Maggie Heffernan

‘She suckled her child and was a good mother’

Maggie remained in the Women’s Hospital for eleven days. According to nurse Lilian Farrington, who was in charge of Ward 2 when Maggie was admitted, Maggie ‘attended to her child while she was there’. Under cross-examination Nurse Farrington expanded on this statement, observing: ‘She suckled her child and was a good mother.’ When Maggie left the Women’s Hospital Nurse Farrington suggested that she was ‘weak but well enough to go out from the Hospital when she left,’ a statement supported by Dr Harold Smith, who confirmed: ‘I saw her just immediately before her discharge.  She was as far recovered as midwifery cases are.’ Under cross-examination he clarified: ‘She was not more weak than healthy women usually are leaving here.’ In response to further questioning Dr Smith added: ‘There is a liability to mental derangement during the whole 9 months ’. The reason for this comment is not clear in the transcript, but it may have been in response to a question from either the defence barrister, or the judge.

Maggie was discharged from the Women’s Hospital on 9 January and was sent to Mrs Cameron’s Home in Armadale. According to the testimony of two other inmates of this home, women from ‘the Hospital’ were entitled to stay in this home with their babies for a fortnight, presumably to allow them to recover further and to establish breast-feeding.

 

‘I then let the baby drop gently into the river.’

For reasons that were never established, Maggie and George left Mrs Cameron’s Home on 15 January after only six days. She told two of the other inmates that she was ‘going to give the child to the father’s mother’. Agnes Voges, one of these inmates, also gave evidence that Maggie had said ‘that she was going to meet her mother at the Menzies’ and then she was going to Albury’. According to her own signed confession, she did neither of these things.  Instead she took the train to Northcote, intending to go to the Junction Hotel to collect her box, but changed her mind and returned to Melbourne, where she ‘walked about the town with the child’. At about 5 PM she went into the Treasury Gardens to feed George and then tried to get a bed for the night.  She was refused at the YWCA on the corner of Spring Street and Flinders Lane (she called it ‘Little Flinders Street’) and at another similar institution, which did not take women with babies. She then tried two hotels and the Victoria Coffee House in Collins Street without success.  The Victoria Coffee House would have given her a room for 2/6d, but since she only had 2/8d she kept trying. Eventually a woman in the street told her of a restaurant ‘in Bourke Street near the Parliament House where I got a bed for myself and baby’. She left there the next morning after ‘being given a cup of tea.’ By this time she probably had not eaten for more than 24 hours.

Maggie then walked about the streets with her baby. She bought an Argus to try to find a ‘situation anywhere’, then walked over the Princes Bridge to the Botanical Gardens, where she remained ‘until about 11 o’clock’. Sometime after this she walked back along St Kilda Road to some steps near the Princes Bridge.  She walked down the steps to the river. By this time she must have been both hungry and exhausted, especially if she had been carrying the baby in her arms all of this time. Almost certainly she was also dehydrated, especially if it was hot. We can only assume that baby George was equally uncomfortable. Maggie made no reference to changing his clothing and may have had no means of doing this. It scarcely bears thinking of!

The following account is taken from her confession.

I walked up and down the river side for about an hour.  I then sat down with the baby. The baby was clothed with a little gown and a small piece of flannel only. …I sat close up to the edge of the water I took the gown from off the baby.  I took off the flannel too. I then let the baby drop gently into the river.  The baby was alive when I dropped [him] into the river. I did not look to see whether the body sank or not. I then walked away carrying in my hand the gown and flannel. It would be about one o’clock in the day then. (‘Copy of Exhibit IB, statement by Maggie Heffernan, p. 10-11)

Maggie then caught the train to Preston where she stayed overnight with the Ralphs. She told them that George had died later on the day of his birth at the hospital and that she was going to ‘a situation that Dr South had got for her.’ In his evidence John Ralph later said that she ‘looked weak and ill’.

 

The confessions

There are two versions of Maggie’s confession, the first tabled at her trial as Exhibit IB and the second as Exhibit C. They are very similar, but not identical. Exhibit IB was signed by her but not dated. It was probably the statement taken down in his book by Detective Sergeant Gleeson when he first arrested Maggie in Hawthorn on 20 January 1900. The second statement was taken down in the detectives’ office (it is headed ‘C.I Branch’) later on the same day.  This second confession includes an account of Maggie’s actions on the day after she left Ralphs’ hotel (17 January), when she went to the Women’s Hospital ‘and spoke to Dr South about a situation as a wet-nurse.’ (Exhibit C, p. 14) This evidently bore fruit, because later on the same day, she was first interviewed by the police about the whereabouts of her child at the home of a Mrs Guest in Hawthorn, where she was acting as nurse to Mrs Guest’s infant.

 

Arrest

On the morning of 17 January 1900, against all the odds, George’s tiny body was seen by a local labourer floating near the South Melbourne Wharf. He retrieved the body and handed it over to the police, who immediately took George’s body to the Women’s Hospital. That same afternoon the police came to interview Maggie.

When first asked about George’s whereabouts by Detective-Constable John Murray, Maggie repeated her claims that her lover’s mother had taken him. She told an elaborate story about a ‘Mrs Hardy’ who came from Sydney on 15 January and took the child by train.  Maggie claimed that she had travelled with them as far as Wangaratta, where they all stayed ‘at Mr Allen’s Hotel’. She then returned to Melbourne on the following morning while ‘Mrs Hardy’ travelled on to Sydney.  She gave Mrs Hardy’s address as 204 King Street Sydney.

Within three days the police were back, having checked the story they had been given. Maggie attempted at first to change some of the detail of this story, but was told by Detective-Sergeant Lawrence Gleeson: ‘It is no use telling us any more falsehoods…Speak the truth and fear nothing’.  At this point Maggie was alleged to have said: ‘Yes, I know I did wrong.’ Her first confession was then recorded in situ. When asked about the gown and the flannel from her baby, Maggie retrieved them from her box and handed them over to the police. The police then arrested her and took her into the ‘Detective Office’ where they took down another statement and charged her formally with murder. No thought seems to have been given to the fate of Mrs Guest’s baby, who was deprived of milk abruptly when Maggie was arrested. Later that evening Maggie was transferred to the Gaol Hospital where she was admitted, according to The Age, in a ‘state of exhaustion.’ (2 March 1900, p. 7)

 

The trial

Maggie’s trial took place at the Supreme Court before Justice Hodges one month later, on 20 February 1900. Despite her confessions, both of which were tabled in evidence, Maggie entered a plea of ‘not guilty’. Several of her supporters after the trial insisted that both the police procedures in taking down her confession without a proper caution, and later advice given to her in gaol that she should accept state legal aid, prejudiced the trial outcome, because insufficient financial allocations were made for such defence cases. Certainly it must have been one of the swiftest murder trials on record - the jury retired after only an hour and 40 minutes of proceedings. Although Maggie was represented by Sir Bryan O’Loughlen QC, very little evidence was presented in her defence. No witness was called to testify to the good character that many of her supporters later emphasised and Maggie was not put on the stand to give evidence, although an amendment to the Evidence Act 1890 (Vic) would have allowed her to do so. Although according to press reports O’Loughlen put forward a defence of puerperal mania, he called no witnesses to support such a defence, leaving Justice Hodges to seek enlightenment from the medical men who gave evidence for the prosecution – Dr Richard Stawell, who had conducted the post mortem, and Dr Harold Smith, who had discharged Maggie from the Women’s Hospital. In a formal comment on the trial process some time later Justice Hodges expressed surprise that further evidence was not tendered by the defence.  Unfortunately the detail of Dr Stawell’s response to Justice Hodges’ enquiry was not recorded in the trial transcript, leaving the only record the newspaper accounts of the trial. As in other court records, newspaper reports were also the only source for either the defence address, or the Judge’s remarks to the jury.

The Age reported on the trial in some detail on 22 February 1900. This account included reference to Dr Stawell’s response:

Dr Stawell, in answer to a question from Mr. Justice Hodges, stated that a woman who had suffered from puerperal mania would be unable afterwards to give a distinct account of her actions.

Mr Finlayson QC, in prosecuting, had earlier claimed that the ‘clear and correct statement’ included in Maggie’s confession ‘was sufficient to discredit any statement that the woman was of unsound mind at the time of the painful occurrence.’ This point seems to have been accepted by Justice Hodges.  In addressing the jury he was reported as saying that:

While the case was very sad, it was perhaps more painful because it was so extremely plain. The issues the jury had to deal with were whether or not the accused woman intentionally took her child to the river to drown it. …If the young woman intentionally dropped her child into the river, she was guilty of the charge of murder. He had asked Dr Stawell whether she would be able to state what had occurred if she had been suffering from a temporary mania to which women were liable. The doctor had answered that she would not: yet here was her description of the whole of her movements at the time of the crime. That the woman was hard pressed was beyond question; and all that might demand sympathy. But it did not prevent her legal responsibility however it might affect the extent of her moral responsibility. Her own evidence showed that she intentionally, under pressure of her circumstances, committed the crime.

The court transcript records that the jury retired at 11.42 AM. According to the Age (although not noted in the transcript) the jury came back into court ‘after a short retirement’, to ask if a verdict of manslaughter might be recorded, but was advised that it could not. Several hours then elapsed before the jury returned with their verdict (at 3.38 PM). They found Maggie guilty of murder but ‘strongly recommended to mercy on the ground [sic] of her weakness of mind and state of her destitution at the time of committing the act.’ (transcript, p.8). The Age recorded the recommendation slightly differently: ’strongly recommending the prisoner to mercy on the ground of her weak mental condition at the time of the murder and her great distress.’ (p.9)

 

The sentence

There was only one possible sentence when a defendant was found guilty of murder, as Justice Hodges pointed out in passing sentence of death on Maggie Heffernan. Nevertheless, he expressed his sympathy:

I need not say that one may have very strong sympathy with you, as well as for the poor child who was cast into the river.  That sympathy I may have, but at this time and in this place I have but one duty.

Sentence of death was then passed upon the unfortunate woman, who was carried out of court in a swooning condition.

Under the system of criminal justice at this time, any sentence of death was then considered and either confirmed or mitigated by the Governor-in-Council (the Executive Council), which then (and now) met in the Executive Council Chamber in the Old Treasury Building. At the meeting of the Executive Council held on 11 March 1900 the fate of three condemned prisoners was discussed – William Jones, who had murdered a little girl in December 1899, John Foster, who was found guilty of wounding with intent to murder, and Maggie Heffernan. The Executive Council determined that it would not interfere in the fate of Jones, whose date of execution was set down for 26 March, but it commuted Foster’s sentence to ten years with hard labour and Maggie’s sentence to four years. (Reported in the Argus, 13 March 1900, p.6.) In determining Maggie’s sentence the Executive Council undoubtedly took into account the jury’s recommendation, but also a letter sought from her former employer, Fred Hayes, in Albury, which testified to her general good character. This testimony was apparently organised by the police immediately after Maggie’s trial and was filed with other testimonies in her capital case file. (Letter from Fred Hayes, 27 February 1900) The Executive Council was undoubtedly fully aware of public sentiment, which was strongly supportive of Maggie.

One factor that was never stated explicitly, but that must have been very clear to the court, was that Maggie was a very unusual prisoner. Even though she was not put on the witness stand, her appearance, speech and bearing must have marked her out as different from most of the poor girls who appeared in these situations. Her former respectability was undoubtedly one of the reasons behind the strong public response in her favour.

 

Public response

Maggie’s conviction provoked an immediate and very strong public reaction. Letters to the newspapers expressed their ‘outrage’ at the sentence and were quick to blame the trial process. Such public opposition continued long after the sentence was commuted.  As Georgina Rychner has pointed out, ordinary members of the public with no legal or medical training were happy to argue that the trial process had erred and that the medical evidence given by Dr Stawell had mislead the jury on the question of puerperal mania.  (Rychner, p. 92) One correspondent to the Age, who signed his or her name as ‘Jus[stice]’, wrote on 2 March:

The public sense of justice is outraged at the verdict given in the case of the unfortunate girl Maggie Heffernan, and more particularly so when the evidence – and want of it- is carefully considered. (p. 7)

Some of the most touching letters were those written by members of Maggie’s local community near Wodonga, many of whom only learned of her ‘trouble’ when they read the outcome of the trial in the newspapers. That apparently included her parents, who were said to be ‘heart-broken’.  A selection of these letters has been preserved with the trial transcripts in the capital case file. They include letters written by former employers, neighbours who had literally known Maggie ‘all her life’, a former school friend and the local priest, who implored the Anglican Bishop of Melbourne’s wife to intercede for Maggie with the Governor. Mrs Goe promptly obliged, despite the fact that Maggie was a Catholic.