1854: A Poisoned Kettle and a Child Who Saw It All: Hanged at Geelong for Attempted Murder by Arsenic
George Roberts worked alongside fellow shepherd George Kelly on a sheep station near Geelong, and had quietly been stealing from him, cash, clothing, even a small box of gold, when Kelly began asking questions. That August, Kelly found his breakfast tea emptied from the kettle and refilled with what looked like plain water; one mouthful burned his throat like fire and he collapsed before he could reach help.
A nine-year-old boy told the court he had watched Roberts stir a white powder into the kettle before setting it back on the fire, and investigators later found a box of arsenic, the very one stolen from Kelly, hidden under Roberts's bed. Convicted of attempting to murder his workmate, Roberts was sentenced to hang.
On 9 November 1854, Roberts was hanged at Geelong alongside another man condemned for murder, in the first public execution ever carried out in the city, before a crowd of some two thousand onlookers.
Roberts went to the gallows having confessed his guilt and the justice of his sentence.
