George Blantern asked the young domestic servant Flora Macdonald to marry him. When she refused, he crept into her room at Marlborough Station near Rockhampton on 7 May 1893 and struck her repeatedly with an axe as she slept, then set her bed alight in a failed attempt to hide the crime. Within hours he confessed to the arresting constable: “I killed her. I don’t know what possessed me to do it. I must not have been in my right senses when I did.”
Convicted of murder, Blantern read a lengthy statement to the court blaming drink, jealousy and an old head injury for his “awful crime” before sentence was passed. He was hanged in Brisbane on this day in 1893, walking to the gallows steadily and showing no emotion until the cap was placed over his head.
He went to his death expressing penitence, ending his final words with “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.”
