Last Woman Hanged

ONE WOMAN. TWO HUSBANDS. FOUR TRIALS. ONE BLOODY EXECUTION.

On 8 January 1889, Louisa Collins became the last woman hanged in New South Wales.

The Crown, convinced that Louisa had poisoned both her husbands, put her on trial an extraordinary four times in order to get a conviction. Then, against a background of ferocious debate about capital punishment and the place of women in a developing colony, the arbiters of justice ordered her hanged.

But was she guilty? Here, Caroline Overington delves into the original forensic reports, court documents, judges’ notebooks and police records in an effort to discover the truth.

Much of the evidence was circumstantial. Louisa’s only daughter, May, was still a child when asked to take the stand against her. Overington tells of this and of other characters instrumental to Louisa’s fate, including the women who took up her cause, and the hangman who saw out her final moments.

Last Woman Hanged is both a lively telling of a terrible, true story, and a tender portrait of the young Australian nation.