Elizabeth Woolcock – murderer or victim?

In September 1873 in Moonta, Thomas Woolcock died slowly from mercury poisoning. His wife, Elizabeth Woolcock, was convicted of his murder and became the only woman hanged in South Australia. Many believe she was innocent. Was she a calculating murderer, or an innocent victim?    

Elizabeth Woolcock had a terrible childhood. According to writer Allan L Peters, who spent many years researching her background, Liz, as she was known, was abandoned by her mother when she was very young. She remained with her father, John Oliver, who was a miner, first at Burra, then on the Victorian Goldfields. Allan L Peters in No Monument of Stone, Elizabeth Woolcock's struggle through life, presented a fictionalised account of her life, based on his research. After undertaking even more research, he published Dead Woman Walking in 2008. He tells how young Liz witnessed the brutal murder of a family friend, and was the victim of a vicious rape at the hands of an itinerant worker at just seven. It is thought that she became addicted to the opioid medicine prescribed to help her cope with her ordeal. Her father died from illness when she was around ten years old. She was then sent to live and work for a couple who ran a chemist's shop. This gave her access to more of the medicine that made her life bearable and, importantly, knowledge of how  it was made by mixing powdered opium with antimonial wine.  

At 15, Liz moved to the ‘bright lights and big city’ of Ballarat, to work as a live-in domestic servant. Here Peters speculated that she fell in with a group of prostitutes. After initially being shocked by their lifestyle, she  realised that her knowledge of drugs could assist the girls to make easy money. She created a potion that could be slipped into a man’s drink. When he slipped into semi-unconsciousness, the girls would ransack his pockets and make off with whatever cash or valuables they found.  

Eventually, Elizabeth was found in Ballarat by a preacher from South Australia and taken to Moonta, where she had spent her very early childhood.  At 17 years of age, she was reunited with her mother and now, a stepfather. She found work as a live-in housekeeper for widower Thomas Woolcock, but this caused a huge scandal in the small town. So, in February 1867, they married, and Elizabeth became stepmother to Thomas’s young son, Tom.  

It was not a happy marriage. Her husband drank heavily and became increasingly demanding and abusive. Elizabeth ran away twice, but in a pattern all too familiar even now, he managed to talk her into returning.  

Then, in September 1873, after several weeks of illness, Thomas died. A post-mortem confirmed that he had died from mercury poisoning. Elizabeth had been sending her stepson Tom to three local pharmacies. A number of unsuccessful attempts were made by Elizabeth and young Tom to procure morphine. One chemist testified that the boy had also produced a note for mercury, signed 'Mary Edwards'. However the note had been destroyed. The substance had been requested for treatment of a scalp condition and two drachms of precipitate powder of mercury had been supplied. Both mercury and morphine were classed as poisons and were only to be supplied under strict conditions. Liz later testified that she had wanted the morphine to remove stains from a white skirt. A Coroner’s Inquest found that Thomas could have been poisoned by his wife who was sent to trial in Adelaide. The prosecution claimed that she could have used mercury, possibly in combination with morphine to slowly poison her husband. The defense argued that his death could have been as a result of his poor health, exacerbated by alcohol and dust containing mercury from his workplace at the local mine. As well, one of several doctors had prescribed mercury pills early in Woolcock's illness, and another had later prescribed opioids for pain relief.