The Sinister and Calculating Case of Elizabeth Anderson

Brief Case

The Early 19th Century Case That Became the Talk of New South Wales  Join this channel to get access to perks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXNVw0S9_LZHhWTr-skizhg/join  Please remember to subscribe and hit the bell icon as well as leave a like and a comment for more videos every week!  Brief Case is a True Crime Channel focusing on old or lost cases that have been forgotten to history. If you have any recommendations for future cases that you would like to bring to light, feel free to reach out to me to: briefcaseuk@gmail.com  Music Credits Music by Myuu https://www.youtube.com/user/myuuji  Music by CO.AG Music https://www.youtube.com/@co.agmusic  “Cicada” by Kevin MacLeod https://incompetech.com/    Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

00:07Today we are looking at a case from the first part of the 19th century.

00:12So sit back as we go to Australia.

00:18In 1816, New South Wales was still a young and developing British colony.

00:23Having been founded less than 30 years earlier as a penal settlement,

00:27Sydney was its main centre,

00:29but settlers and former convicts were increasingly establishing farms and small communities,

00:34particularly along the fertile Hawkesbury River.

00:37Pitt Town lay in the Hawkesbury District, around 34 miles northwest of Sydney,

00:42situated on the banks of the river and surrounded by farmland.

00:46It was one of five townships that had been established by Governor Lachlan McQueary in the year 1810.

00:53Life in these rural districts could be isolated,

00:55with families and farm workers living some distance from their neighbours,

00:59and relying mainly on themselves for protection and assistance.

01:03Convicts and former criminals made up a large part of the population,

01:07while free settlers were becoming increasingly important to the colony's development.

01:12New South Wales was undergoing considerable expansion,

01:15and the administration encouraged agriculture,

01:17new roads and buildings,

01:19and the growth of settlements beyond Sydney.

01:21It was in this expanding but still isolated colonial society,

01:25that in 1816,

01:27John Anderson was living and working on his farm at Pitt Town.

01:31He too had arrived in the colony as a convict,

01:34after being found guilty at the Old Bailey in London,

01:36of stealing three linen tablecloths,

01:38and assaulting the kitchen maid.

01:40For this he was sentenced to seven years' transportation,

01:44and arrived in Sydney in January 1788,

01:47aboard the Scarborough,

01:48one of the ships of the First Fleets.

01:51On Christmas Day 1790,

01:53he married another convict,

01:55a woman named Elizabeth Roster.

01:57She too had been convicted for theft in London,

02:00and had been sentenced to transportation to New South Wales,

02:03arriving in Port Jackson in June 1789,

02:07aboard the ship Lady Juliana.

02:09When he had served his sentence,

02:11John Anderson chose not to return to England,

02:14and instead he stayed in New South Wales.

02:16He was granted 50 acres of land,

02:19which gave him the opportunity to establish a new life in the colony.

02:23By 1806, he owned 130 acres,

02:26where he grew wheat and raised livestock.

02:28From his beginnings as a transported convict,

02:31he had gradually established himself as a landowner,

02:34farmer, and employer,

02:36in the growing colony of New South Wales.

02:40He had the services of two farm servants,

02:43named James Stock and John Rawlings,

02:45both of whom had been transported to the colony from England,

02:48and as his landholding expanded,

02:51he took on a third farm servant,

02:53a man named Ralph Meekins.

02:55The work was hard and physically demanding,

02:57particularly during the hot summer months.

02:59The men cleared dense grub,

03:02worked in the wheat and maize fields,

03:04tended livestock,

03:05and maintained the boundary fences.

03:07At night they would sleep in a simple wooden hut,

03:10which was a short distance from the main house.

03:13On the evening of the 20th of February,

03:15John Anderson retired to his bed early,

03:17saying that he felt unwell.

03:19Although his wife Elizabeth still lived in the house,

03:22they were no longer living as man and wife.

03:24About a year earlier,

03:25they had decided that their marriage would effectively end,

03:28and John had agreed to pay Elizabeth £25 a year.

03:32The agreement, however,

03:33did little to bring peace between them,

03:35and despite continuing to live under the same roof,

03:38they frequently quarrelled,

03:39and their troubled relationship was well known in the area.

03:43At around seven o'clock,

03:44Ralph Meekins briefly left the farm to run an errand.

03:47He knew that Mr Anderson had gone to bed,

03:50so would not require him again that evening.

03:52However, when he returned,

03:53he saw that Elizabeth Anderson was in the company

03:56of the two other farm servants,

03:58James Stock and John Rawlins.

04:00Shortly after,

04:01both men said that they too were heading to bed for the night,

04:04which prompted Ralph Meekins to retire as well.

04:07However, as he lay on his bed,

04:09he noticed that James Stock was not in the room.

04:12He did not think much of it.

04:14But about half an hour later,

04:16Mrs Elizabeth Anderson came to the servants' room,

04:19and appeared to be in a state of panic.

04:20She said that someone was attempting to break into the house.

04:24Mr Meekins found this strange.

04:26The farm dogs had not made a sound,

04:28and he knew that if an outsider had entered the property,

04:31they would have started barking,

04:33and raised quite an alarm.

04:35He kept his doubts to himself,

04:37and got up to accompany Elizabeth Anderson back towards the main house.

04:41John Rawlins followed,

04:43and the three of them looked around the property,

04:45but found no sign of anyone attempting to break in,

04:48with nothing apparently wrong.

04:49Ralph Meekins and John Rawlins returned to their sleeping quarters.

04:53At that point,

04:54there was still no reason for either man to suspect

04:57that anything more serious had taken place.

04:59But a short time later,

05:01Elizabeth Anderson returned to their room,

05:03with an entirely different story.

05:07This time she insisted that she had been robbed,

05:10and requested that the two men came to the house once more to investigate.

05:14Again, they both got out of bed,

05:16and went with Elizabeth to see what was wrong.

05:19As they approached the house,

05:20they came across James Stock,

05:22who was strangely not wearing his hat.

05:24Elizabeth immediately turned to him,

05:26and accused him of having committed the robbery,

05:28something he immediately denied.

05:30The three men and their mistress,

05:32then entered Mr. Anderson's bedroom,

05:35where a faint light was still burning.

05:37Looking around the room,

05:38Ralph Meekins saw a watch lying on the table,

05:41which he knew belonged to his master.

05:43Still half believing that a genuine robbery might have taken place,

05:47he picked it up,

05:48just in case there was indeed someone trying to rob the house.

05:52He now realised that Mr. Anderson was missing from his bed,

05:55and that something far more serious may have taken place

05:58than a supposed attempted robbery.

06:01Unsure of what may happen next,

06:03and with concern for his own safety,

06:05he decided that he needed to protect himself.

06:07So without drawing attention to what he was doing,

06:10he took hold of a musket,

06:12and secretly loaded it,

06:13while Ralph Meekins now remained armed and on his guard,

06:16James Stock and John Rawlings began searching the property.

06:20The search led them away from the house,

06:22and it was not long before they discovered the body of their master.

06:26He was lying on his back,

06:27an apron had been placed over his head,

06:29and a rope had been passed twice around his neck.

06:32The two men immediately called out that Mr. Anderson was dead.

06:37This immediately changed the atmosphere.

06:39Strangely, however,

06:41Elizabeth Anderson did not respond by asking what had happened to her husband.

06:44Instead, her immediate concern appeared to be

06:47how people might interpret what had happened.

06:50She then declared that she hoped no one would suppose that she had murdered John,

06:55believing that this may have been a murder.

06:57Ralph Meekins told John Rawlings to run to the home of Mr. Thomas Arndall,

07:02the local magistrate,

07:03who lived about half a mile away,

07:05and bring him back to the farm as quickly as possible.

07:08Meekins himself remained behind.

07:10As he wanted to keep a close watch on Elizabeth Anderson and James Stock,

07:14he was determined that neither of them should have the opportunity

07:17to leave the premises before the authorities arrived.

07:20Whatever had happened inside the farmhouse,

07:23Meekins was now convinced that the story of an intruder

07:25breaking into the property was not to be believed,

07:28and he wanted to make certain that those present

07:30could not escape before they had been questioned.

07:33It was not long, however,

07:35before James Stock's behaviour began to attract even more suspicion.

07:39At one point he went to wash,

07:41and as he did,

07:42Meekins noticed that his hands were visibly stained with blood,

07:45and asked him how the blood had got there.

07:48Although James Stock appeared anxious,

07:50he replied that the blood had got on his hands

07:52when he removed the apron

07:53that had been placed over his master's head.

07:56Any composure that he had, however,

07:58quickly disappeared.

07:59He looked quite frightened,

08:01and then suddenly made a confession,

08:03admitting that he had taken part in the crime.

08:05However, he placed the principal responsibility on Elizabeth Anderson.

08:09According to him,

08:11Elizabeth had killed her husband herself,

08:13and then promised him £30 to assist her

08:15in removing and disposing of the body.

08:17He made this omission in the presence of Elizabeth Anderson.

08:21Meanwhile, John Rawlins had reached the home of the magistrate,

08:24Thomas Arndall,

08:25but rather than being treated simply as a messenger

08:28who was bringing news of a murder,

08:30Rawlins himself came under suspicion,

08:31and was initially detained because of a possibility

08:34that he had been involved in the crime.

08:36Yet, throughout the ordeal,

08:38the behaviour of the two farm servants seemed very different.

08:42Rawlins showed none of the apparent guilt

08:44that might have been expected from someone involved in such a crime.

08:47Although he had himself been apprehended,

08:50he appeared generally distressed by what had happened,

08:53and seemed visibly affected by the discovery of his master's fate

08:56when the local officials finally arrived at the farm.

08:59Ralph Meekins handed over Elizabeth Anderson and James Stock.

09:04Before speaking to them,

09:05the officers began a careful examination of the farmhouse

09:08and the surrounding property.

09:09What they discovered provided further evidence

09:13that the supposed break-in had been nothing more than an invention,

09:16apparently intended to make the murder appear to have been committed by an outsider.

09:20The officers recovered a hat that belonged to James Stock,

09:23which they found in the space between the house and the creek,

09:26along the route where John Anderson's body had apparently been dragged.

09:30The hat itself had been completely crushed and flattened.

09:33From its position and condition,

09:36the officers concluded that it had been caught beneath the body

09:39as it was dragged across the ground.

09:41When James Stock was questioned about what he knew of the terrible events,

09:45he initially claimed that he had gone to a neighbouring settler named Crabtree

09:49to collect some money,

09:50and when he returned,

09:52he encountered Ralph Meekins and John Rawlins near the house.

09:55However, when officers questioned him about the crushed hat,

09:59he offered another explanation.

10:00He claimed that he himself had flattened it,

10:03something the officers did not believe.

10:06The physical evidence inside the house

10:08added further weight to the suspicions already surrounding him and Elizabeth Anderson.

10:12Near the bedroom door,

10:14the officers found a significant quantity of blood,

10:17proving that a violent attack had taken place there.

10:20Then there was the rope around John Anderson's neck.

10:23Ralph Meekins said that the rope was part of a tether rope

10:26that had been in the kitchen adjoining the premises earlier that same evening.

10:29Piece by piece,

10:31the evidence was beginning to contradict the story of the unknown intruder,

10:34and the supposed robbery had left no convincing signs of an outsider's involvement,

10:39while the blood,

10:40the crushed hat,

10:41the rope,

10:42and James Stock's own confession

10:44pointed towards those who lived and worked on the property.

10:49The following morning,

10:51James Marlson,

10:52a local magistrate and assistant surgeon at Windsor,

10:55conducted a formal examination of the body.

10:57He confirmed the presence of an incision beneath the right ear,

11:01which he said had been caused by a heavy blow,

11:04but concluded that the actual cause of death was strangulation.

11:08The possibility that a stranger had entered the property

11:11to rob and murder John Anderson was investigated.

11:14Thomas White,

11:15who owned the neighbouring property,

11:16had gone to the farm with the constable,

11:18and told him that the dogs were so fierce,

11:21that he considered it impossible for a stranger to approach the house,

11:24without being attacked or causing considerable alarm,

11:28the magistrate Thomas Arndall supported this view.

11:31His residence was close to the Anderson farm,

11:34and given how remarkably calm and quiet the night had been,

11:37without any unusual noise or disturbance,

11:40he found the claim that an intruder had entered the property highly suspicious.

11:44He also knew that John and Elizabeth Anderson had frequently quarrelled,

11:48and remembered an early occasion when he heard Elizabeth crying out for help,

11:52and shouting the word murder.

11:54In the light of John Anderson's death,

11:56this memory took on a new significance.

11:59The supposed robbery had failed to produce convincing evidence of an outside intruder.

12:03The fierce farm dogs made this story even less credible,

12:06while the blood found inside the house,

12:08the crushed hat beside the creek,

12:10and a rope around the deceased man's neck,

12:13all raised further questions.

12:15Most damaging of all,

12:16was James Stock's confession,

12:18in which he omitted his own involvement,

12:20and accused Elizabeth Anderson of killing her husband.

12:24Suspicion fell increasingly upon those who had been at the farm,

12:27and the authorities moved to take Elizabeth Anderson,

12:30James Stock and John Rawlings into custody.

12:33A coroner's inquest was then held at Hawkesbury,

12:36which stated that John Anderson had been attacked while asleep,

12:39and suffered a severe blow to his head,

12:42before being dragged from his house,

12:44with a rope around his neck.

12:46At the conclusion of the inquest,

12:48Elizabeth Anderson,

12:50James Stock

12:50and John Rawlings

12:52were all charged with murder.

12:56In early 19th century New South Wales,

12:59the court did not have civilian juries for serious criminal trials.

13:03Instead, cases were heard by the Court of Criminal Jurisdiction,

13:06which consisted of the judge advocates,

13:09and a number of military or naval officers,

13:12who were appointed to sit with him.

13:14This meant that when Elizabeth Anderson,

13:16James Stock and John Rawlings were brought to trial,

13:19there was no jury of local settlers to decide their fate.

13:22The members of court themselves heard the evidence,

13:25and then retired to consider the verdict.

13:28It was not until the 1820s

13:30that civilian juries began to appear in New South Wales,

13:33and following the reforms that created the Supreme Court in 1824,

13:37juries of local citizens were gradually introduced

13:40into some criminal proceedings.

13:42This use of juries then expanded during the following years,

13:45although it was not until 1839

13:47that trial by a 12-man civilian jury

13:50became the established system for criminal cases

13:53in both the Supreme Courts and the lower courts.

13:56The trial began on Monday the 17th of June 1816,

14:00and attracted considerable attention from local people,

14:03many of whom had already formed the opinion

14:05that Elizabeth Anderson,

14:07James Stock,

14:08and John Rawlings

14:09were guilty.

14:11Twenty years earlier,

14:12Elizabeth Anderson had been brought before the courts,

14:15alongside a man named William Norman,

14:17as both were accused of murdering their neighbour,

14:20Elizabeth Williams,

14:21who had died on the 19th of September 1796,

14:25after suffering several wounds to her head.

14:28This happened in an area known as the Ponds,

14:30and although both were acquitted,

14:32this earlier case bore some striking similarities

14:35to the murder of John Anderson.

14:37So now that Elizabeth was once again

14:39standing accused of murder,

14:41the events of 1796 were remembered,

14:43and inevitably added to the suspicion

14:46that surrounded her.

14:47The principal witness was Ralph Meekins.

14:50He gave evidence about his brief time

14:52working as a farm servant,

14:53and described to the court

14:55what had taken place on the night of the 20th of February.

14:58Thomas White,

14:59and the magistrate Thomas Arndall,

15:01also gave evidence.

15:03Both men were neighbours of Mr Anderson,

15:05and were familiar with the property

15:07and the circumstances surrounding the crime.

15:09Thomas White told the court

15:11about the fierce dogs kept at the farm,

15:13and explained why he believed

15:15it would have been extremely difficult

15:16for a stranger to approach the house

15:18without being detected.

15:20Magistrate Thomas Arndall added

15:22that he had heard the couple argue

15:24on many occasions.

15:26Another witness was Mr John Trussell,

15:28who worked on a neighbouring farm.

15:30He too testified to the turbulent relationship

15:32between Mr and Mrs Anderson,

15:34and said that in December of 1815,

15:36he had personally intervened

15:38to prevent Elizabeth from stabbing her husband

15:40with a kitchen knife.

15:42The combined physical evidence

15:44and witness testimonies

15:45painted a clear picture for the court.

15:48John Anderson had been struck

15:49and strangled in his bedroom,

15:51before his body was dragged towards the creek.

15:54The supposed break-in

15:55appeared to have been nothing more

15:57than a clumsy attempt

15:58to disguise what had happened,

15:59and create the impression

16:01that an intruder had entered the property.

16:03There was also the fact

16:04that James Stock had washed blood from his hands,

16:06and his hat had been found crushed

16:08near the place

16:09where Mr Anderson's body had been left.

16:11He had also made his confession

16:13to Ralph Meekins.

16:14Once the prosecution had closed its case,

16:17the three prisoners were given

16:18the opportunity to present their defence.

16:21This consisted largely of witnesses

16:23who were called to speak

16:24about their character and reputation.

16:26The evidence and arguments

16:27concluded shortly before

16:29five o'clock in the afternoon,

16:30when the court retired

16:31to consider its verdict.

16:33After about an hour,

16:34the judges returned to announce

16:36that they found

16:37Elizabeth Anderson

16:38and James Stock guilty.

16:40However,

16:41they found John Rawlings

16:42to be not guilty,

16:43and he was immediately discharged.

16:46For Elizabeth Anderson

16:47and James Stock,

16:48the verdict meant

16:49that there was only one outcome.

16:51The court pronounced

16:52the sentence of death upon them,

16:54and they were condemned

16:55to be executed

16:56on a day and a place

16:57to be determined

16:58by His Excellency,

16:59the Governor

17:00and Commander-in-Chief.

17:01The sentence also contained

17:03a grim final provision.

17:04After their execution,

17:06their bodies were to be handed over

17:08for dissection and examination

17:10on Friday, the 19th of July, 1816.

17:13Elizabeth Anderson

17:14and James Stock were hanged.

17:18Hello, everyone,

17:20and thank you so much for listening.

17:22As usual,

17:23please leave any comments

17:25or feedback you may have,

17:26and I hope to see you all again

17:28in the next

17:29brief

17:29case.

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