brisbane

Frank Horrocks was barely 17, the son of a senior Queensland civil servant and only a year out of grammar school in Brisbane, when he was charged with murder. As police carted the body of his victim to the morgue, Horrocks was reportedly standing at a road junction, watching it pass.    Rudolph Weissmuller, 20, was a newly arrived immigrant looking for bush work, and Horrocks was the only fellow lodger he confided in. In April 1892 the pair left their boarding house together; only Horrocks came back, and he slipped away that night without paying his board. The body was found in the bush beside a small tomahawk, the twin of one Horrocks had bought the day before. He gave a false name when arrested, which proved useless: the detective sent to collect him had known him since he was a little boy.    Pleas for mercy on the grounds of his youth and unsound mind were refused. Several hundred people, some with infants in their arms, gathered outside the gaol on the morning of the execution. Horrocks had slept soundly and eaten a hearty breakfast, stood “steady as a rock” on the scaffold and never spoke.    On his arrest he had insisted “I did not kill him”, but before the end he sent a confession to the Governor, admitting the deed and the justice of his sentence.

⬅ See all events from 26 September

Ernest Austin was the last person ever executed in Queensland. The 23-year-old farm labourer was hanged in Brisbane in September 1913 for a murder committed at Samford three months earlier.    Reporters noted that the brilliance of the spring morning made it hard to grasp what was happening a few yards away. A chaplain led the procession to the scaffold, reciting the burial service. The condemned man looked in remarkably good health; his appetite had stayed “voracious to the very last”, and he had gained 28 pounds in gaol.    Asked if he had anything to say, he spoke in low, clear tones, waving his right hand for emphasis: “I say straight out that I quite deserve this punishment.” As the white cap was drawn over his face he added: “Send a wire to my mother.”

⬅ See all events from 22 September