William Page, a groom at Hedley Park near Mount Gambier, had courted a young woman named Mary Buchan for months, though she confessed to her family that she loved him but feared him. On the night of 11 July 1875 she left to walk with him after church and was never seen alive again.
Weeks of fruitless searching followed, until two people who had never met, Buchan’s own father and the wife of the investigating police inspector, each separately dreamed that the dead girl led them to a ploughed field marked by three trees. Acting on the strange coincidence, police searched the spot and found her body buried about eighteen inches down, her hands bound with her own handkerchief.
Page was arrested, tried, and hanged at Mount Gambier on this day in 1875.
In a signed confession he admitted striking Buchan with a stockwhip handle after she tried to end their relationship, then strangling her when he believed the blow had been fatal. He insisted the killing was done only ‘in a fit of passion’ and expressed deep remorse before his death.
