Ashamed of your mushroom murder obsession? Don't be
Collins maintained her innocence until the end. But there was so much public and political pressure to have her brought to justice (her husbands having both died from short and violent gastro-intestinal illnesses) that the authorities seemed determined to keep trying her until a jury eventually convicted.
Collins' hanging was horribly botched, leaving her windpipe exposed, according to the eyewitness report in The Sydney Morning Herald. Her executioner, nicknamed Nosey Bob (he had lost his nose to a kicking horse and was left with nothing but two nasal holes) was famously bad at his job.
When Collins swung shortly after 9am on January 8, 1889, wearing 'the usual prison clothes of dark wincey material', as per another Herald report, she became the last woman ever hanged in NSW.
Louisa Collins' story is not well-known by contemporary Australians. In an excellent book by Caroline Overington on Collins' short but notorious life (she was 41 when she went to her death), Overington wonders why Australians know well the history of our male villains, but not the female ones. But of course, the names of Collins' victims – Charles Andrews and Michael Collins – are not known at all.
The female poisoner who has captured the contemporary imagination – Erin Patterson – will also outlast her victims in the public memory.
Patterson was this week convicted of three murders and one attempted murder, having poisoned her family members with a meal containing death-cap mushrooms.
There has been some consternation from some, and even a scolding sense of moral condemnation, about the sheer volume of coverage of Patterson. Meanwhile, these critics say, her victims have been callously disregarded, cruelly dismissed as their deaths become fodder for the salacious true-crime appetites of the masses.
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