LIMINA (Thallium)PDF

Clair Scrine

L I M I N A ‘More Deadly than the Male’ The Sexual Politics of Female Poisoning: Trials of the Thallium Women Clair Scrine In September 1952, 30 year old Yvonne Gladys Fletcher of Newtown, New South Wales, stood trial before Justice Kinsella at Sydney’s Central Criminal Court for the murder by poison of her first husband, Desmond George Butler. Popularised through Sydney newspapers this story was a gruesome tale of not one but two husbands’ deaths at the hands of a woman presented as deceitful, treacherous, and self-serving. Yet within 12 months Fletcher’s trial was only one of a succession that saw six women charged with poisoning various family members. Common to all the crimes was a household commodity – the rodenticide ‘Thall-rat’, a thallium-based product common to many 1950s suburban homes. These women and their crimes captured the imagination of the press and public and it is the way they were represented by both the law and print media that forms the subject matter of this paper.

Examining female crime reveals numerous anxieties that are deeply linked to gendered expectations about women’s familial role, the marriage contract, and patriarchal authority. Female poisoners present a particularly interesting focus on female offenders because most of their victims are intimates – husbands, children, or other family members. The wife or mother who poisons highlights the instability of women’s docility and subservience to certain domestic ideals general ly seen as ensuri ng women’s confinement and subordination. The threat and danger such women pose lies in the power they can wield through the inversion of their assigned roles and their ability to deceive. In fact, the deceitful nature of poisoning is said to account for its ‘feminine coding’. In 1950 American 127

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criminologist Otto Pollak in his text The Criminality of Women, considered one of the most influential studies on women and crime in the postwar era, argued all women were physiologically deceitful. He claimed conceali ng menstruation, the ‘pretence of sexual response’ during intercourse, and misrepresenting sex to her children, shaped a woman’s character. 1 Pollak attributed women’s propensity for poisoning, and their greater success at concealing their criminal activities, to this natural deceit.2 Such deep-seated myths and beliefs about women’s poisoning have a long historical legacy that reveal a range of misogynist views.3 In examining the cases of ‘the thallium women’ this paper seeks to show the way such notions manifest themselves in the treatment and perception of women accused of such crimes. Exploring these trials involves analysing their representation in the contemporary print media and institutions of the criminal justice system, both of which constructed a particular perception of these women and their alleged crimes. Representations of criminal women are embedded in a cultural frame informed by values and expectations of the dominant social order. The stories of the thallium women presented to the courts and then popularised through the press were constructed in reference to particular expectations and ideals for women that permeated 1950s society. Historians have described the immediate postwar era, and the 1950s in particular, as marking a return to repressive conservative values where women had second class status. 4 Men were especially threatened by the upheavals of the war years that saw change to traditional gender patterns. Women’s active participation in the war effort brought many new freedoms and opportunities. The need to re-establish social, political, and economic stability in the postwar period manifested itself in the promotion of conservative ideas concerning relations between the sexes and their roles. Dominant familial ideology advocated a return to ‘traditional family values’ which essentially meant a return to pre-war patterns of men as the breadwinners and women as ideal mothers and wives. This paper is concerned with illustrating the way such dominant gender norms constituted the ‘filter ’ through which female crime and the female ‘deviant’ were interpreted, represented, and thus understood. Ultimately, the images and stories of the thalli um women demonstrate the way the gendered social order of the early 1950s worked to maintain itself and, in particular, how institutions such as the media and law were crucial to that process.

Thallium was discovered in 1861 by chemist William Crookes and was originally prescribed as a depilatory in dermatological practice. The abundance of acute toxic symptoms led to its eventual abandonment.5 In the twentieth century it resurfaced as a treatment for ringworm in the form of thallium acetate, although it became restricted after the deaths of 13 children in Spain in 1930. In Australia it was still used predominantly for the treatment of ringworm until the mid-1940s, after which it was mainly utilised as a pesticide. 6 In New South Wales, thallium was available in liquid form in ‘Thallrat’. At a time when rats were increasingly a problem for many inner city suburban and rural households, the commercial availability and cheapness of this rodenticide meant it was a common domestic item. Indeed, a witness at one of the trials, a hardware salesman at Nock and Kirby’s Ltd., claimed that his store in George Street, Sydney, sold on average three dozen bottles of ‘Thall-rat’ per week.7 Most of the women involved in the thallium cases resided in suburbs around metropolitan Sydney. Yvonne Gladys Fletcher, Australia’s first thallium poisoning suspect, lived in Newtown. Caroline Grills, the accused in perhaps Australia’s most infamous poisoning case and suspected of poisoning over 11 members of her family, resided in Gladesville. Mabel Monty, certainly the most scandalous of the thallium cases, lived with her daughter and sonin-law in Ryde, while Beryl Hague resided in Leichardt. Aileen Smith and Ruby Norton both lived on rural properties battling the problem of rats, the former in the Bathurst area, the latter in the northern New South Wales town of Maclean. While ‘Thall-rat’ was deemed a useful and effective solution to rats, a spate of poisonings and homicides quickly saw it assuming menacing proportions as a ‘diabolical and inhumane weapon’ which had come to ‘supplant arsenic, strychnine and cyanide as the most widely-used poison murder weapon in New South Wales’.8 It was in September 1952, when Australia’s first thallium murder trial took place, that the alarm was raised about this poison. Through the trial of Yvonne Gladys Fletcher, forensic experts and medical authorities were alerted to the ease with which thallium could be obtained and administered, and the extremely debilitating effects of this toxic substance. A dose of one gram was considered sufficient to cause death within two to 14 days, with the most striking symptoms including loss of hair, pain in the abdomen, back and legs, extreme tenderness of the soles of the feet, loss of vision, and periods of lethargy, delirium and depression.9 Newspapers were

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particularly fascinated by thallium’s lethal qualities. In somewhat hyperbolic tones, the Sydney Morning Herald reported ‘a piece of thallium the size of a headache tablet is sufficient to kill five people’.10 However, the revelation of another thallium murder case sent the papers into a frenzy. The substance became notorious not simply for its deadly properties, but for its connection to women and murder. In October 1952 50 year old Ruby Norton stood trial charged with the murder by thallium poisoning of her daughter ’s fiancé, Allen Williams, who died in Cowra hospital in July of that year. Fletcher ’s case was said to have provided Norton with the idea of how she could rid herself of an unwanted son-in-law. Norton’s other son-in-law testified that she showed great interest in the Fletcher trial when he read it to her. At her initial questioning by police, Norton is said to have admitted finding a bottle of poison in the house, claiming ‘it was the same as that stuff that woman used in Sydney, the one that murdered her two husbands with rat poison, wasn’t she a terrible person’.11 Together these two cases were represented in both the court and the media as women exacting their revenge against the men in their lives. Norton’s trial generated great interest within the towns of Noonbinna (Norton’s residence) and Bathurst, with the two local newspapers devoting large amounts of coverage to this drama.12 The prosecution portrayed Norton as a woman who despised all the men in her family and publicly declared her intentions to rid herself of them, yet the case against her was dependent on gossip and hearsay. Various witnesses, including other family members, provided evidence of supposed incrimi nating conversations. Norton’s sister stated that one evening after a fight with Williams, Norton turned up at her house asking for poison to give to him. ‘I told her she would hang if she did and she said, “I’ll give it to him in a way I won’t hang for”.’13 Norton’s neighbour, Mrs Muriel Bridgett Hackett, who also admitted to sending a letter around the town which contained malicious gossip about Norton and her daughter, testified that on her inquiring into Williams’ health, Norton had stated, ‘the doctors have given up all hope of him, I’ll get rid of him’.14 The prosecution alleged Norton had poisoned Williams’ food, in particular, a bacon pie she had cooked for him not long before the start of his physical decline. Norton and her daughter denied such statements and claimed Williams had bought ‘Thall-rat’ to get rid of the rats in his car. Norton declared at her trial: ‘I am innocent of this terrible crime. I have been arrested and

tried as a result of wicked gossip. ... Allen was a wonderful chap and I loved him very much’. 15 Both Fletcher and Norton’s trials highlighted the widespread availability of thallium and the fact that it escaped detection by its victims and physicians. It appeared women could literally ‘get away with murder ’ and the call was made for greater thallium regulation. Despite fierce opposition from the manufacturers of ‘Thall-rat’, by September 1953 the NSW Poisons Act was extended to include the banning of all thallium to anyone under 18 years of age. Other provisions included restricting all sales to one bottle per customer, and that the customer must be known to the retailer unless in the presence of a witness known to both retailer and purchaser, all of whom had to sign a ‘ poisons book’. Such measures proved inadequate and the Truth took great delight in ri diculing and exposing their ineffectiveness by reporting the story of a young girl they sent out who successfully purchased a large quantity of the product. 16 By November an inclusive Poisons Act, the Therapeutic Substances Bill, was passed unifying standards among all states so that the sale of thallium was effectively banned. Despite regulation, by the time the trials of Veronica Mabel Monty and Caroline Grills came to Sydney’s Central Criminal Court in late 1953 Australia was in the grip of a thallium panic. Along with these trials, a spate of suicides and accidental poisonings attributed to thallium were said to account for up to 55 casualties and 10 deaths.17 Reporting on this craze, the Sydney Morning Herald claimed thallium was ‘acquiring a certain unhealthy popularity as an instrument for both murder and suicide’.18 The trials of Monty and Grills further entrenched in the minds of the reading public the association between women and thallium poisoning. The manner in which the papers constantly referred to those previousl y accused in the repor ting of each new case also directly contributed to the ‘serialisation’ of these women and their crimes. In fact, much of the frenzy surrounding the thallium women owed a great deal to the print media, which used them for public titillation and fantasy. The way in which the thallium stories were presented heightened their sensational quality and the mystery surrounding those involved. Particular representations served to satisfy the desires of the reading public, yet, at a more implicit level, they can also be seen as having a significant impact in codifying and reinforcing certain portrayals of these women. The heavily publicised trial of Caroline Grills in October 1953 fascinated the reading public not only because of its thallium

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connections, but also due to the extent of the allegations. The preoccupation with this case was especially true of women, who flocked to the trial daily to hear the details of an entire family ‘whose close bonds since before the turn of the century had been a thing at which to marvel’. Yet this family had been ‘torn asunder ’ as its members were methodically ‘wiped out’, supposedly by Grills.19 Although Grills was only being tried for the attempted murder of her sister-in-law, Mrs Eveline Lundberg, the prosecution were permitted to use evidence regarding the suspicious deaths of all her family members, effectively contributing to the image of Grills as serial killer. The prosecution alleged that, since 1946, Grills had slowly poisoned Mrs Christina Mickelson, her 84 year old sister-inlaw, and Mrs Angelina Thomas, aged 87, a close friend of Grills’ mother. Both bodies were later exhumed to reveal lethal quantities of thallium. Grills was also accused of attempting to poison her brother ’s second wife, Mrs Mary Ann Mickelson, and another 11 members of her immediate family. 20 The papers took great delight in reporting the trial of ‘Aunt Carrie’, as Grills became known, particularly her more extroverted actions in court. Descriptions of her laughter, smiles and waves towards members of the gallery were commonplace. The Truth described Grills as ‘completely self-possessed, smiling and waving at the intervals to women who jostled for seats in the back of the courts’, and suggested, ‘she has enjoyed her forays and skirmishes with the eager cameraman’ . 21 Once when Gr ill s reached the courtroom, leaving a trail of rueful photographers outside, she was said to have laughed and declared the trial ‘the fun of the world’. 22 While initially such portrayals painted Grills as a quaint and curious character, eventually they worked to effectively establish the notion of her as a malevolent thrill killer. The papers began to report on the way Grills did not shy away from questions that were quite obviously designed to imply her guilt. Asked if she knew of the product ‘Thall-rat’, Grill s was quoted as giving it a glowing endorsement, admitting she had in fact given bottles of it to two of her victims.23 Similarly indicting were stories about Grills being renowned for predicting the deaths of various family members, whom she was later accused of killing. Grills was reported as taking great delight in her predictions, attributing her success to the power of her ‘intuitions’. 24 By the end of the trial, some five months after Grills had hit the headlines, it seems the prosecution’s portrayal of her as a cold and calculated poisoner won out, as reflected by the newspapers’ more sinister depictions. In reporting the verdict, the

media emphasised her complete absence of concern or emotion at the guilty finding. She simply ‘drummed her fingers on a rail in the dock ... [and] was otherwise apparently unmoved’.25 After a record jury deliberation of only 12 minutes, Grills was pronounced guilty. She spent her remaining days in Long Bay Gaol, where she became renowned for dispensing motherly advice, singing softly to herself and embroidering hankies.26 The tr ial of Veronica Mabel Monty was al so a par ticular ly poignant example of the sensationalism the papers ascribed to the thallium women. The trial took place in November 1953 and had daily front-page coverage in both the Truth and the Sydney Morning Herald. The sense of sensationalism and scandal attributed to this story arose not only because Monty was accused of poisoning handsome young Australian football hero, Robert (Bob) Lulham, but equally because of the revelation of a sexual relationship between this newly-married man and Monty, his mother-in-law. Having separated from her husband, Veronica Monty moved in with her daughter and Lulham in late 1952. In her defence, Monty claimed she was very depressed at her circumstances and felt suicidal. 27 She told police she purchased ‘Thall-rat’ ‘on impulse’ with the intention of poisoning herself, which was how the thallium came to be in a cup of Milo Lulham received. Monty stated that it was her usual routine to make herself, Lulham, and her daughter a nightly cup, and claimed that, on that particular night, ‘I must have picked up the wrong cup. I really thought I was going to get the poison’.28 Lulham became very sick, to the puzzlement of his physicians. It was only through anonymous calls to the police and his doctor made, it was later revealed, by Monty, that Lulham’s symptoms were identified as that of thallium poisoning. Monty also sent imitation hate mail implying the poison was part of a vendetta against Lulham which she later claimed was merely designed to divert attention from herself. The prosecution based thei r case against Monty on th e relationship between her and Lulham. The Crown Prosecutor, Mr Charles Rooney, claimed it was her ‘incestuous passion’ that led to Lulham’s poisoning, and was the motive for wishing her son-inlaw dead. 29 Rooney sought to portray Monty as manipulative, sexually devouring, desperate and entirely responsible for the sexual relations with her son-in-law. Questions directed at Bob Lulham during the trial continually sought to emphasise Monty’s seduction of him, typically focusing on how she dressed and behaved. In outlining the prosecution’s case, Rooney stated that the evidence

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‘demonstrated beyond all doubt that a most infamous and unnatural relationship of sexual nature existed between the pair ’, declaring it ‘a disgraceful episode’ in which ‘the guilty pair polluted the marital bed’ and where ‘obviously the male party was the pursued’.30 The newspapers also focused on the sexual details of this case that acquired colossal proportions because of these ‘scandalous’ revelations. With headlines such as ‘Lulham tells of Petting’ and ‘Lulham - a little familiar with Mrs Monty’, both the Truth and the Sydney Morning Herald deliberately emphasised the more sordid aspects of the case.31 Such was the nature of their representation that Monty’s solicitor wrote to the Attorney General, accusing the papers of simply further gratifying ‘the sensual desires of those who enjoy publishing and reading pornographic matter ’. 32 Despite Lulham’s acquiescence, Monty was always the one portrayed as responsible for the affair. The Truth claimed her ‘connubial feelings’ towards Lulham were a classic case of ‘mother-in-law syndrome’.33 It seems the reading public revelled in the opportunity to gaze into the domestic life of a man they regarded as the ‘average Australian bloke ’, ye t whose m arital proble ms and sexual indiscretions presented a very different picture to the expected domestic scene. Women seemed fascinated by the Monty trial and many took a particular ly active i nterest in the case. It was reported that

women were isolated not only in their suburbs and homes, but also by their sense of alienation from societal expectations of their primary role. 36 Widespread dissatisfaction amongst suburban women in the 1950s was identified as ‘the problem that has no name’ in Betty Friedan’s ground-breaking work, The Feminine Mystique.37 In this respect the thallium trials provided a rare opportunity for women to he ar these discontents and frustrations publi cly expressed. The extent to which the thallium women challenged or subverted the dominant rhetoric was also undoubtedly equally important in accounting for women’s attraction to the cases. Certai nly it was these aspects which structured the media’s representation of the thallium women and contributed to their ‘deviant’ image. Examining the representation of the thallium women by various prosecutors suggests it was more the nature of the crimes, rather than the actual crimes for which they were accused, that directed the portrayals. A wealth of imagery and myth was utilised that sought to relate these women and their alleged crimes to classic images of woman’s deceit and the pe rception of the femal e poisoner ’s treachery. Thi s effectively reduced the women to archetypal notions that dismissed the need to explore the particular circumstances surrounding each case. In effect, it reduced them to the ‘fact’ that they were simply cold and calculated poisoners. Such deliberate ploys were apparent in the work of Senior Crown Prosecutor Charles Rooney who was present at the trials of Fletcher, Norton, Monty, and Grills. In continually invoking potent imagery and ideas about female poisoning, Rooney situated these women in a credible system of meaning. In the case of Grills he utilised notions of the poisoner ’s deceit and disguise in order to overcome the incredulity of the serial killer tag being accorded to this ‘dear old woman’. 38 In the absence of any clear motive he simply asked, ‘who can look into the mind of a poisoner?’39 Through recourse to such well-established conventions and historical associations he reduced the character of Grills to that of a type. He stated that

[a]t each day’s hear ing a crowd of women bustled into the small courtroom as soon as the doors opened, cut lunches in their string bags, ready to listen to the details of Lulham’s domestic attachments. Many were respectable suburban housewives. Others came from the glamour ranks.34 The Monty case certainly made a mockery of dominant values and domestic ideals of the 1950s, and this aspect seemed to attract the interest of many women. In fact, this accounts for much of the appeal and fascination of all the thallium cases. Despite the entrenched familial ideology that portrayed life for women as ‘domestic bliss’ in the 1950s, many Australian women experienced a very different reality. In her study of housewives and mental illness in the 1950s, psychologist Carol Warren argues that women lacked the legitimate means through which to articulate their grievances. 35 She claims

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classical cases show that poisoners poison for the thrill they get from watching the effect of the poison and knowing that they alone in the world know what is causing the symptoms. … [T]he ordinary murderer kills in a white heat of passion, the poisoner plots and plots, wins the

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The case built up against Ruby Norton also sought to portray her as a cold-blooded, spiteful, and malicious character. Rooney stated Norton was typical in that ‘poisoners work by stealth and there is never an eyewitness. ... [B]y the cold blooded nature of the offence, they make no direct admissions’. 41 He claimed that

Clair Scrine the crime of murder is a terrible one, and when the killing is by means of an insidious poison, secretly administered within the family circle to an unsuspecting victim, which destroyed him mentally and physically while permitting him to linger for months in wretched agony then the crime is a horrible one. 46

In 1955, at the inquest of Aileen Smith who was charged with murdering her husband with thallium, the police prosecutor argued that although many had claimed she always acted lovingly towards her husband, ‘[o]ne of the characteristics of poisoners ... is that they have ki ndl y and he l pful ways and have hi ther to be en of unimpeachable character ’.43 Again, at Smith’s trial, the Crown Prosecutor, Mr Reynolds, acknowledged the evidence he was presenting was highly circumstantial but claimed this was inevitable because ‘the poisoner was a person who acted in secret and in the dark’.44 As with their ‘historical counterparts’, notions of ‘domestic treachery’ underlay the stories of the thallium women. All the accused used the term ‘domestic duties’ to describe their occupation. Yet the juxtaposition of their domesticity with these crimes simply contributed to the sense of treachery and deceit surrounding these women. Through their representation in both court and the media the thallium women’s identities as primary care-givers were given an element of suspicion and threat. The young wife, the dear old aunty, and the m other -i n-l aw assumed monstrous and menacing qualities. In the case against Grills, Justice Brereton stated her treachery was made all the more sinister because it came in the pretence of a caring aunt: ‘under the guise of friendship and loving kindness but with apparently motiveless malignity, you administered poison’.45 Similarly, at Fletcher ’s trial Justice Kinsella declared that

The fact that women in the 1950s could buy ‘Thall-rat’ openly at the grocery store under the guise of their household activ ities heightened the deceitful nature of these crimes. That the thallium was always administered by way of comforting items such as a cup of Milo or tea, and gifts of cakes and biscuits brought to family occasions, simply intensified the level of treachery surrounding these women and their domestic image. Such ideas can be identified in the case of Beryl Hague who stood trial in July 1953 at the Darlinghurst sessions court for ‘maliciously admi nistering thallium ’ and endangering her husband’s life. Hague’s case poignantly reflects, both within the court and the media, how the perception of these crimes and the women accused was centred on the threat they posed to the domestic scene. This trial also illustrates the contempt that was held for a woman so brazen in admitting her deliberate intentions to harm her husband and abuse his trust. Hague confessed to going to the corner shop, buying ‘Thall-rat’ and putting it in her husband’s tea. She also admitted that her actions were a result of a fairly violent domestic dispute. She claimed she had only intended to ‘give him a headache to re pay the many he adaches h e h ad gi ven me ’. 47 Hague subsequently began to regret her actions and eventually took her husband to hospital in time for him to fully recover. Despite this, Hague was sentenced to two years in Long Bay Gaol for what Judge Holden described as ‘a grave matrimonial offence’.48 Evoking classic poison imagery, Holden stated that to excuse the deliberate actions of Hague would mean, ‘ we would be back to the days of the Borgias’. 49 Much of the anxiety surrounding the thallium cases can be linked to the challenge they posed to the stability of the dominant ideologies of postwar society. This era saw women’s femininity, subjectivity and status become synonymous with their domesticity, monogamy and (hetero)sexuality, which, Marilyn Lake argues, can be seen as a direct response to the anxieties generated over women pursuing

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it is difficult to think of an act containing more hatred and malice. ... [I]t was done with wilful, deliberate malice and a desire to hurt and injure, and could only be done by a person possessing malice to the last degree.42

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their own interests during the war years. 50 Images and philosophies supported and perpetuated by advertising and ‘professionals’ claimed that a woman’s happiness, self-fulfilment, and a successful marriage, depended on her domestic capabilities and remaining alluring to her husband. The mass media played a crucial role in promoting such ideas, with imagery constantly presenting women as extremely domestic and sexy. A wealth of commodities flooded the market which were promoted as guaranteeing those qualities. Indeed, the commodities themselves assumed an explicit erotic significance, invoking sexual desire, pleasure and fulfilment. 51 Yet while women’s sexuality was increasingly emphasised, in truth it was intended solely for the purpose of monogamous marriage and ultimately for the satisfaction of one’s husband. Women were opened up to a new sense of sexual potential and yet, at the same time, were told it was to be expressed in very narrow margins. As Carol Smart claims, a wife was encouraged to be sexual, but her sexuality ‘had to be functional in terms of family stability’.52 The moral panic over women who transgressed such narrow limits, particularly divorced, adulterous, an d promiscuous women , reveals the incon sistencie s and conservatism surroundin g im ages and expectations of women.53 While statistics reveal many women were increasingly seeking to end their marriages – in 1950 in New South Wales alone, 2221 women petitioned for divorce compared to 1718 men – the horror evoked over the unmarried mother and the ‘divorcee’ continued to manifest itself both ideologically and institutionally. 54 As Smart states, such women challenged the conservative order and became ‘ the n ew folk devil ’. 55 The demonising of such women was especially reflected in thei r treatment in the criminal arena. Judith Allen argues that the concerted effort to establish male authori ty in postwar society directly re asserted an inh erent patr iarchal and mi sogynist culture within the criminal justice system, particularly manifesting itself in differing perceptions of men’s and women’s crime.56 She claims that dominant sexual and political positions in postwar Australia informed responses to crimes against, and by, women. Allen argues this is evident in the reception of trials involving the slaying of wives that were increasingly framed in the context of a crime of passion where women’s infidelities or actions were said to ‘unreasonably provoke’ the husband.57 Certainly, powerful and conservative expectations permeating postwar society, particularly with regard to women’s sexual conduct, were pervasive in the tr ials of Fletcher, Monty and Smith. The alleged sexual

‘deviance’ of these women became a matter of immense scrutiny and significance in the eyes of the prosecution, law makers, and the press. These cases indicate the manner in which women’s moral character became a central issue in their trials. Furthermore, these examples reveal how concern with criminal women was as much with their distance from, or subversion of, dominant roles and expectations for women as with their crimes. Fletcher and Monty were consistently presented as fail ing to embody domin ant stereotypes of the caring mother, devoted wife, and virtuous woman, against which their characters and their actions were judged. Nowhere is this made more apparent than by Chief Prosecutor Rooney who, in a letter to the Attorney General regarding Monty, stated ‘there can be no doubt’ evidence of her sexual misconduct with her son-in-law

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is highly prejudicial to the accused and must inevitably alienate from her any sympathy a jury might feel for a person accused of a capital offence , par ticular ly whe re the accuse d is a woman. 58 Evidence of marital disharmony in a woman’s trial was equally damning because it revealed she had violated her duty to ‘love, honour and obey’, and as such was capable of other transgressions. In the thallium trials witnesses provided valuable and ‘authoritative’ local opinion on the state of the defendant’s marri age and the character of the defendant. Certainly Fletcher ’s acknowledgment that both her marriages were unhappy and violent worked against her. In fact an earlier application for an apprehended violence order against her second husband contributed to her image as a bad wife and was used as evidence of Fletcher’s desire to be rid of her husband. It was acknowledged during Fletcher ’s trial that the rule of law was such that ‘it is not permissible to show that the accused is the kind of person who might be expected to do this kind of thing’.59 Yet the case against her was explicitly based on ‘matrimonial differences, her obvious dislike of her husband, [and] her reluctance to care for him’.60 The prosecution’s case was thus principally built around establishing her as the very antithesis of the good, happy wife, an image which was then utilised by the prosecution as an adequate motive for the deaths of her first and second husbands. As with Fletcher, the case against Aileen Smith was built around linking her character and motive to evidence that she had been

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unfaithful to her husband, an accusation based heavily on the gossip of numerous locals regarding an alleged relationship between her and a close family friend. 61 In contrast to Fletcher, Aileen Smith’s image as a caring, devoted wife and mother of five was continually invoked. As such, it seems she succeeded in conforming to the domestic and devoted model the jury expected and understood. Both cases are poignant examples of the degree to which women’s deviation from dominant notions of appropriate behaviour came to be as significant as the crimes of which they were accused. The reliance on circumstantial evidence always means a great deal of inference informs poison trials. Thus, certain ‘deviant’ behaviour is used in a manner that suggests it is a legitimate explanation for women’s criminal actions. Yet in truth, such an idea is directly informed by the view that women who fail to embody certain images and expectations are inherently bad. Carol Smart argues that the ‘sexed woman’, the ‘unruly mother ’, the ‘criminal woman’, and ‘the prostitute’ are the characterisations of women constructed in and by legal discourse.62 Similarly Jocelyn Scutt claims the Australian law has historically defined women in male terms within which they are ‘dependent wives with no ability to make their own decisions or, wretched whores’. 63 The representations of women on trial in the 1950s illustrates the way such stereotypes and images inform the discourse of the ‘deviant’ woman, and how enormously influential they are wi thin the crim inal justice system. The construction and representation of these women as ‘deviant’ can also be seen as ensuring the maintenance of ‘appropriate’ gendered behaviour by contributing to the censure of all women who contravene overwhelmingly powerful expectations. Other studies that have explored the perception and treatment of female criminals in Australia have also dem onstrated how dominant notions regarding women are pervasive in the operations of the justice system. In her examination of women and capital pun ishmen t in Vi ctoria between 1842 an d 1951, Mel bourn e criminologist Kathy Laster found that out of the total 185 women sentenced to death, the five who were executed were all portrayed as promiscuous and immoral.64 She argues such portrayals saw these five women treated more harshly precisely because they failed to live up to stereotypical feminine roles. The fact that such women were regarded as ‘irredeemable’ was apparent justification for their execution. The case of Jean Lee, who in 1951 was the last woman hanged in Australia, is a particularly pertinent example of a woman being judged for what she did (and did not) represent, as much as

for her crime. As Laster shows, Lee’s identity as a prostitute, a single mother, and ‘all round good time girl’, was the very antithesis of ideals of the dominant moral, social, and political authority of the early 1950s, and she paid the ultimate price. 65 For this article, the question of the thallium women’s innocence is not of primary concern. Rather, the intention is to illustrate that social codes, rather than simply the laws, were at work in these trials. Representations of the thallium women within both the court and media reveal less about the reality and complexity of their crimes and more about the workings of a patriarchal and conservative value system entrenched within 1950s Australia. Both institutions position women within culturally constructed categories which support dominant value systems and specific gendered stereotypes that serve to either legitimate or discredit these women and their testimonies. 66 The deviant nature of the thallium women derived less from their alleged crimes and more from the extent to which they departed from such ideals. Accused of poisoning, the thallium women also faced the double burden of a history of popular and misogynist stereotypes surrounding such crimes and such women. Like gender ideology, the ‘genre’ of the archetypal female poisoner provided a system of meaning to narratives within the courts and media. Yet, paradoxically, this discourse suggested it was through their very domesticity that these women were able to carry out such crimes. Women’s domestic and familial lives actually became a form of stealthy insubordination. In this sense, the threat posed by the thallium women was mul ti-layered, arisi ng not just from the challenge they presented to expectations of women, but also in revealing the danger and power women could wield in those roles. The investment Australian society had in particular identities and behaviour for women in the early 1950s reveals itself in the perception and treatment of women who challenged such ideals and expectations. The social and sexual stereotypes in the postwar era inevitably worked against women whose actions seemingly contr avene d or thr eaten ed the stabi l ity of such i mages. Representation of the thallium women was informed by women’s position within the gendered social order of the 1950s. Such representations are thus a mi rror to a wider social context, in particular, the problems and tensions arising from changes to the roles and identities of men and women at the time. Ultimately, examining the thallium women illustrates the way both the law and media sought to contain the threat these women posed to the status quo, and thus how deeply interconnected these institutions were to the social control of all women.

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Volume 8, 2002 Notes

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O. Pollak, The Criminality of Women, University of New York Press, New York, 1950, p.10. 2 ibid., p.11. 3 G. Robb, ‘ Circe in Crinoline: Domestic Poisonings in Victorian England’, Journal of Family History, vol. 22, no. 2, 1997, pp.165-177; E. Dolan, ‘Home Rebels and House Traitors: Murderous Wives in Early Modern England’, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, vol. 4, 1992, pp.1-31. 4 For instance, see A. Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonisation of Women in Australia, Penguin, Melbourne, 1994; J.J. Matthews, Good and Mad Women: The Historical Construction of Femininity in Twentieth Century Aus tralia,Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987. 5 R. Hausman & W. Wilson, ‘Thallotoxicosis - A Social Menace’, Journal of Forensic Scie nces , vol. 9, no. 1, 1964, p.701. 6 Noel Sanders claims the Spanish case was well known to authorities in Australia yet thallium continued to be used in the treatment of ringworm. N. Sanders, The Thallium Enthusiasms and Other Australian Outrages, Local Consumption Publications, Sydney, 1995, p.45. 7 Archives Office of New South Wales (AONSW): Clerk of the Peace (CP), Supreme Court (SC), Criminal Depositions (CD), R. v. Veronica Mabel Monty, 3/19989. 8 Truth , 18 October 1953. 9 D. Glaister, ‘Thallium’, Journal of Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology, 1973, pp.701702. 10 Sydne y Morning Herald, 9 October 1952. 11 AONSW: CP, Supreme Court and Courts on Circuit (SCCC), CD, R. v. Ruby May Norton, 10/10484. 12 See Western Times and National Advocate (Bathurst), 21-25 October 1952. 13 AONSW: CP, SCCC, CD, R. v. Ruby May Norton. 14 ibid. 15 Western Times , 24 October 1952. 16 Truth, 16 October 1953. 17 Sydne y Morning Herald, 24 June 1953. 18 ibid. 19 Truth, 18 October 1953. 20 AONSW: CP, SC, CD, R. v. Caroline Grills, 19/9841. 21 Truth, 11 October 1953. 22 ibid, 16 August 1953. 23 Sydne y Morning Herald, 14 October 1953. 24 ibid. 25 Sydne y Morning Herald, 16 October 1953. 26 Sanders, The Thallium Enthusiasms, p.45. 27 AONSW: CP, SC, CD, R. v. Veronica Mabel Monty. 28 ibid. 29 ibid. 30 C.V. Rooney to Attorney General, 4 November 1953, AONSW: SC, CD, R. v. Veronica Mabel Monty. 31 Truth, 13 September 1953; Sydne y Morning Herald, 11 September 1953. 32 Jack Thom to Attorney General, 7 October 1953, AONSW: SC, CD, R. v. Veronica Mabel Monty.

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Truth, 13 September 1953. ibid. 35 C. Warren, Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1987, p.8. 36 ibid. 37 Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, Norton, New York, 1963, pp.15-32. 38 Sydne y Morning Herald, 15 October 1953. 39 ibid. 40 ibid. 41 National Advocate, 24 October 1952. 42 ibid. 43 AONSW: SCCC, CD, R. v. Aileen Fay Smith, 19/13213. In 1955, four years after his death, Alfred Smith’s body was exhumed. Medical authorities testified that the concentrated amounts of thallium found in his stomach region probably meant he died within three days of its consumption. 44 Northern Star, 1 September 1955. 45 Sydne y Morning Herald, 16 October 1953. 46 ibid., 24 September 1952. 47 Truth, 31 July 1953. 48 ibid. 49 ibid. 50 M. Lake, ‘A Case of Male Justice’, The Australian Review of Books, supplement in The Australian, February 1997, p.6. 51 See G. Reekie, Temptations: Sex, Selling and the Department Store, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993, pp.161-167. 52 C. Smart, ‘Law and the Control of Women’s Sexuality: The Case of the 1950s’, in B. Hutter & G. Williams (eds), Controlling Women, Croom Helm, London, 1981, p.48. 53 On the discriminations divorced women faced, see Matthews, Good and Mad Women, p.132. 54 J.S. Mukherjee & A. Scandin (eds), Source Book of Australian Criminal Statistics 18041988, Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra, 1989, p.13. 55 Smart, ‘Law and the Control of Women’s Sexuality’, p.48. 56 J. Allen, Sex and Secrets: Crimes Involving Australian Women Since 1880, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1990, p.242. 57 ibid., p.234. 58 Rooney to Attorney General, 4 November 1953, emphasis added. 59 N.S.W. State Reports, vol. 53, 1953, p.77. 60 ibid., pp.74-75. 61 ibid. 62 C. Smart, Law, Crime and Sexuality: Essays in Feminism, Sage Publications, London, 1995, p.221. 63 J. Scutt, ‘Sexism in Criminal Law’, in S.K. Mukherjee & J. Scutt (eds), Women and Crime , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1981, p.17. 64 K. Laster, ‘Arbitrary Chivalry: Women and Capital Punishment in Victoria, Australia 1842-1967’, Women and Criminal Justice, vol. 6, no. 1, 1994, p.70. 65 ibid. 66 See L. Code, Rhetorical Spaces: Ess ays on Gendered Locations, Routledge, New York, 1995, p.45. 34

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