Rendell had stolen the children’s father, one Thomas  Morris, away from his wife, who was then kicked out of the house by her idiot husband and forbidden to see the children – sort of like the modern Family Court with the sexes reversed.

Martha was a monster of a woman who delighted in abusing the children and who seemed to have no motive other than the pleasure she derived from torturing them. One neighbor even claimed that on several occasions  she had peeked in Martha’s window to see what all the screaming was about, and had seen Martha smiling with delight as she watched one of her victims writhing in pain. Other neighbors claimed to have heard Martha laughing over the children’s screams.

Rendell’s method was as simple as it was cruel. She would simply place a small amount of acid in the victim’s drink. This would lead to a sore throat which the family doctor would then order treated by coatings of a certain medication, a medication for which Martha then substituted the diluted hydrochloric acid. The acid being diluted it took her young victims weeks to die, though it remains unclear whether they died from the acid itself or from starvation due to not being able to eat.

Rendell’s luck ran out when she tried the same acid-in-the-tea trick on the fourth Morris child, a teenage boy who unlike his father knew scum when he saw it. Young George Morris ran for his life to his real mother’s house, and his disappearance led the already suspicious neighbors to call the police, who eventually uncovered the sickening killing spree and charged Martha with murder. In September of 1909 Rendell was found guilty and sentenced to hang, a punishment which seems rather genteel compared to her crimes – a nice long bath in some diluted acid would seem much more fitting to this writer.

Due to the two fatty deposits on Rendell’s chest the death sentence led to much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, with various baby-kissers and clergymen making it clear that a woman’s life is worth more than that of three children, but decency won out and on the 6^th of October 1909 Martha Rendell was led to the noose by two female attendants, presumably so that she wouldn’t get felt up on her way to hell…

Most of this information was sourced from “Australia’s Serial Killers” by Paul Kidd.

Australian GynoBeast Frances Knorr wanted some cash, so she decided the way to make it was to look after other people’s children. Or to be more accurate, pretend to look after other people’s children.

Child minding in 19^th Century Victoria was a very different proposition to its modern day equivalent. Parents, usually single mothers, would pay to have their babies looked after on a long term, full time basis. The mother would make an initial payment of 5 to 20 pounds then smaller monthly payments, and would visit the babies at certain pre-arranged times – a situation which couldn’t have been much fun for either the mothers or the babies.

Unfortunately, there were numerous cases in which the so-called carer was only in it for the money and the babies were abandoned, left to starve, murdered outright, or if they were lucky, sold off to childless couples. Knorr was one such “baby farmer” as the press of the time dubbed these dirtbags. She would take the money, kill the babies in her charge, then move on to another address and start all over again. Her baby-killing spree finally came to an end when a man occupying one of her former residences decided to plant a vegetable garden and dug up something other than an angry gopher. What Mr. Clay instead found, that September day in 1893, was a decomposing baby girl with a rope around her neck.  After the police were called locals told them that Knorr had also resided in a nearby house. When that house’s garden was dug up the police found more dead babies, this time two boys who had been suffocated.

Eventually Knorr was found guilty and sentenced to hang for the murders of these three babies, though it is estimated that she may have killed as many as 13 children. Because she was a woman there was much public controversy, and Melbourne hangman William Perrins was so distressed at the social repercussions of killing one of The Important Sex that he killed himself instead! A couple of days before Perrins was to carry out the execution, he got drunk, stood over a sink, and slit his own throat! If nothing else, this pitiable act shows that we have made some progress in the last one hundred years – I don’t recall any Yank slaying himself rather than a murderer for fear of being ostracized because the killer in question was female! No siree! These days we don’t ostracize men for executing women, we just hand women life when a man would get death, and a slap on the wrist when a man would get life!

Most of this information was sourced from “Australia’s Serial Killers” by Paul Kidd.

Details of hangman’s suicide found here.