Minnie Dean goes on trial

The trial of Minnie Dean for the murder of a baby placed in her care began at the Invercargill Supreme Court. The ‘Winton baby-farmer’ was found guilty three days later and hanged on 12 August.

Minnie Dean had looked after children for money since the late 1880s, and she had been under police surveillance for several years. On 2 May 1895 she was seen boarding a train carrying a young baby and a hatbox. On her return trip she had only the hatbox – which, railway porters later testified, was suspiciously heavy. After a fruitless search along the tracks, police unearthed from Dean’s garden the recently buried bodies of two babies – identified as Eva Hornsby and Dorothy Carter – and the skeleton of an older boy (whom Dean was to claim had drowned). An inquest determined that Carter had died of an overdose of the opiate laudanum, which was commonly used to calm irritable infants.

Despite her defence that Carter’s death was an accident, on 21 June Dean was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. She was hanged at Invercargill gaol on 12 August 1895, becoming the only woman ever executed in New Zealand.

Image: Minnie Dean dolls.