1863: On the Scaffold, She Begged Her Lover to "Clear Her": the First Woman Hanged in Melbourne
Elizabeth Scott ran a bush shanty with her husband Robert Scott on the road between Mansfield and the Devil's River, nursing him through a bad bout of delirium tremens while carrying on with her young groom, David Gedge. One night that April she sent a household servant into the sickroom with a loaded pistol; he shot Robert Scott where he lay, and the household then tried to pass the death off as a man taking his own life with a pistol left carelessly on the bed.
The story unravelled fast. The servant and Gedge each turned on the other, and both swore Elizabeth Scott had ordered the killing and handed over the gun herself. Tried and convicted alongside the two men, she was hanged in Melbourne on 11 November 1863, the first woman executed in the colony of Victoria.
On the drop she turned to Gedge and asked if he would not then "clear her". He said nothing, and the bolt was drawn.
