The Case of Martha Rendell

Welcome to our first episode of our Western Australia season! Fair warning, this episode discusses the death of children. Remember when we said we weren’t gonna cover child murder cases? We’re massive liars.

Life’s tough out there for a kid in 1907. You have to write on a literal rock at school, the only thing you have to play with is a hoop and a stick, there are no video games yet, and you’re dodging the Grim Reaper at every turn. If the ol’ infant mortality rate doesn’t get you, or the common cold, maybe your own stepmother will.

This episode, we discuss the Wicked Stepmother of East Perth, Martha Rendell, and we question whether or not this lady really did poison three of her stepchildren with hydrochloric acid, or if she actually committed a far more serious crime for the early 20th century – being an unattractive, unmarried woman who was living in sin.

EPISODE NOTES:

Annie, Olive and Arthur Morris died from what was believed at the time to be illnesses arising from complications with an earlier bout of diphtheria. But all the children had curious symptoms that were unable to be diagnosed by some of the best doctors in Australia at the time. They suffered from seizures, typhoid fever, and burning pains in the stomach that didn’t seem to have a clear cause. The children were buried, and the Morris family was considered to be terribly unlucky, until one day George Morris accused Martha Rendell, the family’s housekeeper and his father’s mistress, of poisoning his siblings with spirit of salts – the old-timey name for hydrochloric acid.

Martha was put on trial, and the press had a field day when it was uncovered that she was not really the children’s mother, as she presented herself, but really just Thomas Morris’ mistress, a homewrecker who had been having an affair with Thomas for over ten years. The salacious supposed murder of the three children painted Martha as a wicked and uncaring stepmother who delighted in children’s suffering.

She was sentenced to hanging in 1909, but in recent years there has been much discussion about whether Martha was really responsible for the deaths, or if she herself was a victim of the society in which she lived.

I myself suffered from some kind of paresis of the brain nerves and thought it would be “fun” to reference this week’s sources in Harvard style, because I used a lot of journal articles and I’m a uni student and was like, this will be a fun gag, then halfway through I was like, what is wrong with me. Anyway, if you want to learn more about Martha Rendell and the social circumstances acting on her, please look here:

Haebich, A 1998 'Murdering stepmothers: the trial and execution of Martha Rendell',Journal of Australian Studies vol. 22, no. 59, 66-81, accessed 31 August 2019, available <https://doi.org/10.1080/14443059809387425>

Haebach, A 2010 'Revisiting the Trial of Matha Rendell', The New Critic, accessed August 31 2019, available <http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/new-critic/thirteen/?a=1314992 >

For all the fun medical information, go here:

Koschny, R et al 2013, 'Fatal Course of a Suicidal Intoxication with Hydrochloric Acid', Case Reports in Gastroenterology vol 7 no 1, 89-96, accessed 31 August 2019, available <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3618096/>

Paget, G E 1883, 'Case of Coexistence of Diphtheria and Typhoid Fever', The British Medical Journal vol 2, no 1176, 67-68, accessed 31 August 2019, available <

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