Martha Needle was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on October 22, 1894, for the murder of Louis Juncken, a carpenter whose brother she had promised to marry. In the years before, she had buried her husband and all three of her young daughters, and each of those deaths had been put down to illness. Only after a doctor found arsenic in another of the Juncken brothers in 1894, and police caught her at the house, did investigators look again at the family she had lost. The exhumed bodies of her husband and two of the girls were found to contain arsenic, according to the State Library Victoria and the Old Treasury Building museum. She was never charged with those deaths. She was tried for one killing, Louis Juncken's, convicted, and executed, still saying she was innocent.
Her case raised a question that was argued over at the time and has been argued over since: whether a woman who had spells of unconsciousness and wandered the streets looking for her dead children was responsible for what she did. The judge who tried her refused to let that question delay the law.
She was born Martha Charles in South Australia in 1864. The State Library Victoria gives her birthplace as Port Adelaide. The Old Treasury Building, a Melbourne museum that featured her in its exhibition "Wayward Women?", gives her birth date as April 9, 1864, and her birthplace as near Morgan. It says her parents separated seven months before she was born. When she was two, her mother married again, to a man the museum describes as "another brutish man."
Police reports written after her arrest, the museum says, described a poor and unhappy childhood marked by violence and abuse. Her mother had convictions for drunkenness, indecent language and willful damage, and a neighbor later testified that the mother "used to beat her pretty severely at times." The Public Record Office Victoria, the state archive that holds her prison and court files, also describes a rough childhood in South Australia marked by violence and abuse.
The author Samantha Battams, whose 2019 book on the case was reviewed in the Adelaide paper InDaily, describes the girl's early life as "a lifetime of deplorable poverty, cruelty and social, emotional and psychological deprivation," with parents who abused and neglected her. According to the review, Battams also writes of years of severe headaches and delirium after a bout of typhoid fever.
She worked as a domestic servant. At 17, according to the South Australian Register as cited by the State Library, she married Henry Needle, a carpenter. The museum describes him as five years older than she was and "short, strong-built."
The young couple moved to Sydney for work, and their first daughter, Mabel Hannah, was born there on November 13, 1882, according to the Old Treasury Building. A second daughter, Elsie, was born on October 6, 1884. Around 1885 the family moved to Richmond, an inner suburb of Melbourne. Neighbors there, quoted in The Argus in June 1894, remembered the couple as "comfortably situated and well-matched." A third daughter, May, was born in 1886.
Portraits of Martha Needle and of two of her three children survive in the State Library Victoria's manuscripts collection, along with letters from 1894.
Mabel died on December 28, 1885, when she was three, by the museum's account. Her mother said afterward that the child "seemed to fade." The doctor who attended her certified a congenital brain tumor and bronchitis as the cause of death, and no one suspected anything else. The State Library and the Public Record Office both date Mabel's death to 1885.
After Mabel's death, the museum says, Henry Needle spent months at a time working in Sydney. A newspaper later reported that his wife went out alone at night and had "a flighty disposition fond of company." The marriage soured, and Henry became jealous and morose.
He fell ill in 1889, and his doctor noted that his behavior was odd. Henry Needle died on October 4, 1889, with his wife at his side. The official cause of death, the museum says, included sub-acute hepatitis, enteric fever and exhaustion. No post mortem examination was held.
His life had been insured. The State Library account says his widow received 60 pounds in life insurance after his death.
Elsie fell ill about a year after her father died. She was about six. She was sick for nearly two months and died on December 9, 1890, according to the museum. Her doctor, who later remembered the illness only vaguely as measles, told the court in 1894 that her mother had never been "inattentive or unkind." Her mother's fiancé testified that "the prisoner's manner towards the child could not have been more kind and attentive." The State Library says another 60 pounds of insurance was paid on Elsie's death.
May, the youngest, was four. About seven months after Elsie's death she became ill, and she died on August 27, 1891, by the museum's account. Her death certificate gave tubercular meningitis as the cause. Her doctor later said he "was always puzzled by the case." Her mother's fiancé again spoke at the 1894 trial of the care she gave the child. With May's death, the State Library says, Needle received the remaining insurance money, 80 pounds.
At the trial a witness said, as quoted in the InDaily review, that "the children were nicely, cleanly and tenderly kept." Each of these deaths had been treated as natural, and the Public Record Office says that no suspicion fell on her at the time.
After May's death Needle moved within Richmond to keep house for Louis Juncken and his brother, a carpenter, whose family lived in South Australia. In 1892, the State Library says, she became engaged to the carpenter and was working as housekeeper to him and his two brothers. The Public Record Office says Louis was worried by her behavior, which had become more troubling. The museum records that Louis opposed the engagement, and the State Library says the brothers' family in South Australia strongly opposed the marriage.
Witnesses described spells in which she became unresponsive or rigid for long periods. On at least one occasion, the museum says, she went out to "search for" her dead children. The Public Record Office account adds that she once walked the streets half dressed, looking for them.
Louis Juncken fell ill on April 25, 1894, by the museum's account, and died on May 15. Her fiancé later told the court that Needle "prepared the food and gave the medicine." The State Library account, drawing on The Argus, says her home remedies seemed to bring him some relief but that he never fully recovered.
His body was taken back to South Australia for burial. Her fiancé went to Adelaide for the funeral and stayed with his family for some time. A letter Needle wrote to him there, angry at his absence, was later printed in The Argus, according to the State Library.
When her fiancé came back to Melbourne, another of the brothers followed him to settle Louis's affairs. Within days, the State Library says, he became violently ill after a meal she had cooked. The Public Record Office dates his illness to less than a month after Louis's death. His doctor suspected an irritant poison and arranged an analysis, which found a considerable quantity of arsenic colored with charcoal, similar to the rat poison sold as Rough on Rats.
The doctor went to the police. Officers watched the house, and they arrested Needle there. The Advertiser reported, as the State Library quotes it, that she was "caught by the police in the very act" of offering the brother a cup of tea containing arsenic. A box of Rough on Rats was in the cupboard, according to the museum. She was charged with attempting to murder him.
Police noticed how closely Louis Juncken's death resembled the deaths of Henry Needle and the children, the State Library says, and sought permission to exhume the bodies. Arsenic was found in the bodies of Louis Juncken, Henry Needle, Elsie and May, by the State Library's account, and the museum gives the same four. Neither account reports a finding for Mabel, the first of the girls to die. The Public Record Office account says only that all the bodies examined contained traces of arsenic.
The State Library says insurance had been paid on each of the three deaths that followed Mabel's. Whether money was her motive has never been established.
Needle was tried in September 1894 for the murder of Louis Juncken, according to the museum. The jury was made up only of men; women did not serve on juries until the 1920s, as the InDaily review points out.
Evidence about the deaths of her husband and daughters was heard at the trial. Doctors who had treated Elsie and May gave evidence, and her fiancé testified about her care of the girls. Battams argues, in the reviewer's summary, that the trial was prejudiced by public opinion and coverage before it began, and by evidence that would not be allowed today; the review says the details of the deaths and the exhumations of her children and husband were discussed at length in court and in the press.
Her counsel argued that her spells of unconsciousness meant she could not be held responsible. Her fiancé described fits that came "without warning," when she would "fall suddenly right down." The doctors called would not commit themselves to a diagnosis. Justice Hodges rejected the plea. "The law cannot wait while philosophers, physicians and scientists settle metaphysical problems," he said, in words the museum quotes.
The jury found her guilty and made no recommendation to mercy. She was sentenced to death.
A few days after the trial a lawyer, Marshall Lyle, wrote to the Governor, Lord Hopetoun, on behalf of the Victorian branch of the Howard Association for the Prevention of Crime. The museum, which displayed the letter, summarizes his argument. Her acts, he wrote, were "utterly revolting and opposed to the natural instincts of women," and it was reasonable to assume that a mother who killed her own children was insane. He said many women executed in the past had later been recognized as insane, and that Victoria's prisons held more insane people than officials admitted. He called for proper scientific inquiry, criticized "incompetent medical men," and objected that the prison doctor tested her sanity by asking her about the Ten Commandments. "Scandals of this character ought to be avoided in future," he wrote.
Lord Hopetoun passed the letter to the government. The Attorney-General, Isaac Isaacs, declined to recommend any action. She had been ably defended, he noted, and the petition did not "disclose any facts which would shew that the woman was insane."
Her fiancé visited her in prison. He wrote to his mother, in a letter quoted in The Advertiser, that he hoped she "will be proved to be insane, and therefore not responsible for her misdeeds."
Shortly before her death Needle wrote on prison notepaper to a friend who had stood by her. That letter, letters from her fiancé to the same friend, and her annotated miniature New Testament are held in the State Library Victoria.
She was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on October 22, 1894, the State Library, the Public Record Office and the museum all record. She was still protesting her innocence, the State Library says.
She left her estate, valued at 25 pounds, to her fiancé. In her last letter to him she wrote that when he received it he could think of her "in a happy home with my loved ones, waiting and watching for you." Her will is held by the Public Record Office, together with her capital case file, sentence file, inquest and probate papers and her photograph in the prison register.
The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, published by the University of Melbourne, places her execution among three executions of women in a short span in 1894 and 1895, with those of Frances Knorr and Emma Williams, under what it calls a "get tough on crime" policy. Its entry on capital punishment says that of 45 women convicted of capital offenses, five were executed.
Her fiancé married later, had six children, and became a successful builder, according to the State Library, which says he designed the suspended scaffold used to replaster its own domed ceiling.
Her story was told again in a 1949 Sydney newspaper feature, and in the decades since in books including Michael Cannon's 1994 "The Woman as Murderer: Five Who Paid With Their Lives" and, in 2018 and 2019, books by Brian Williams and Samantha Battams, as well as a stage play. The Old Treasury Building's exhibition "Wayward Women?", which ran until June 2020, included her case.
Battams presents her, the InDaily review says, as "both victim and perpetrator," describing a volatile temper, fits, hallucinations and confusion, and linking them to addictions to laudanum, morphine, cannabis and chloroform. "The lack of appreciation for the depth of her suffering was astounding," Battams writes.
Only the death of Louis Juncken was tried, and only that killing is hers in law. The deaths of her husband and three daughters were never the subject of a charge. Arsenic was reported in the exhumed bodies of Henry, Elsie and May; no finding for Mabel is reported in the State Library or museum accounts, and her death was certified at the time as a brain tumor and bronchitis.
Her birth is reported differently. The State Library says she was born in Port Adelaide in 1864; the museum says she was born near Morgan on April 9, 1864. The Public Record Office account calls her husband Arthur Needle, while the State Library and the museum both call him Henry.
The question of her sanity was not settled. Her counsel raised her spells of unconsciousness at trial, the doctors would not give a diagnosis, the judge refused to wait for one, and the Attorney-General found no facts in the petition to show she was insane. Her motive for killing Louis Juncken was never established, and no reason has ever been given for the deaths in her own family.
1864: Born Martha Charles in South Australia (April 9, near Morgan, by the museum's account; Port Adelaide, by the State Library's).
At 17: Marries Henry Needle, a carpenter.
November 13, 1882: Daughter Mabel born in Sydney.
October 6, 1884: Daughter Elsie born.
About 1885: The family moves to Richmond, Melbourne.
December 28, 1885: Mabel dies, aged three.
1886: Daughter May born.
October 4, 1889: Henry Needle dies.
December 9, 1890: Elsie dies, aged about six.
August 27, 1891: May dies, aged four.
1892: Engaged to a carpenter of the Juncken family; keeps house for him and his brothers.
April 25, 1894: Louis Juncken falls ill.
May 15, 1894: Louis Juncken dies; his body is taken to South Australia for burial.
1894, weeks after Louis's death: Another Juncken brother falls ill; his doctor finds arsenic; police arrest Needle in Richmond and charge her with attempted murder.
1894: The bodies of Louis Juncken, Henry Needle, Elsie and May are exhumed; arsenic is reported in all four.
September 1894: Tried in Melbourne for the murder of Louis Juncken before Justice Hodges; found guilty with no recommendation to mercy; sentenced to death.
After the trial: The Howard Association's appeal to the Governor; the Attorney-General, Isaac Isaacs, declines to recommend action.
October 1894: Writes a farewell letter from Melbourne Gaol to a friend.
October 22, 1894: Hanged at Melbourne Gaol.