, for a penniless and friendless prisoner, will devote their time and talents, and think of a fee as of the least consideration’. Frederick Lee (letter to the editor), Sydney Evening News, 26 December 1888.

77 ‘CHARGE OF MURDER. ACCUSED FOUND GUILTY’, Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 28 April 1904.

78 ‘Murder at Kiandra’, Goulburn Herald, 27 April 1904.

79 Adelaide Register, 27 April 1904. Louisa Collins (dubbed the ‘Borgia of Botany Bay’) was similarly tarred.

80 ‘Sentenced to Death’, Mudgee Guardian and North-Western Representative, 28 April 1904.

81 The Governor was to act ‘with the advice of the Executive Council’ in all affairs, ‘except in respect of the exercise of the pardoning power’. Crimes Act, Part XVI, s. 4. For further discussion, see John Waugh, ‘The Big Hill Murder and the Colonial Death Penalty’, Provenance: Journal of Public Record Office of Victoria 16 (2018); J.M. Bennett, ‘The Royal Prerogative of Mercy – Putting in the Boots’, Australian Law Journal 81 (2007): 35–47.

82 Gregory D. Woods, A History of Criminal Law in New South Wales. The New State, 1901–1955 (Sydney: The Federation Press, 2018), 29, 32.

83 Chick claimed he had shot his employer in self-defence.

84 Wong Ming was executed in 1898, as were Indigenous men Jimmy Governor and Joe Underwood in 1900. Thomas Moore, also Indigenous, was executed in 1903. For further examples, see the NSW Capital Convictions Database 1788–1954 at http://research.forbessociety.org.au/search (accessed 15 March 2019).

85 Collins’ hanging, which produced a spurt of arterial blood and left the body dangling by the vertebrae, added horror to outrage. ‘The Execution of Louisa Collins’, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 January 1989.

86 ‘TWO DEATH SENTENCES. Jane Hetherington's Sentence Commuted’, Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 19 May 1904. Chick was executed at Dubbo on 29 June 1904.

87 ‘Occasional Pars’, Mudgee Guardian and North-Western Representative, 26 May 1904. Charles Knight (1861–1937) was a printer and publisher, involved extensively in civic affairs, and a member of the Manchester Unity Lodge. He served as Mudgee's mayor between 1918 and 1921. ‘Fine Citizen Passes. Death of Mr. C. Knight Senior, a Former Mayor’, Mudgee Guardian and North-Western Representative, 8 November 1937.

88 Raymond Markey, The Making of the Labor Party in New South Wales 1880–1900 (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1988); Robin Gollan, Radical and Working Class Politics: A Study of Eastern Australia, 1850–1910 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1960); John Rickard, Class and Politics: New South Wales, Victoria and the Early Commonwealth, 1890–1910 (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1976).

89 In 1901, Haynes’ ‘Capital Punishment’ bill reached second reading. ‘The State Elections. Mr. Haynes Opens His Campaign’, The Wellington Times, 13 June 1901.

90 Woods, A History of Criminal Law in New South Wales: The Colonial Period, 336.

91 ‘CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. GOVERNMENT AGAINST IT’, Sydney Sun, 12 February 1912. Carolyn Strange, ‘Never to Be Released?’, Criminal Law Journal 36, no. 6 (2012): 395–6.

92 Holman to undersecretary, 16 February 1912, in NSWSA, NRS 324 Letters Received, 1911–56 Justice Branch, Department of Attorney General and of Justice, 7/5454.

93 Jane Davis, whose death sentence was commuted in 1905, was the other. On 29 April 1911, Sarah Makin, serving a life sentence for murder since 1893, was released from the State Reformatory. Heather Radi, ‘Makin, Sarah Jane (1845–1918)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/makin-sarah-jane-13271/text23651, published first in hardcopy 2005 (accessed 2 May 2019).

94 The execution of William Ball on 18 June 1912 at Armidale drew protest from the NSW Political Labor League as ‘capital punishment is against the platform of the League’. ‘New South Wales. Political Labor League and Capital Punishment’, Geraldton Guardian, 13 June 1912.

95 Graham Freudenberg, Cause for Power: The Official History of the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Labor Party (Sydney: Pluto Press, 1991), 56.

96 New South Wales, Criminal Appeal Act, 1912, no. 16 (1912), Part III – ‘Right of Appeal and Determination of Appeals’, s. b.

97 Wendy Abraham, ‘A Guide to Criminal Appeals in New South Wales’, Bar News (December 2011): 73–8, 74.

98 On Holman's stature among leading Labor politicians in the early 1910s, see Bede Nairn, ‘Holman, William Arthur (1871–1934)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/holman-william-arthur-6713/text11589, published first in hardcopy 1983 (accessed 27 May 2019).

99 NSWSA, Attorney General and Justice, Letters Received, NRS 310, 5/7909, item 6512.

100 On illness as non-effectiveness, see Peter Millett, ‘The Distribution of an Offensive Population: Classification and Convicts in Fremantle Prison, 1850–1865’, Studies in Western Australian History 25 (2007): 40–56, 51.

101 Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, Report of the Deputy-Comptroller and Inspector of Prisons, New South Wales, for the Year 1909 (Sydney: William Applegate Gullick, 1910), 4. Hetherington arrived the day after the Reformatory opened. NSWSA, NRS2491 5/2258.

102 On Scott's role in the case and her focus on the plight of the ‘seduced and abandoned’ woman, see Judith A. Allen, Rose Scott: Vision and Revision in Feminism (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 183–8.

103 Report of the Deputy-Comptroller, 1912, 7; 1909, 13.

104 Table B, ‘Particulars of Prisoners Released on Medical Grounds’, in Report of the Deputy-Comptroller, 1916, 57. The table referred to inmates by initials. JH and JD were the only female prisoners serving life sentences who were released in 1915.

105 For an account of Davis’ life, see Jane Ison, ‘Jane Davis’, available at http://nis.wikidot.com/davis (accessed 26 April 2019).

106 NSWSA, NRS 1870, Record of prisoners released on licence under the Crimes Act (1900), 1911–15, Department of Prisons (1874–1970), container 5/1788, 117.

107 ‘Criminal Inquiry’, The Land, 31 October 1913. The paper was established in 1911 by the United Farmers and Woolgrowers’ Association of New South Wales.

108 Mrs George Yan to base commander, 24 September 1918. Service Record, National Archives of Australia, B2455, Hetherington A 440.

109 Les Hetherington, ‘The Trials of Jane Hetherington’, unpublished manuscript. I am grateful to Mrs Robyn Hetherington for sharing this source with me.

110 Kiandra's total population dropped to ten in 1929. Smith, 47. The expiration date of her licence was 24 October 1917. NSWSA, NRS 1870, Record of prisoners released on licence under the Crimes Act (1900), 1911–15, Department of Prisons (1874–1970), container 5/1788, 117.

111 ‘Mrs. Jane Hetherington’, The Tumut and Adelong Times, 15 July 1947.

112 ‘Inspector Bolton. AN INTERESTING CAREER’, Queanbeyan Age and Queanbeyan Observer, 21 June 1921.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the Australian Government though the Australian Research Council DP150101798.