Today in History

1895 Minnie Dean goes on trial

Minnie Dean's trial for murdering 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 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 the return trip she only had the hatbox – which, as 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 later claimed had drowned). An inquest determined that Dorothy Carter had died of an overdose of the opiate laudanum, commonly used to calm irritable infants.

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

Image: during the trial miniature hatboxes with baby dolls in them were sold outside the courthouse. (NZ Folksong)