In September 1893, a man digging in the garden of his newly rented house on Moreland Road in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick unearthed the body of a baby. Police were called, and an inquiry began at once. The child was a girl, later identified as Gladys Crichton, estimated to have been about three weeks old at the time of death. Neighbours told detectives that the previous tenant of the house had also lived at another property nearby, number 26 Davies Street.
When police dug in that garden, they found the bodies of two infant boys. They now had to find the woman who had occupied both properties. Her name was Mrs Francis Knorr. Francis Lydia Alice Thwaites, known as Minnie to her family, had been born in Hoxton, near London, in November 1867.
Her father was a respectable hat maker who provided a comfortable home for his wife and seven children. The family attended church every Sunday, the children always neatly dressed, and the household was regarded as honourable and well mannered. But Minnie’s conduct brought trouble. Rumours began to circulate that she was involved with a soldier, and she once disappeared from the family home, returning days later in a condition that brought shame upon her parents.
Whether by her own choice or under pressure from her family, Minnie decided to emigrate to Australia. She arrived in Sydney in the 1880s, a young woman of nineteen, determined to work. She began using the name Frances instead of Minnie and found employment in domestic service, though she believed her upbringing meant she could eventually find something better. On her days off she mixed with people her parents would not have approved of.
One of them was Rudolph Knorr, a German-born waiter and petty criminal. They spent much of their time together, and on 2 November 1889 they married. Because Rudolph’s business dealings were often illegal, the couple moved to Melbourne. In 1892 Frances gave birth to a daughter.
At that time Melbourne was one of the richest cities in the world, with grand boulevards and parks, and life was initially good. But in the early 1890s the Australian economy fell into severe depression. Investment dried up, unemployment rose sharply, and Frances found herself relying on relief societies for food. Her situation worsened when her husband was sent to prison for selling furniture he had obtained on credit.
Frances was now twenty-five, alone with a young child, and in a very poor state. For a while she lived with a fishmonger’s assistant named Edward Thompson, but the relationship did not last, and when he left she found herself with nowhere to live and no way to support herself and her daughter. She tried making dresses, with little success, and eventually set up a child care service. She agreed to look after babies for weekly or lump sum payments.
Licensed homes for children existed, but there were not enough of them to meet demand. In the difficult economic climate, even some married women who already had young children sought to place their babies with unlicensed providers in the hope of finding them adoptive parents. These operations did not always have the children’s best interests at heart. The women who ran them were often called baby farmers.
In England, Margaret Waters had been hanged in 1870, and in Scotland Jesse King had been hanged in 1889, both for the deaths of babies in their care. Melbourne newspapers had reported on cases of neglect, cruelty, and terrible conditions in these establishments. Mothers knew that handing their children over carried risk, but many felt they had no other choice. The authorities found these operations difficult to stop, especially since the service was always in demand.
Frances made a good impression. She was articulate and presented herself as a caring woman who would either find a good couple to adopt an unwanted child or keep the infant herself until the parents could take it back. She sometimes used her own daughter as an example, even pretending the girl was not her child but one she was caring for until its parents’ circumstances improved. These arrangements were seldom formal.
Frances used alias names and frequently moved from one property to another. If a mother came looking for her baby, she often found that Mrs Francis Knorr no longer lived at the address where the child had been left. Most unmarried mothers did not report their babies missing, afraid of being exposed as having given birth to an illegitimate child. When Rudolph Knorr was released from prison, he and Frances decided to return to Sydney.
Frances was again pregnant. Meanwhile, the police investigation in Melbourne continued. After the discovery of the three bodies, officers were able to trace the couple to rooms on Brisbane Street in Surry Hills. They planned to arrest both of them, but when the detectives arrived on 4 September 1893, Frances went into labour.
They had to wait until she had given birth before taking her into custody. Rudolph and Frances Knorr were then escorted back to Melbourne. An autopsy suggested the baby girl had been strangled, while the two boys had been suffocated. An inquest was held.
Neighbours from Moreland Road told of the many young women who left their babies with Mrs Knorr, but many unmarried mothers were reluctant to give evidence, not wanting their own indiscretions exposed. It was said that once Frances received a baby, she would sometimes take the child to another child-minding service that charged less money, but with no records of how many infants she had been paid to look after, the authorities had no idea how many might have died in her care. They were unable to identify the two deceased boys and could only confirm that the girl was Gladys Crichton. Following the inquest, Frances Knorr was charged with murder, and her husband was charged as well.
The trial began on 27 November 1893. The prosecution alleged that Frances had been looking after three-week-old Gladys Crichton between 8 and 11 April, after which the child was not seen again. They pointed out that she regularly moved house and was reluctant to let anyone know where she was going. A young nursemaid testified that Frances had once borrowed a spade from a neighbour, claiming she wanted to dig the garden, and that she had moved house again a few days later.
The prosecution also produced a letter Frances had written to Edward Thompson, asking him to tell the authorities that the children were his and had died of consumption. Thompson, knowing this would implicate himself, handed the letter over and denied any knowledge of such events. Frances gave a statement from the witness box. She admitted burying the babies in Moreland Road but claimed the children had died of natural causes.
She said Gladys had died of convulsions and swore that she had done everything in her power to resuscitate her. She explained that she had thought of going to the police but became frightened, so she decided to bury the child instead. The prosecution rejected this account, maintaining that the girl had been strangled with tape and the boys suffocated. In his summing up, Mr Justice Holroyd noted that there was no direct proof that Frances Knorr had committed the acts.
At the end of the trial, Rudolph Knorr was discharged. His wife, who had been emotional throughout, was found guilty and sentenced to death. As the sentence was read out she collapsed and had to be assisted from the court. The trial had caused great public interest in Melbourne.
The press generally believed her to be guilty and considered the sentence just, but the public was divided, not over guilt but over whether she should hang. Newspapers were flooded with letters from readers campaigning to have the sentence commuted. Some saw her as a victim of terrible circumstances, a woman unable to get help from the state, who had tried to support herself and her daughter by taking in young children, and who, unable to cope, had committed these terrible crimes in despair. A petition was raised and presented to the governor, but the sentence was not overturned.
The hangman appointed for the execution was Thomas Jones. He was uneasy about having to hang a woman. Although the newspapers had reported the details of her crimes, he understood the difficulties Frances would have faced trying to bring up a baby alone. His wife believed the sentence should be commuted and told him how she felt about what he had been asked to do.
It was reported that she said if he hanged Mrs Knorr she would leave him. The strain became too much for Thomas Jones, and he took his own life a few days before the execution. The day before Frances Knorr was due to be hanged, she wrote a confessional statement. Placed as she was within a few hours of death, she expressed a strong desire that the statement be made public, hoping her fall would serve as a warning to others and deter those who were carrying out the same practice.
In it she confessed to being guilty of the murders of the two babies referred to in evidence. At ten o’clock on the morning of Monday, 15 January 1894, she walked to the gallows. Many people had gathered outside the prison and were singing hymns. She was calm and looked straight ahead.
Her last words were that the Lord was with her, that she did not fear what men might do to her, and that she had perfect peace. She was then hanged.