1907: A Doctor Fooled Twice: Martha Rendell and the Second Child to Die of Diphtheria
Seven year old Olive Morris died on this day in East Perth, her throat swabbed raw, just as her older sister Annie had died months before. Both times the family doctor, Cuthbert, signed the same death certificate: diphtheria. Both times he was wrong.
What the certificate did not record was hydrochloric acid, swabbed onto the children’s throats by their father’s partner, Martha Rendell, under the guise of treating illness. The pattern would not be noticed for two more years, until a third child in the household died the same way and police finally ordered the earlier graves reopened.
The exhumations in 1909 revealed what two death certificates had missed, and set in motion the case that would end with Rendell on the gallows.
