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Martha Rendell
Martha Rendell was the only woman hanged in Fremantle Prison, in 1909, having been convicted of infanticide.
Ron Davidson:
Details of the early life of Martha Rendell are sparse. It is known she left her husband and their several children in South Australia and came to Perth in her mid-thirties. Here she was instrumental in persuading carpenter Thomas Morris, who had known Rendell in Adelaide, to leave his wife.
When Martha Rendell joined Morris at a weatherboard house in East Perth in 1907, she also took over the care of the five Morris children. Over the next 15 months, three of the children died from “throat afflictions”. It was only when another child became ill in 1909 that police became suspicious.
The Coroner found that Rendell had killed the children by regularly painting their throats with hydrochloric acid. Soon after, a jury found her guilty of one death despite the lack of a motive. They had heard that Rendell was a “sadist and pervert” and the judge said she was a “moral deformity”. Morris, who had been jointly charged, was acquitted. Rendell became the only woman to be hanged in Fremantle Prison. She died protesting her innocence. There was controversy at the time, with many claiming she did not get a fair trial. The debate occasionally resumes. Text and image from MCB.
References and links
Anna Haebich 2011, Murdering Stepmothers: The Execution of Martha Rendell, UWAP.
Anna Haebich 2015, 'Iconic murders: fictionalising the life of Martha Rendell', The Conversation', 17 June.
Fremantle Cemetery Heritage Walk
Photo of actress playing Martha Rendell
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 23 November, 2014 and hosted at freotopia.org/people/rendell.html (it was last updated on 18 February, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.