CHILD SLAYER

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 207, 2 September 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

CHILD SLAYER

OF the lamentably long list of murderers who have marched across the screen of New Zea- ( land s legal life, none perhaps was more fiendishly callous and cruel than Minnie Dean who, 44 years ago—Monday, August 12, 1 895—made history by being the first woman to be hanged in this country. Her execution brought to an end a series of homicides that claimed the lives of a dozen small children. Citizens shuddered at the brutality of the crimes of the Sullivan gang (the Maungatapu murderers), of Errol Coates (slayer of Avis Symons), Cooper (the Johnsonville baby farmer) and Mouat the St. Martin's wife-slayer); but their crimes were without the long-sustained cruelty of those of Minnie Dean.

By-- /. Halket Millar

MINNIE DEAN WAS THE FIRST WOMAN TO BE HANGED IN NEW ZEALAND

At Winton, in the Far South, she set herself up as a baby farmer and in five years "adopted" at least 22 babies, more than half of whom vanished and were , never officially accounted for. Well educated, aged 48 years at the time of her trial, MiSnnie Dean was in her early thirties when her first husband, a doctor, died. Some little time later she married Charles Dean and thev livi-.d at Christchurch for a time. There Mrs. Dean fell foul of the police followin ,r complaints that she was ill-treating a child who had become an inconvenience to its parents and whom Mrs. Dean had taken into her home. Police attention was not to Minnie Dean s liking, so she went to Winton, a tiny village half-way between Invercargill and Lumsden, there to carry on her baby farming, activities which no douot she had started when she was in Christchurch. At Winton she was away from the keen eyes and brains of police officers and had to contend only with a constable who, had he used anv degree of perspicacity, could have saved °the lives of a number of the woman's tiny victims. "The Larches," where the Deans lived at Winton, was an ideal setting for the terrible deeds committed there; that is, it was ideal if the murder locations of fiction are taken as a standard. It was a miserable place, The Larches; the weatherboards had gone for many a year without painting and the whole setting was extremely squalid and i wretched. Unkempt, the garden had long since gone back to the native. Rank growth surrounded the house, and the interior was no better. If anything it was worse. There was little furniture > and the flooring was so decrepit that ' the <rround could be seen between tlie : boards. The bedding comprised old l far from clean. ~ When one considers how Mrs. Dean i had once presided over a doctor's home, r a line to her changed and debased outt look is .taken as one contemplates the squalor of The Larches. The wonder, indeed, is that anyone could be content , to live in such a place and in such a state, and it is difficult to conceive how

any mother with the slightest spark ot feeling could consent to her child being brought up in such an environment if she once paid a visit to the house. 'When Minnie Dean went to Winton she had two children in her care, but in the next five years she obtained possession of many others, all of whom, with two exceptions, were infants, the ages ranging from four weeks to nine months. The exceptions were a young woman of 20 and a girl of 15. Some of the infants Mrs. Dean kept for two and three years before she ended their lives. Others she killed in a matter of days or months—one babv was murdered within half an hour of" beinsr handed over by its mother. Strange streaks of love and cruelty, also a flair for teaching good manners to her small charges and some religious zeal, coursed through this woman's soul. She had been known to remove her jacket and wrap it around an infant she was carrying at night leet it take a chill. At other times she had been seen to take hold of the auburn curls of a bonnv h°y. three years of age, and with a devilish light in her eyes, batter his head on the floor. Minnie Dean's murder method was to dose the infants with laudanum to induce sleep and then to suffocate them by holding a cloth over their faces. The crime that tripped her up was one she committed on a train. She entered the train carrying a light hatbox and a child. During the journey the guard noticed that the child had disappeared. The woman left the train without any sign of the child, but carrying a heavv batbox. She was tried only on this count, was found guilty in spite of eloquent appeals by counsel (the late Mr. A. C. Hanlon), and was sentenced to death. Charles Dean was also charged with murder, but was found not guilty and was discharged. Mr. Hanlon appealed against the verdict, maintaining that the child's death was an accident, and that manslaughter would cover the case, Wit two days before the date set for the hanging Cabinet rejected the appeal. Xn the meantime. Mrs. Dean preserved perfect equanimity, ate heartily, slept well, her only regret being that she had brought disarace on her relatives. On her last night on earth. Minnie Dean slept from 11.30 p.m. till 3 a.m. She took no breakfast and onlv a sip from a arlas« of spirits given to her by the gaol surgeon, to whom she said: "Don't let them keep me in agonv, doctor." Apparently the most selfpossessed of the dismal procession, she marched to the scaffold and. a-s she stood on the trapdoor, erect and hatless. her last glimpse of the world was of a black board marking the grave of Walsh, the Waikawa murderer, who was hanged some years before. She swayed to and fro. graspinsr. hard at the warden's hand. "T am innocent." she said, when asked if «he had anvthing to say. Then, a-s her legs were , Pinioned: "Oh. God. let me not suffer." She plunged down for a drop of 7ft 9in; i death was instantaneous. , Tt is recalled that the registration of . private homes where children were kept » was made law following an inquest into , the death of a child Sirs. Dean had in t her house several vears before her trial, i, but, notwithstanding this, she refused t to the last to register her house.