WARNING: This article discusses infanticide, which may be difficult for some readers
In 1882, a 38-year-old Frenchwoman, who had been in the New South Wales colony for about four months, was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of her two-year-old child. A woman had not swung from the gallows here for almost 25 years. The emotional grip of the death penalty for the French national saw colonialists sway between moral justice, prejudice, heartlessness and compassion.
The murder
Constable Duncan Stuart found the body of a ‘fine little boy’ of about two years of age at 6 am on Thursday 2 March 1882, face down on the south side of Flagstaff Hill. The hill (today called Observatory Hill) is at the highest point of the finger of sandstone called The Rocks, overlooking Sydney Harbour. In the 1850s, a stone observatory was built on Flagstaff Hill’s pinnacle. The skull of the child was fractured, and a pine batten was found with blood on it near the scene. The pale body was dressed neatly in a blue velvet jacket with white pearl tortoiseshell buttons. A white cotton pocket handkerchief was tied around his neck.
On searching the murder site, an officer named Sergeant Higgins found a carpetbag under some dry stable manure. Inside the bag were items of women’s
