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1883: A Father Who Watched Him Hang: James Gardiner Executed at Brisbane for Killing German Ada

James Gardiner, a 19-year-old cabman, lived off the earnings of a woman known as German Ada in a Rockhampton brothel. On the night of 21 August 1883 a drunken quarrel turned fatal: he kicked and stamped her to death. Police tried to suppress the story, closing the inquest to reporters, but a neighbour who had heard her screams and been waved off by a constable made sure it got out anyway.

Gardiner was sentenced to death by Justice Pring and hanged at Brisbane Gaol alongside two other condemned men. Among those at the gate stood Charles Muller, an elderly German man and father of the dead woman, whose real name was Matilda. He had asked to watch his daughter’s killer die, stood opposite the scaffold through the execution, then pushed forward to view the body and walked away looking, witnesses said, satisfied.

Gardiner never denied killing her, pleading only that he had been drunk, and spent his last days exhorting the two men hanged beside him to repent.

Elderly man with long beard isolated on white background

⬅ See all events from 15 October

Australia Brisbane Domestic Violence Execution Murder QLD Rockhampton Trial

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1884: Keep Away From Women: the Final Warning Scrawled on a Cell Wall Before a Hanging at Hobart

Henry Stock married Elizabeth Keats when she was nineteen and already raising another man’s child. The marriage soured, she took out a maintenance order against him, and when she vanished with her young son in April 1884, searchers found their badly decomposed remains in dense scrub near the Ouse district, both riddled with shot that matched Stock’s own gun. Witnesses recalled him muttering that he would “murder her yet” and would rather “swing” than live with her again.

His first trial ended in a deadlocked jury; a second, before Hobart’s Chief Justice Dobson, convicted him. On the morning of his execution at Campbell Street Gaol in Hobart, hangman Solomon Blay prepared to carry out his hundredth hanging. Before he was led to the scaffold, Stock scratched a message on his cell wall naming two sisters whose evidence had convicted him, hoping to see them “here before long,” and warning other young men to keep from woman. He walked to the gallows carrying a small bunch of flowers tied with a scripture text: “He shall speak peace unto the heathen.”

To the end he denied the killings, declaring on the drop, “I swear by Heaven that I am innocent.”

Henry Stock, c. 1883. Photograph attributed to T. J. Nevin. Tasmania Supreme Court, Death warrants and related papers, vol. 2, C 203. Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.

⬅ See all events from 13 October

Australia Domestic Violence Execution Hobart Murder TAS Trial

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1983: The Body Was in the Backyard the Whole Time: a Melbourne Wife Murder Hidden in a Barrel for Two Decades

When Edwina Boyle vanished from her home on this day in Carrum Downs, in Melbourne‘s southeast, in 1983, her husband Frederick Boyle produced a note saying she had run off with a truck driver. His mistress moved in two days later, and neighbours pitied him for raising two daughters alone. All the while Edwina’s body sat metres away, sealed in a green metal barrel in the backyard where the family held parties and guests leaned against it without ever knowing.

The secret held for 23 years, until Boyle’s future son-in-law grew suspicious of his odd anxiety about the drum and cut it open, finding clothing, then later a hessian bag of human bones including a skull. Boyle was convicted of murder in 2008 and sentenced to 21 years, having shot his wife in the head.

He initially claimed he found her dead and panicked, but later admitted he strangled and shot her, telling the court, “my wife died in a terrible way and I was not going to let her remains be thrown down the tip like garbage”.

⬅ See all events from 6 October

Australia Carrum Downs Cold Case Domestic Violence Melbourne Murder Trial VIC

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1851: He Prayed for His Own Son to Die: A Fatalist Hanged at Melbourne Gaol for Murder

Patrick Kennedy was a shepherd at an out-station near Penshurst in Victoria, sharing a hut with his wife and two other men. After a night of drinking, he turned on her the next afternoon without any clear provocation, kicking her so violently that the pattern of his boot nails was later found bruised into her body.

He was convicted at the Supreme Court and hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 1 October 1851. The drop failed to kill him instantly, and he struggled for nearly three minutes, prompting the hangman to boast to bystanders that he had predicted exactly how long it would take.

In his final days Kennedy revealed a chilling belief in fatalism, insisting he was merely an instrument of forces beyond his control. He recalled that his small son used to prattle a rhyme, “mammy dead and dady gone,” which he took as a dark omen; when the boy died in custody during his imprisonment, Kennedy said plainly that he was glad.

He showed no remorse for the killing, telling gaolers only, “Drink did it all, but if it had not been done by drink, something else would have done it, as it was decreed to be done.”

Skull and vintage hourglass on wooden background in beam of light

⬅ See all events from 1 October

Australia Domestic Violence Execution Melbourne Murder Penshurst Trial VIC

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