ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to revisit the histories of the women convicted for killing adults in Victoria between 1880 and 1916 – some of whom are well known, and others who never received historical attention – and seeks to interrogate the ways in which these women were understood or condemned by judges, lawmakers and the wider public. In doing so, this chapter will focus on the idea of ‘insanity’ in female perpetrators, an area in which historians, similar to the contemporaries they seek to study, are quick to apply judgements regarding the mental states of historical actors. An examination of both the convicted women and the historical literature that has categorised them for over a century reveals that not only was women’s offending complex, but also the legal and public responses to murder at the hands of women was varied, and highly dependent on access to advocacy and justice.
