Sarah Jane Makin was a Sydney midwife and the wife of John Makin, a former brewery drayman. In the early 1890s the couple took in infants for money, most of them the children of unmarried mothers who could not keep them. In October 1892 workmen in Macdonaldtown, in inner Sydney, found the remains of two babies at a property the family had recently left. Police went on to search the properties the Makins had rented since 1890 and recovered the remains of 13 infants, according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography; ABC News and the Illawarra Mercury give the total as 15.
Sarah and John Makin were tried together in March 1893 for the murder of a single child. Both were found guilty. The jury recommended mercy for Sarah, and while John was hanged in August 1893, her death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. She was released in 1911 and died in 1918. Their appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council failed, and the decision, Makin v Attorney-General for New South Wales, became a leading case on when evidence of other acts can be put before a jury.
Sarah Makin was convicted of one murder. The other infants whose remains were found were never the subject of separate convictions, and how any of the children died was never established.
Sarah Jane Sutcliffe was born in Sydney on December 20, 1845. She was the only daughter and the elder of two children of Emanuel Sutcliffe, a miller who had been a convict, and his wife Ellen, born Ellen Murphy in Ireland, according to the historian Heather Radi's entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
On April 29, 1865, at 19, she married Charles Edwards, a mariner, in a Presbyterian ceremony in Sydney. The Dictionary says they had one daughter. A 2022 Illawarra Mercury feature says the marriage was childless and that she remarried after Edwards died.
On August 27, 1871, she married John Makin under the rites of the Free Church of England. On the marriage record she was described as a spinster, the Dictionary notes. John Makin had been born at Dapto, New South Wales, on February 14, 1845, the fourth of the 11 children of William Samuel Makin, a farmer, and his wife Ellen. A 2024 feature in Region Illawarra notes that his later prison record gives his year of birth as 1842.
The Makins were a Wollongong hotel family. John's father bought a public house in Wollongong in 1856 and renamed it Makin's Inn, and one of John's brothers ran the Royal Hotel in the town, Region Illawarra reports. In 1872 John was granted a license for the Settler's Arms in Wollongong despite police objections, and renamed it the Royal Alfred Hotel. The Illawarra Mercury, drawing on the local historian Mick Roberts, says the house had belonged to John's uncle and that John's time as its licensee was short. During those years, Region Illawarra says, police were often called to the hotel over disorderly drinkers, illegal sales of liquor and late Sunday trading, and the Mercury reports that a senior police sergeant complained the house was improperly run.
In 1873 the couple left Wollongong for Sydney, both features report, and settled in the city's inner west.
Sarah and John Makin had ten children, five sons and five daughters, according to the Dictionary. The Illawarra Mercury says there were at least ten, that some may have died of illness or been stillborn, and that some left home as teenagers.
Sarah worked as a midwife, which the Dictionary gives as her occupation. John worked as a drayman for a brewery until he was injured in an accident; after that, the Dictionary says, the family lived by caring for illegitimate babies. The Mercury puts it more bluntly, saying John "didn't seem to work much." SBS News, citing the Dictionary, describes him as a drayman who delivered beer until an injury left him unable to work.
Caring for other people's infants for payment was known at the time as baby farming. In the colony of New South Wales there was little regulation of adoption, and unmarried women without work had few choices, SBS News reported in 2020. Laila Ellmoos, the City of Sydney's historian, told ABC News in 2026 that the practice was not unusual, and that unmarried mothers often paid to give up their children. She saw the Makin case as part of a wider change in attitudes to the care of children. ABC News also noted that another woman, Ellen Batts, had been tried over baby farm deaths in Woollahra three years before the Makin case, with little press attention.
According to the Dictionary, it was usually John who answered notices placed in newspapers by mothers seeking someone to take a child. He negotiated a fee, usually a lump sum of three to five pounds, and had the parents sign papers releasing the putative father from any further responsibility. The family moved often and sometimes left owing rent. The Illawarra Mercury adds that they moved between rented houses and used different names.
Amber Murray was 18 and unmarried when her son Horace was born on May 30, 1892, SBS News reported. On June 24 she placed a notice in the Evening News seeking someone to adopt him. The Makins answered under the false name of Mr. and Mrs. Hill, met her at their house in Redfern and persuaded her that they would raise the boy as their own and let her visit him. The Illawarra Mercury reports that the papers she signed recorded that she had left the baby with "Mr J Hill," and that a few days later one of the Makins' daughters came to collect him.
On June 30, according to SBS News, John Makin told Amber Murray that the family was moving to Hurstville and would send her the new address. In fact they had moved the night before to Macdonaldtown, and they later moved again. When she asked to see her son, she was turned away again and again.
The charge that later came to trial named the date of the child's death as June 29, 1892, and the place as Redfern, the Dictionary records.
On October 11, 1892, according to SBS News, a workman in Macdonaldtown found the remains of two infants and told the police. The Makins had lived at the property around the time the children died. The Evening News, as quoted by Region Illawarra, reported that two doctors found them to be a boy and a girl, and a neighbor's statement that the family had kept several infants there during their stay.
At an inquest a few days later, John and Sarah Makin both gave evidence. Sarah swore that she had brought no child with her to the house, but had taken in one to nurse the day after she arrived, and that it had since been taken away by its parents, whom she did not know, Region Illawarra reports. The Dictionary says the family claimed to have had only one infant in their care at the house and that it had been returned to its parents. The jury returned an open verdict.
The police were not satisfied. After the first inquest a young couple came forward, SBS News reported, and on November 2 Constable James Joyce returned to the Macdonaldtown property. Over two days, five more infants were found there, bringing the number at that property to seven. The Evening News, as quoted by Region Illawarra, dated the finding of the five bodies to November 3 and reported that the Makins were sought at once and found to have moved again.
John and Sarah Makin were arrested, together with two of their daughters, then aged 17 and 14, according to Region Illawarra. At a second inquest on November 7, all four were charged "on suspicion with causing and being concerned in the death of the infants."
The police then traced the family back through the places they had rented since 1890 and searched 11 properties, the Dictionary records. On November 9, SBS News reported, four infants were found in Redfern, and two more in Chippendale. SBS News counted 13 infants found at three properties the Makins had occupied over four months. The Dictionary gives the overall total as 13. ABC News in 2026 and the Illawarra Mercury in 2022 both give 15.
How the children died was never determined. Many of the remains were too decomposed for a cause of death to be found, SBS News reported.
The inquests of late 1892 drew large crowds and close press attention. On November 28, according to the Dictionary, a coroner's jury returned open verdicts in four cases. It identified one of the children as the baby of a young couple and recommended that the Makins be charged with manslaughter over that child's death.
In December further inquests were held into four more deaths, among them that of Horace Murray. On December 21 the jury returned a verdict of murder in the case of Amber Murray's son, the Dictionary records. Region Illawarra describes the sequence somewhat differently: it says that a jury at the third inquest returned a verdict of manslaughter against John and Sarah, that the two daughters were released, and that the charge was later raised to murder.
John and Sarah Makin went on trial at the Central Criminal Court in Sydney in March 1893, Region Illawarra reports. The indictment charged them with the murder of Horace Murray or, if the identification of the child failed, of an unknown infant at Redfern on June 29, 1892, according to the Dictionary. Neither of them gave evidence.
Amber Murray was a central witness. SBS News reported that she told the court she could identify her son by clothing she had made for him. The prosecution also called other mothers who had handed babies to the Makins. Their evidence, which showed the couple taking in one infant after another for payment, was at the center of the appeals that followed, the Dictionary notes.
The trial lasted three days. The jury found both defendants guilty and recommended mercy for Sarah, Region Illawarra reports. The Dictionary records the verdict as murder of an unknown infant. SBS News describes it as the murder of Horace Murray. Both John and Sarah continued to say they were innocent, the Illawarra Mercury reports.
Justice Stephen sentenced both to death. He told them they had been engaged in "baby-farming in its worst phase and most forbidding aspect," according to the press report quoted by Region Illawarra. "What the poor little babies' lives and sufferings were God only knows," he said, and he told them it was almost beyond belief that two people could have hearts "as hard as adamant." He warned them not to expect mercy for the lives they had taken.
The Makins appealed against the admission of the other mothers' evidence. The appeal in New South Wales was dismissed, and so was a further appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, the Dictionary records. Region Illawarra adds that a deputation went to the premier, George Dibbs, and that the appeal was quickly dismissed. The Dibbs government rejected the plea for clemency for John, the Dictionary adds.
The Privy Council's decision is reported as Makin v Attorney-General for New South Wales, [1894] AC 57. Its reasoning has been quoted in courts and law schools ever since. Speaking for the Committee, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Herschell, set out two linked propositions, quoted in a 1995 article in the Queensland University of Technology Law Journal by the legal scholar Wendy Harris. First, the prosecution may not lead evidence that the accused has committed crimes other than those charged in order to suggest that he or she is the kind of person likely to have committed the crime on trial. Second, the mere fact that evidence shows other crimes "does not render it inadmissible if it be relevant to an issue before the jury," and it may be relevant if it bears on whether the acts charged "were designed or accidental, or to rebut a defence which would otherwise be open to the accused."
Applied to the Makins, the Committee held that the remains of the other infants could throw light on how the child named in the charge had died, the Sydney barrister Ian Barker QC wrote in a paper on the modern law.
After clemency was refused, John Makin signed a statement claiming that the child found in Redfern was not Amber Murray's son, according to the Dictionary. He was hanged at the Sydney gaol at Darlinghurst on August 15, 1893, the date given by the Dictionary and Region Illawarra. ABC News gave the date as August 16.
Sarah Makin's death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. She served her sentence at Bathurst and in Sydney, the Dictionary says. Her daughters petitioned for her early release in 1907, and again in 1911.
On April 29, 1911, she was discharged from the State Reformatory for Women at Long Bay into the care of one of her daughters, because of her great age and failing health. The Illawarra Mercury says she had served about 18 and a half years and went to live with her daughters.
After her release, according to the Dictionary, she nursed her eldest daughter through a fatal illness and then lived with a son-in-law. She died at Marrickville, in Sydney, on September 13, 1918, aged 72, and was buried with Anglican rites at Rookwood Cemetery. Three sons and four daughters survived her. The National Centre of Biography at the Australian National University lists "Mother Makin" among the names by which she was known.
The suburb where the first remains were found no longer appears on the map under that name; it is now Erskineville, and only the railway station keeps the old name, the Illawarra Mercury notes. A long-told local story holds that the scandal of the Makin case led to the change. ABC News examined that story in January 2026. A New South Wales act renaming Macdonaldtown as Erskineville passed in March 1893, five months after the remains were found. But a notice in the Evening News showed that the Macdonaldtown council had proposed a new name months before the discovery, arguing that the change would raise property values by at least five per cent. Laila Ellmoos, the City of Sydney historian, told ABC News that the link with the Makins was "a long bow that has been drawn over the years." Asked whether the story was a myth, she answered, "I think it is."
The case brought baby farming into public view. SBS News reported that it led the New South Wales Legislative Assembly to pass the Children's Protection Act 1892, which began to regulate adoption and made it an offense not to report the death of an infant. Ellmoos, speaking to ABC News, said a child protection act came "not long after" and that coverage of the Makins "was the impetus for this."
In the courts, the Makin decision became the starting point of the common-law rule on what lawyers call similar fact or propensity evidence. In 1977 the McGill Law Journal described it as "the landmark decision" on the subject, and argued that the examples given in the judgment hardened over time into a list of fixed categories, such as absence of accident, motive and identity. Harris traced its later treatment by the High Court of Australia, which in cases such as Hoch v R (1988) and Pfennig v R (1995) moved toward a test that asks whether the evidence, if accepted, has any reasonable explanation other than the guilt of the accused. In New South Wales, Barker wrote, the common-law rule that began with Makin was replaced by the tendency and coincidence provisions of the Evidence Act 1995.
The case has had its critics. Annie Cossins, a law professor at the University of New South Wales, published a book on the Makins, The Baby Farmers, in 2013, and in the same year an article in the Sydney Law Review titled "The Legacy of the Makin Case 120 Years on: Legal Fictions, Circular Reasoning and Some Solutions." SBS News summarized her view that the trial was unfair and that the evidence was lacking.
In Wollongong the story was remembered within the Makin family. A relative told the Illawarra Mercury in 2022, "I suppose people want to be convicts or something, I guess, we're baby farmers," and said the case "wasn't a secret in our household." Region Illawarra noted that John Makin's nephew later built and ran a hotel in Dapto. A musical based on the case was staged at the Seymour Centre in Sydney in 2008, the Mercury reports.
The verdict. The indictment named Horace Murray or, failing identification, an unknown infant. The Australian Dictionary of Biography records that the jury found both guilty of murdering an unknown infant. SBS News reported the conviction as the murder of Horace Murray. John Makin, before his execution, signed a statement claiming that the child in the Redfern yard was not Amber Murray's son.
The number of infants. The Dictionary and SBS News give 13; ABC News and the Illawarra Mercury give 15. Only one death was the subject of the convictions. The other infants were never the subject of a trial verdict against Sarah Makin, and most were never identified.
How the infants died. No cause of death was established at the inquests or the trial, SBS News reported.
The inquest verdicts. The Dictionary records a recommendation of a manslaughter charge on November 28, 1892, in the case of one identified child, and a murder verdict on December 21 in the case of Horace Murray. Region Illawarra describes a manslaughter verdict at a third inquest, later raised to murder.
The date of John Makin's execution: August 15, 1893 (Dictionary; Region Illawarra) or August 16 (ABC News).
Sarah's first marriage. The Dictionary says she had a daughter with Charles Edwards; the Illawarra Mercury says the marriage was childless.
The renaming of Macdonaldtown. The claim that the case caused the suburb to be renamed is disputed by the City of Sydney's historian, who pointed to a council proposal made before the discovery (ABC News, 2026).
December 20, 1845: Sarah Jane Sutcliffe born in Sydney.
February 14, 1845: John Makin born at Dapto, New South Wales (his prison record gives 1842).
April 29, 1865: Sarah marries Charles Edwards, a mariner, in Sydney.
August 27, 1871: Sarah marries John Makin.
1872: John Makin licensed for the Settler's Arms in Wollongong and renames it the Royal Alfred Hotel.
1873: the couple move to Sydney.
1890: earliest year of the rented houses later searched by police.
May 30, 1892: Horace Murray born.
June 24, 1892: his mother advertises in the Evening News for someone to adopt him.
June 29, 1892: date of death named in the later indictment.
June 30, 1892: John Makin tells Horace's mother the family is moving to Hurstville; they had moved to Macdonaldtown the night before.
October 11, 1892: remains of two infants found in Macdonaldtown.
October 1892: first inquest; open verdict.
November 2 and 3, 1892: five more infants found at the same property.
November 1892: John and Sarah Makin and two daughters arrested; second inquest on November 7.
November 9, 1892: four infants found in Redfern; two more later found in Chippendale.
November 28, 1892: open verdicts in four cases; manslaughter charge recommended in one.
December 21, 1892: inquest jury returns a verdict of murder in the case of Horace Murray.
March 1893: Macdonaldtown renamed Erskineville by act of Parliament.
March 1893: John and Sarah Makin found guilty of murder after a three-day trial; jury recommends mercy for Sarah; both sentenced to death.
After the trial: appeals dismissed in New South Wales and by the Privy Council; clemency refused for John; Sarah's death sentence commuted to penal servitude for life.
August 15, 1893: John Makin hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol (ABC News gives August 16).
1907: daughters petition for Sarah's release.
April 29, 1911: Sarah Makin released from the State Reformatory for Women, Long Bay.
September 13, 1918: Sarah Makin dies at Marrickville, aged 72.
2013: Annie Cossins publishes The Baby Farmers and a Sydney Law Review article on the Makin case.