Rosanna Nicholls – the first person to be sentenced to death at the Beechworth Circuit Court
By Anne Hanson
Copyright ©Anne Hanson 2010
William Nicholls was born at Sebastopol Flat, some ten kilometres north west of Beechworth on New Year’s Day in 1857. He was the only son and youngest child of twenty-five-year-old Rosanna Nicholls.
Gold had been discovered at Sebastopol early in 1856. When William was born, it was a four street settlement with a population of about 1000. As well as the miners themselves, there were butchers, storekeepers, blacksmiths, dairymen, a Church of England school, bakers, barbers, brewers and, of course, numerous hotelkeepers.
On a bitterly cold day early in April, William, barely three months old, died in his mother’s tent. As a result of his death, Frederick Ridgeway, a miner and neighbour of the Nicholls family, went to the Police Camp, where he alleged that William had died from starvation and neglect. Constable Thomas Wilson took Ridgeway’s allegations seriously and immediately went to the Nicholls tent, where he found William’s tiny emaciated body on a bed underneath a sheet. His mother and his two siblings, two elder sisters, one aged about four or five and the other aged three, were nowhere to be seen. Wilson then went in search of Rosanna and apprehended her later that evening.
On 7th April 1857, a Coronial Inquest, investigated the circumstances of William’s death. Three witnesses who were close neighbours of the Nicholls’ were particularly critical of Rosanna’s dissolute way of life.
The wife of a miner, Eliza Brown, told the inquest that Mrs. Nicholls was a neighbour of hers and that she had had plenty of opportunity to observe how William was treated.
At about nine o’clock on the morning of Wednesday 1st April, Mrs. Brown after hearing screaming coming from Rosanna Nicholls’ tent, went into the tent and saw the baby, William Nicholls, in a filthy state, lying on a bed. When she asked Mrs. Nicholls what was wrong, she said that she had neglected the child and he was now dying. Mrs. Brown then suggested that Mrs. Nicholls should go for the doctor but she replied that it was of no use, because if the baby became well again, she would only neglect it. Nevertheless, a little while later, Mrs. Nicholls left the tent saying that she was going for the doctor. She returned three hours later in an intoxicated state and told Mrs. Brown that the doctor was not at home.
Mrs. Brown also stated that prior to William’s death Rosanna was frequently away all day, leaving William in the care of his two very young sisters. On previous occasions she had offered to nurse William, but Rosanna had refused, saying it was of no use because when the child came back she would continue to neglect it. In her opinion, when William died he was so small that he had the appearance of a newly born infant and that he had died through neglect and want of proper nourishment.
Another married woman, Cristeena McClennan, who had been at William’s birth and lived next door to Rosanna Nicholls, corroborated Eliza Brown’s evidence.
Frederick Ridgeway testified that William was neglected by his mother and when he remonstrated with her, she said, ‘that the little b______ was going to hell and that it would soon be dead’. He further alleged that Rosanna had frequently left William in the charge of his two little sisters and for all of the fortnight preceding William’s death, she had been in a drunken state.
The inquest jury concluded that William’s death was caused by starvation brought about by the wilful neglect of his mother and her habitual state of intoxication which made her unable to care for him.
As a result of the inquest’s findings, Rosanna was tried in the Beechworth Circuit Court on Wednesday, 8th April 1857, for wilfully and feloniously murdering her infant son. In charge of the proceedings was Justice Edward Eyre Williams. The trial caused great excitement because, Rosanna, if found guilty, would, as a matter of course, be sentenced to death.
At the commencement of the trial, the crown prosecutor told the court that the prisoner was charged with murder, not because of any violence by her towards the child but because of the gravity of her neglect, which in the eyes of the law, constituted murder.
The witnesses at the inquest also testified at the trial. One of whom was Charles Dixon, a medical practitioner from the Upper Woolshed. He told the court that his post mortem examination of William’s body revealed that although the organs were in a perfectly healthy state, the body was much emaciated. There were no marks of violence and in his opinion, the baby had died from neglect and starvation.
When all the evidence had been heard, Justice Williams directed the jury to consider whether the evidence presented to the court could allow them to conclude that William Nicholls had died from natural causes and if that was the case, the prisoner should be acquitted. He also said that in order to find the prisoner guilty, they must know that she either had the means of providing sustenance or had breast milk available.
In response to his directions, one of the jurymen wanted to know if the prisoner was married, how she got her livelihood and whether she had milk with which to suckle her child. As a result, Eliza Brown was recalled to the witness box. She told the court that she believed the prisoner had a husband and that she had milk with which to suckle the child.
The jury then retired to consider its verdict, but after about fifteen minutes returned a guilty verdict based on their opinion that William Nicholls’ death had been caused by neglect. Justice Williams however, refused to accept their decision and sent them away again to reconsider their verdict. After deliberating for a further twenty minutes, the jury returned with the same verdict. This caused uproar in the court, because with a guilty verdict, came the ultimate penalty, a death sentence.
Once order was restored in the court, Justice Williams severely addressed Rosanna: He said:
Your conduct has been that of a depraved woman. I cannot conceive how any mother could so wilfully neglect her maternal duty. Drink appears to have taken away your senses and hardened your heart. You caused the death of your child by your unnatural conduct and now your life is to be forfeited.[5]
Justice Williams then bestowed on Rosanna, the dubious honour, of not only being the first person to be sentenced to death at the Beechworth Court but, if the execution was carried out, then she would be the first woman to be executed in Victoria.
Whatever Rosanna’s sins as a mother, the citizens of the Woolshed mining district obviously felt some level of sympathy for her. They drew up a petition addressed to his Excellency, the Governor, Sir Henry Barkly, praying that he would ‘… respite the sentence of death passed on this unfortunate woman for the murder of her infant child….’[6] One of the instigators of this petition was thirty-two-year-old Ednott Burbank, head teacher at the Woolshed School. 
In the meantime, Rosanna, in preparation for her execution, had been removed to Old Melbourne Gaol. In 1857, Beechworth Gaol did not have the necessary equipment needed to carry out a hanging. Her two little girls were fostered out to Eliza and Thomas Brown at Sebastopol, at the rate of £1 a week, until they were removed to the Melbourne Immigrants Home in late September 1857.
As a matter of course, Rosanna’s death sentence was placed in the hands of Victoria’s Executive Council. At a meeting on Saturday, 18th April 1857, Justice Williams read his trial notes to the council members. He then informed them that he had explained to the jury that the law did not allow for a special verdict. He also told them that if the law had permitted a special verdict, then he believed the jury would have found Rosanna Nicholls guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. The Council were obviously swayed by Justice Williams’ opinion as they decided that Rosanna’s death sentence should be commuted to seven years imprisonment.
Rosanna spent the first eight months of her sentence at Old Melbourne Gaol before being transferred to the penal hulk, Sacramento, moored in Corio Bay off Geelong.
The Central Register of Female Prisoners described Rosanna as being five feet tall with dark hair and dark grey eyes. She had a dark complexion, with a mole on her chest and on the left side of her neck. She was born in Sydney about 1832, was married, belonged to the Roman Catholic faith, could neither read nor write and arrived in Victoria on the SS Wonga Wonga. Her trade was listed as a servant.
The register also reveals that on 5th December 1859, Rosanna was granted a ticket of leave. This meant that she was permitted, under certain conditions, to work and to support herself while still under sentence of the law. The ticket of leave stated that she was to reside in the police district of New Ballaarat on the Ovens Goldfields. However, in April 1860, the Victorian Police Gazette listed Rosanna as being illegally at large.
Despite much research, nothing more is known about Rosanna or the remainder of her life. Her husband’s name and the names of her two little girls also remain a mystery.
Acknowledgements:
Many thanks to Fay Johnson and Colin Fish whose diligent research helped to fill in some of the gaps.
Sources:
Public Record Office Victoria
PROV, VPRS 516, Unit 1, Register No. 2, Page 2
PROV, VPRS 937/P, Unit 29, File 57/46
PROV, VPRS 30/P000, Unit 69 File 2-270-21
PROV, VPRS 1189/P0, Unit 696, File Z57/2785
PROV, VPRS 1189/P0, Unit 751, File A57/6142
Robert O’Hara Burke Memorial Museum, Beechworth
The Argus - 2 May 1857
The Constitution and Ovens Mining Intelligencer - 9 April 1857, 28 April 1857
The Ovens and Murray Advertiser - 7 April 1857, 9 April 1857, 18 April 1857
Shennan, M. Rosalyn A Biographical Dictionary of The Pioneers of the Ovens and Townsmen of Beechworth, 1990
Woods, Carole, BEECHWORTH A Titan’s Field, Hargreen Publishing Company, 1985
Born 1813 Trinidad, West Indies. Died 30 April, 1880, Bath, Somerset, England.
The Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 9 April 1857.
Born about 1825 to Enerdine and Eleanor Burbank (nee Kirby), arrived in Victoria in December 1852 and died at Melbourne, aged sixty-one in April, 1886.
