In the winter of 1895, the body of a small child was pulled from the waters of Sandridge Lagoon in Port Melbourne. A labourer working nearby saw something floating and, using a boat hook, retrieved it. He found, to his horror, that he had caught the body of a little boy, tied down with a piece of braid attached to a stone. The police were called, the body was taken to the mortuary, and a search for the child’s identity began.
Within days, the whole of Melbourne knew the name of the mother they were looking for: Emma Williams. Emma’s story had begun thirty years earlier, in far more ordinary circumstances. She was born on the 24th of November 1864 in Evandale, a small town in northern Tasmania. Her father, Henry, worked as a labourer, and her mother, Joanna, was in domestic service.
The family was not well off, but her parents tried to raise their children to be respectable. In the 1860s, schooling in Tasmania was patchy, particularly in rural areas where many parents preferred their children to work. Compulsory education laws existed, but they were poorly enforced and attendance dropped sharply as children approached their early teens. When Emma was seventeen, in 1882, she found herself unmarried and pregnant.
In the early 1880s, that was enough to mark her as a woman of low moral character and make her the subject of local gossip. She gave birth to a boy, but the baby died just ten days later. By August of that same year, she married a 28-year-old labourer named Henry Williams, who was not the father of her deceased child. Over the next four years, she gave birth to three more children, two daughters and a son, and all of them died in infancy.
In an era when infant mortality in Australia was already about 140 deaths per thousand births, the rural districts were even harsher. On the 14th of July 1887, Emma gave birth again, this time to a baby girl whom the couple named Ella. Seeking better opportunities, Emma, Henry, and their daughter moved to Melbourne, the second largest city in the British Empire and one of the richest in the world. But the early 1890s brought a severe economic depression.
Overseas investment dried up, banks failed, unemployment climbed, and relief societies were formed just to distribute food to the poorest families. When the price of wool collapsed, a commodity that accounted for roughly half of Australia’s exports, farm workers were laid off in droves and flooded into the cities looking for work. Melbourne’s sandstone buildings and tree-lined boulevards masked a grim reality for the poor. Emma and Henry lived in a single room in an overcrowded house, in a city still reliant on open sewers and cesspits that contaminated drinking water.
A proper sewage system was not built until 1897. In 1893, while Emma was expecting her sixth child, her husband Henry contracted typhoid and died. She was now a widow, pregnant, and alone, forced to accept charity. She gave birth to a boy and named him John.
To support her baby, she turned to prostitution, living in the Port Melbourne area. By her own later account, she tried to take good care of her son, feeding and clothing him even when it meant she went without. But the more attention the baby needed, the less time she had to earn money. She found a woman named Mrs Wilson who looked after young children for small payments.
Emma would pay for a week of care, then disappear for weeks at a time, forcing Mrs Wilson to track her down and return the child. Life became increasingly difficult. Emma moved from one impoverished lodging house to another, and whenever the baby cried, other residents complained. She asked the Catholic Church for help but was turned away because the child had not been baptised.
She approached a lady named Miss Sutherland, but there was no room for another baby in her house. Her mother, still in Tasmania, said she was unable to help. Her father had died in 1883, and her mother had remarried. By this time, Emma had begun a relationship with a man named William May.
He was not an upstanding member of the community, having been imprisoned on more than one occasion, and he too moved between lodging houses. By 1895, the economy had improved slightly, but for Emma, things remained desperate. She was struggling so badly that on one occasion she asked a woman in the street to hold John for a few moments while she entered a shop, then disappeared. The woman went to the police, and the officer on duty returned the child to his mother.
Emma told William May that she intended to take John to the Salvation Army, which offered support to unmarried mothers and their young children. On Sunday, the 11th of August 1895, she left with her two-year-old son. A few hours later, she returned alone. She told William that she had not wanted to give him up but knew it was the best thing to do.
The next morning, a labourer found a small body in the lagoon. Detective Sergeant Sainsbury took charge of the case. News of the drowned boy spread quickly, and a man named Frederick Chamberlain Foster identified the body as John Williams, the son of Emma Williams, a woman known to go by many aliases. Emma was found, arrested, and taken to the police station for questioning.
She did not confess. On Wednesday, the 14th of August, she was taken to the police courts and charged with murder. Large crowds gathered outside, shouting and jeering, fuelled by newspaper reports describing her as heartless, cruel, and callous. Emma, however, appeared calm throughout.
The police were convinced they had the right person but were anxious for more evidence, especially since Emma denied responsibility. Then a witness came forward from an unlikely source: William May, a man who had frequently found himself on the wrong side of the law. He told officers that Emma had undoubtedly committed the crime. He pointed out that she was still wearing the same dress she had worn on the day she claimed to have gone to the Salvation Army, and that the dress should contain the remains of the braid.
When the police searched the watch room where Emma had been held, they found the remaining braid hidden in the chimney. Faced with this evidence, Emma confessed. She said that on the evening of the 11th of August, she had left her lodgings at about 8:15, taking her son with her. She walked to Sandridge Lagoon, where there was no one around.
She found a stone, tore a piece of braid from her dress, tied her son to the stone, and threw him into the water. She then waited for a while before walking back to her lodgings. Sergeant Sainsbury and his officers were struck by the calmness in her voice as she told the story. She explained that she had tried to find suitable care for her son, but everywhere she went she was turned away.
The church would not take him, Miss Sutherland had no space, even her mother said she could not help. She had tried to pay someone to look after him but could not afford it. She told the officers she had always tried her best, and whenever the baby cried, the other residents complained. Sergent Sainsbury read her statement back to her, unsure how well she could read, and she signed it.
The next day, her confession was published in the daily newspapers. The trial began at the Melbourne Supreme Court on the 24th of September 1895. Despite her confession, Emma pleaded not guilty. The jury heard evidence about the braid that had tied the stone to the child, which matched braid found at the watch house.
William May testified that when he learned a child had been found, he asked if it was John, but she told him she had taken the boy to the Salvation Army. When the child was identified as hers, he said she asked him to take her to Sydney, insisting she had not drowned the boy. Other witnesses, including residents of her lodging house and the women who had looked after John, described her as an uncaring mother who failed to pay for the child’s care, so the boy was always returned to her. Two of the women had reported the situation to the authorities and asked that the child be taken into care, but the magistrates would not consider it.
Witnesses described how the two-year-old would wander around until people sat him down and went to search for his mother. The trial lasted only a day. After the judge’s summing up, the jury retired and returned twenty minutes later with a verdict of guilty. The judge sentenced Emma Williams to death.
“Society is not the means to support and maintain the children of all the immoral women that exist in the community,” he said. The case had fascinated the Melbourne public, and following the sentence, there were attempts to win a commutation. Petitions were raised and gathered many signatures. Emma herself tried to obtain a stay of execution by claiming she was pregnant, but doctors confirmed this was not the case.
As her life story emerged in the press, she gained public sympathy. It was reported that she had borne an illegitimate child in Tasmania who had died, married, lost all but two of her children, and now only one survived. Her life had become impossible when her husband died, leaving her pregnant and destitute, and her cries for help had gone unanswered. Despite the belief among some that Emma Williams was a victim of extreme circumstance, no reprieve was granted.
At ten o’clock in the morning on Monday, the 4th of November 1895, Emma Williams was hanged. What became of her daughter, Ella, is unknown.
