Woolcock, Ms E.

The Hon. R.B. MARTIN (15:36): One hundred and fifty years ago, 25-year-old Elizabeth Woolcock was convicted in a South Australian Supreme Court of killing her husband by mercury poisoning. On 4 December 1873, she was sentenced to death, and 26 days later the only woman ever executed in South Australia stepped off the hangman's scaffold. Her remains still lie between the inner and outer walls of the Adelaide Gaol.

Elizabeth was born in Burra in 1848 to Cornish parents. Like others, they lived in a dugout cut into the banks of the Kooringa Creek. In 1851, a major flood destroyed their home. Her father moved the family to the goldfields, staking a claim at Creswick. When Elizabeth was five, her mother left the family. Thereafter, Elizabeth was often alone in the tent while her father worked his claim. This was the situation one particular day when an itinerant miner came to the tent asking for a smoke. Seven-year-old Elizabeth offered her father's pipe. The miner violently raped her. The assault was so vicious that the chief judge called it one of the most atrocious cases he had ever heard.

Elizabeth's injuries were severe enough to leave her unable to have children. Her pain was treated with opium, to which she developed a lifelong addiction. Two years later, her father died, leaving Elizabeth entirely alone at age nine. She was put into service, and by age 15 she was living in a brothel. After nearly a decade on her own, her now remarried mother made contact and invited 18-year-old Elizabeth to join her in Moonta. Elizabeth took up various domestic posts, eventually becoming a live-in housekeeper to a local widower named Thomas Woolcock.

Elizabeth's stepfather considered the arrangement scandalous and threatened his stepdaughter with violence. So, despite knowing Thomas Woolcock for only a few weeks, Elizabeth married her employer. He soon showed a sadistic temperament. Their relationship was characterised by ongoing physical violence and financial abuse. Over their five-year marriage, Elizabeth left Thomas at least twice and attempted suicide at least once. Her drug use continued; her increasingly desperate efforts to procure opiates become a matter of local knowledge.

The court heard that Thomas Woolcock became ill in July 1873. He was treated by three doctors, who each made a different diagnosis and prescribed a range of medications that contained, amongst other things, mercury and lead acetate. Thomas Woolcock's condition worsened. He died on 3 September. Rumours circulated, in particular by a cousin of Mr Woolcock, accusing Elizabeth of poisoning her husband, prompting the attending doctor to ask for an inquest.

Full details of the inquest and subsequent trial are too lengthy to recount. In summary, Elizabeth's pro bono lawyer was newly qualified, called no witnesses and mounted a very weak defence. The Crown relied on evidence that mercury was found in Thomas's liver and that Elizabeth had been witnessed giving him various medicines and powders, some known to have been recently prescribed to him. The court also heard speculation that Elizabeth was having an affair.

Crowds filled the street to hear the jury's guilty verdict, delivered with a recommendation of mercy. Elizabeth was nevertheless sentenced to hang. Public sympathy favoured sparing her from execution, but appeals to clemency to the Executive Council and the Governor were unsuccessful.

I make no presumption of Elizabeth's innocence or guilt, but the Crown relied very successfully on the prejudices of the era to assist their case. A good deal has been written by academics and historians, debating both the soundness of the evidence and the reasonableness of the sentence. I do not submit that suffering of the magnitude that Elizabeth Woolcock endured in her life does not occur today—it does. We have seen that illustrated with painful clarity over the past couple of weeks. A person could very reasonably look at the deaths of four South Australian women in just one week and say that nothing has changed.

Violence against women is a shameful epidemic in our state and nation. I greatly hope that 150 years from now, people will stand up and tell the stories of victims to shine a light on how far we have progressed. Today, I tell Elizabeth Woolcock's story in part to show the opposite. No victim in 1873 or in 2023 should find themselves without a way out, as so many women do. It is a disgraceful stain on our history and on our present that anyone could.

Whether innocent or guilty of murder, Elizabeth Woolcock was a victim of a lifetime of cruel circumstances. There is nothing we can do to right the wrongs she suffered, but a small act of humanity might be to retrieve whatever is left of her and give her the dignity of a proper burial. The Adelaide Gaol was the site of 44 hangings from November 1840 to November 1964. Behind each one may be a complex story, but Elizabeth Woolcock's life and death stand out starkly in their tragedy and their poignancy. May we one day learn the lessons she can teach us.