ABSTRACT
Women in patriarchal societies are less likely to be law breakers but as the one in six convicts who were female demonstrated, they did commit crimes. In the late nineteenth century, the rise of first-wave feminism created anxiety amongst those who feared that women were abandoning their traditional roles as carers. A social panic emerged around women who killed their husbands by poisoning them and women who killed other people's infants left in their care. This chapter focuses on two of these cases: Louisa Collins who was found guilty of poisoning her husband and in 1889 became the last woman to be executed in New South Wales and Frances Knorr, convicted for the murder of infants in Melbourne in 1894. While other women were convicted of similar crimes, the conjunction of contemporary concerns and unfeminine characteristics attributed to Collins and Knorr, including cool calculation and strong sexual appetites, ensured that they were executed while others were reprieved.
