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Frances
Lydia Alice KNORR
A.K.A.: "The Baby Farming Murderess"
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: "Baby farmer"
Number of victims: 2 +
Date of murders: 1891 - 1893
Date of arrest: August 1893
Date of birth: December 10, 1868
Victims profile:
Children
Method of murder:
Strangulation
Location: Brunswick,
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Status:
Executed by hanging
at the Old Melbourne Gaol on January 15, 1894
During the 1890s depression jobs were scarce, there
was no state welfare and it was difficult to avoid becoming involved
in petty crime. When Rudolph Knorr was sent to prison in February 1892
for selling furniture being bought on hire purchase, his wife Frances
was left pregnant and penniless. She managed by 'baby farming' -
looking after children whose mothers could not care for them.
In September 1892 the bodies of three babies were
discovered in Brunswick. Frances was arrested and sent for trial in
December. The Weekly Times described the 23-year old woman as 'white
and careworn'. She probably suffered from epilepsy. The public was
deeply divided when she was sentenced to be executed. The hangman,
Thomas Jones, committed suicide two days before the event. His wife
had threatened to leave him if he hanged Mrs Knorr. Nevertheless,
Frances Knorr hanged on 15 January 1894. This was the first execution
of a woman in Victoria since 1863.
Frances Knorr found little support either among
newspapers of the day or among government officials, for they had all
come to believe in the deterrent effect of capital punishment. Her
execution was intended as a warning to other wayward women. The city's
health officer, Dr Neil, told a royal commission in 1893 that, of
about 500 post-mortems he had performed on child bodies, more than
half indicated murder.
Vic.gov.au
Frances Lydia Alice Knorr (10 December 1868
- 15 January 1894) was known as the Baby Farming Murderess. She
was found guilty of strangling two infants and hanged on Monday 15
January 1894.
Frances Knorr was born as Minnie Thwaites in
London, England in 1868 and emigrated to Sydney, Australia in 1887.
Initially she worked as a domestic servant and married Randolph Knorr,
a German immigrant. She later had an affair with one Edward Thompson
and soon afterwards moved to Melbourne. The short lived affair was not
successful and Minnie had to find a means to support herself and her
daughter.
Baby farming
In February 1892, Australia was in the midst of a
depression and jobs were scarce when Rudolph Knorr was sent to prison
for selling furniture he had bought on hire purchase. Pregnant and
penniless, Frances decided to set up business as a child minder, and
moved around Melbourne frequently using both her maiden and married
names. Frances Knorr strangled some of the babies she could not place
elsewhere or sell to childless couples. While she was living on
Moreland Road in Melbourne, she buried two of her victims in the
garden. Knorr then moved back to Sydney and returned to her husband.
Arrest
The new tenant at the Moreland Road residence
discovered the body of a baby girl while preparing a garden bed.
Police dug up the rest of the garden and discovered a boy's body as
well. The police soon traced them to Knorr. When they arrested her,
she was about to give birth to her second child. She told the
arresting officer, Detective Keating, "I know what you have come for".
While awaiting trial she wrote a letter to her former lover, Edward
Thompson, asking him to manufacture some evidence for her defence.
Thompson's mother surrendered the letter to the police.
Trial
Knorr came to trial on April 11, 1893, charged only
with the murder of the girl. The letter to Thompson was presented by
the Crown as evidence. The letter was worded to implicate Thompson in
the murders, but was deemed pure fabrication.
Knorr gave a statement herself from the witness box
and admitted that she had buried the babies in Moreland Road but
claiming that they had died of natural causes. The Crown however
demonstrated that they had been strangled with a tape and that the
neck of the little boy had been compressed to less than half its
normal size. The trial lasted five days and resulted in a guilty
verdict. As the death sentence was mandatory and as Judge Holroyd
passed it, Knorr sobbed, "God help my poor mother! God help my poor
babies!". She was taken back to the Old Melbourne Gaol to await
execution.
Although Frances found little support among the
newspapers of the day, the public was deeply divided on her sentence.
Thomas Jones, the state's hangman, committed suicide two days before
the execution after his wife threatened to leave him if he hanged
Frances.
Execution
She was a model and penitent prisoner in the
condemned cell and spent her time singing hymns and praying. She also
made a written confession on her last day. "Placed as I am now within
a few hours of my death, I express a strong desire that this statement
be made public, with the hope that my fall will not only be a warning
to others, but also act as a deterrent to those who are perhaps
carrying on the same practice. I now desire to state that upon the
charges known in evidence as Number 1 & 2 babies, I confess to be
guilty".
Her execution was at 10:00am on Monday 15 January
1894. Her last words were recorded as: "Yes, the Lord is with me! I do
not fear what men may do to me, for I have peace, perfect peace!" When
the trap door was released, she dropped seven feet, six inches. Death
was recorded as "instantaneous". Her death mask is on display at the
Old Melbourne Gaol.
1893 Welfare Commission
Australia was in severe depression from 1873 to
1896 and with no state welfare, women in particular faced a hard life.
The diaries of John Castieau, governor of Old Melbourne Gaol from 1869
to 1884 indicates that as children were permitted to stay with their
mothers, it was a common practice for a pregnant woman to commit a
crime so that she could have her delivery in the gaol and be cared
for. During the 1893 commission Melbourne's public health officer
testified that the post mortems he had performed on over 500 children
who had died indicated that more than half had been murdered.
Wikipedia.org
Knorr, Frances Lydia
Alice (Minnie) (1867–1894)
By Kathy Laster
Frances Lydia Alice (Minnie) Knorr (1867-1894),
baby-farmer, was born on 6 November 1867 at Hoxton New Town,
Middlesex, England, second daughter of William Sutton Thwaites,
tailor, and his wife Frances Janet, née Robin. William became a
respectable hat-maker at Chelsea, London. After at least one affair
with a military man, young Frances (known as 'Minnie') migrated to
Australia, reaching Sydney in the Abyssinia in 1887. Initially
in domestic service, she became a waitress and on 2 November 1889 at
St Philip's Church of England married Rudolph Knorr, a German-born
waiter (and swindler). They moved to Melbourne. After the birth of
their daughter in 1892, during the financial depression, Rudi was
sentenced to a gaol term in Adelaide for selling off the family's
partially paid-for furniture.
Left to fend for herself and her child, Frances
tried her hand at dressmaking but when this venture failed she stole
money and went back to Melbourne. There she took up with Edward
Thompson, a fishmonger's assistant. When he left her, she turned to
'baby farming'—taking care of usually illegitimate children. Many such
children died in circumstances that led to the belief that they had
been murdered or neglected. Mrs Knorr moved around Melbourne
frequently and when Rudi was released the couple returned to Sydney.
Following the discovery of the corpses of three infants in premises at
Brunswick, Melbourne, that she had occupied, she was arrested and,
after giving birth to a second child on 4 September 1893, brought back
to Melbourne, where she was tried for murder.
The circumstantial case against Knorr maintained
that she was not only promiscuous and deceitful but also a ruthless
racketeer. A more sympathetic reading of the evidence was that she was
an unstable young woman eking out a precarious existence in difficult
times. She had cared for some infants, and returned one to its mother.
In other cases she passed on children to other women, paying them a
lower fee. She made no great profit from any of these enterprises.
The Crown used against her a letter she wrote to
Thompson, attempting to persuade him to obtain false evidence on her
behalf, and she was convicted on 1 December 1893 of the wilful murder
of a female child. Rudi's plea for clemency to the governor claimed
that his wife was an epileptic, given to severe fits that sometimes
led to irrational impulses and long bouts of staring blankly into
space. Despite a petition from the 'Women of Victoria', who prayed
that 'the killing of any woman by any body of men does not accord with
the moral sense of the community', Frances Knorr was hanged at
Pentridge gaol on 15 January 1894. She went to her death singing
'Abide with Me'. Her final words were said to have been, 'The Lord is
with me, I do not fear what man can do unto me, for I have peace,
perfect peace'. In her own hand, but not her idiom, she left a letter
advising the premier how better to regulate baby-farming so as to
protect infant life. She was one of only five women hanged in
Victoria.
Adb.anu.edu.au
Frances
Knorr
By Paul B. Kidd
Melbourne: 1893 - Lots of Questions
In
September 1893, the new tenant of a house in the Melbourne suburb of
Brunswick, decided to turn his backyard into a vegetable garden. As he
was digging, to his horror, just below the surface of the unkempt
backyard he unearthed the decomposing remains of a baby girl. Around
the infant’s neck was a tightened length of rope.
Police
were immediately summoned to the house to examine the find. Neighbors
also pointed out a nearby house where the same tenants had also lived,
and when they dug around the garden there, they found another two
decaying infants, both boys, buried just beneath the surface.
The
previous tenants of both addresses, Rudolph and Frances. Knorr, had
recently moved to Sydney and weren’t hard to find. They had moved to
Brisbane Street in the suburb of Surry Hills and were picked up by
police within days of the discovery of the three tiny bodies and
extradited to Melbourne to face the authorities.
An
autopsy would reveal that the little girl had died of strangulation
and the two boys had been suffocated. The Knorrs had a lot of
questions to answer.
Police
learned that Frances Knorr was born Minnie Thwaites in Chelsea,
London, of a highly respected, God-fearing family. An unruly child and
a lustful teenager of many conquests, she was sent from the family
home to do her best in Australia and arrived in Sydney at age 19 in
1887.
She
changed her name to Frances and fell in love with and married Rudolph
Knorr, a German waiter whom she met while working as a domestic
servant. Rudolph was well known to police in both Melbourne and Sydney
as a petty criminal.
The
Knorrs had a daughter named Gladys and after a series of
misadventures, in which Rudolph did 18 months in Pentridge for fraud
and Frances had an affair with an Edward Thompson and even lived with
him for a time until he cast her aside, they reunited and turned to
the new industry of “child minding.”
It
wasn’t hard to do. Any woman with a child or children of her own who
could get away with claiming to be a nurse could take babies in on a
long-term, full-time basis. The usual deal was that the mother would
pay an initial down payment of between five and 20 pounds and then pay
a smaller monthly payment. In return her baby would be cared for and
the mother would have access to her baby at prearranged visiting
times.
The
trouble with such loose arrangements was that often the mother would
turn up to find that the child minder had taken her down payment and
gone missing, presumably having sold the child, and numerous others,
to childless couples for an extortionate sum and set up business again
in another suburb or state.
Damning Evidence
The
child minding industry became notorious. In Victoria in 1893 there
were more than 60 inquests into babies that had been found dead or
had died through neglect. More than 20 of these cases were treated as
murder, but the perpetrators were usually long gone and no one was
charged with a capital offense. Many more infants had gone missing
without trace, presumed sold.
Frances
Knorr was known at numerous addresses throughout Melbourne during her
child minding career and didn’t stay in one place too long. There were
many mothers who wanted to have a word with her about her missing baby
but were too frightened to report it to the police for fear of being
exposed as a single mother. And it now seemed highly likely that the
babies that Frances Knorr couldn’t farm out or sell had been murdered.
As they
arrived to arrest her, Sydney police found Frances Knorr in bed about
to give birth to her second child. After it was born in custody, the
Knorrs were taken under armed escort aboard the steamer Burrumbeet to
Melbourne.
The
inquest into the death of one of the baby boys found in the backyard
in Brunswick, Isaac Marks, was held in Melbourne Morgue in October
1893. Among the 33 witnesses called was a 13-year-old nursemaid who
had worked for Frances Knorr on and off for several years. Her
evidence was damning. She recalled Frances Knorr borrowing a spade
from a neighbour and then complaining that the front garden was too
rocky to dig in and that she would have to dig in the back garden
instead.
The
doctor who examined the deceased infant said that a tape that had been
drawn around his neck was the width of a sovereign coin, thus limiting
the breathing capacity and causing the baby to suffocate.
The
inquest heard evidence that Frances Knorr had so many dealings with
unwed mothers who were reluctant to come forward, swapping babies and
farming babies out to other child-minding centers at reduced rates,
that it was almost impossible to keep track of what was going on. She
had even pretended that her own baby, Gladys, belonged to another
mother and that she was minding the girl for her.
After
the inquest was held into the death of each of the three tiny bodies
found in her backyard, Frances Knorr was charged with three counts of
murder. But even in the face of indisputable evidence, she steadfastly
denied murdering the babies or having anything to do with burying
them.
At her
trial the prosecution was swift to play its trump card and produce a
letter that Frances Knorr had written from her cell in Old Melbourne
Jail to Edward Thompson, the lover who had cast her aside, asking him
to fabricate certain evidence on her behalf. The letter was given to
police by Thompson’s mother.
The
letter was also a crude attempt to incriminate Thompson and have
authorities believe that he was in some way responsible for the deaths
and burials of the children. Frances Knorr wrote to Thompson urging
him to pay a particular man and woman money to say that they had
buried Knorr’s and Thompson’s child, which had died of consumption.
She said in the letter that the woman would confirm this in court and
clear both of them of any wrongdoing.
Frances Find God in
the End
Thompson denied any knowledge of such involvement, and the police
believed him. When this ploy failed, Frances Knorr dramatically
changed her evidence in the middle of the trial. She admitted to
burying the babies in the backyard, saying they had died of natural
causes. This was a contradiction of the autopsies, which proved that
they had definitely been murdered.
At the
end of her five-day trial Frances Knorr was found guilty and sentenced
to death by hanging. As she sat back in the dock sobbing at the
sentence, she turned to Edward Thompson, who was sitting in the court
and screamed: “God forgive you for your sins Ted. God help my poor
mother. God help my poor babies.”
In the
days leading up to her hanging Frances Knorr embraced God and finally
confessed to her sins of murder. “Placed as I am now within a few
hours of my death, I express a strong desire that this statement be
made public, with the hope that my fall will not only be a warning to
others, but also act as a deterrent to those who are perhaps carrying
on the same practice. I now desire to state that upon the two charges
known in evidence as Number 1 and Number 2 babies, I confess to be
guilty.”
Although the man who was appointed to hang Frances Knorr, Thomas
Jones, had a record of sending 15 men to their deaths on the gallows,
he wasn’t too keen about the prospect of hanging his first woman, who
also happened to be the first woman to be hung in Victoria in 30
years, so he took to the bottle.
Two
days before Frances Knorr’s execution date, Jones committed suicide by
cutting his own throat while in a drunken stupor.
But the
hanging was scheduled to go ahead with a new hangman despite the
desperate pleas of hundreds of Melbourne citizens for a reprieve on
the grounds that it was inhuman to hang a woman and mother.
On the
Sunday night on the eve of her hanging -- at 10 a.m. the following
morning on Jan.15, 1894 -- a crowd of 200 protesters gathered outside
Old Melbourne Jail and sang hymns through the night and petitioned for
a last-minute reprieve. But the government stood its ground.
As the
execution party reached the scaffold to await the arrival of the
condemned woman, they heard hymns being sung from her cell in a
strong, yet plaintiff voice. Frances Knorr had been singing hymns
since dawn and continued to do so as she walked the few paces from her
cell to the scaffold unaided, was tied hands and feet and had the
noose placed around her neck.
She
only stopped singing in the last few seconds to say in an unbroken
voice: “Yes. The Lord is with me. I do not fear what men may do to me,
for I have peace, perfect peace.”
Then Knorr, killer of
defenseless babies entrusted into her care, dropped the two and a half
meters to her instantaneous death.
After
Knorr was hung, authorities assessed that, given the period of time
that she was in the child minding business and the amount of women who
clandestinely came forward later and told police that they had given
her their babies, it is believed that she could have murdered as many
as 13 infants.
TruTV.com
Frances KNORR
The practice of baby farming was also exported to Australia. Frances
Knorr had been born Minnie Thwaites in London in 1868 and emigrated to
Sydney, Australia in 1887.
Initially she worked as a domestic servant and met Randolph Knoor who
was German. She soon became bored with him and had an affair with one
Edward Thompson and soon afterwards moved to Melbourne. The short
lived affair was not successful and Minnie had to find a means to
support herself and her daughter. She decided to set up business as a
child minder and moved around Melbourne frequently using both her
maiden and married names.
Like Mrs. Dyer, Knoor had strangled some of the babies she could not
place elsewhere or sell on to childless couples. While she was living
in Moreland Road Melbourne she had buried two of her charges in the
garden and the body of one of these, a little girl, was discovered by
the next tenant. Police dug up the rest of the garden and discovered a
boy's body as well.
Knorr had moved back to Sydney by this time and was back living with
her husband. The police soon traced them however and when they
arrested her she was about to give birth to her second child. She told
the arresting officer, Detective Keating "I know what you have come
for". While awaiting trial she wrote a letter to her former lover,
Edward Thompson, asking him to manufacture some evidence for her
defence.
She came to trial on April 11th 1893, charged with the murder of the
little girl only. The letter to Thompson was presented by the Crown,
having been handed to the police by his mother, and was a damning
piece of evidence. It also tried to implicate Thompson in the murders
and seems to have been pure fabrication.
She gave a statement herself from the witness box and admitted that
she had buried the babies in Moreland Road but claiming that they had
died of natural causes. The Crown however demonstrated that they had
been strangled with a tape and that the neck of the little boy had
been compressed to less than half its normal size.
The trial lasted five days and resulted in a guilty verdict. As in
Britain the death sentence was mandatory and as Judge Holroyd passed
it, she sobbed "God help my poor mother! God help my poor babies!" She
was taken back to the Old Melbourne Gaol to await execution. She was a
model and penitent prisoner in the condemned cell and spent her time
singing hymns and praying. She also made a written confession on her
last day. "Placed as I am now within a few hours of my death, I
express a strong desire that this statement be made public, with the
hope that my fall will not only be a warning to others, but also act
as a deterrent to those who are perhaps carrying on the same
practice." "I now desire to state that upon the charges known in
evidence as Number 1 & 2 babies, I confess to be guilty".
Her execution was set for 10.00 a.m. on Monday 15th January 1894
A
few minutes before 10, the witnesses were brought into the yard and
stood opposite the gallows waiting for the arrival of the sheriff.
From where they stood in silence they could hear Knorr singing a hymn
in her cell, and some of them were visibly affected by this.
The condemned cell opened onto the scaffold, and immediately opposite
was another compartment in which the executioner and his assistants,
wearing false beards and spectacles, remained concealed until their
services were required. They then entered the cell and pinioned her,
before leading her onto the scaffold. Her appearance had changed
almost beyond recognition since she received her sentence, but she was
able to walk onto the trap with a firm and steady step, without
support. Dr Shields, the medical officer of the gaol, attended her and
she appeared to derive comfort from the encouragement he gave.
Stepping on the trap, she stood quietly while her dress was being tied
round her ankles, and then the sheriff asked if she had anything to
say. In a clear and unbroken voice she said: "Yes, the Lord is with
me! I do not fear what men may do to me, for I have peace, perfect
peace!" The noose was then adjusted, the trap released, and she fell 7
ft 6 ins. Death was recorded as being "instantaneous".
Crimes against
infants
By Allan L Peters
The tragic death of baby William Manifold at Port
Adelaide in 1873 disclosed no crimes, but shed light on the brutal
practice of baby-farming.
William was born in the Adelaide Destitute Asylum
on May 24, 1873. He and his mother, single woman Harriet Manifold,
remained at the asylum for nine weeks after his birth.
After nine weeks, Harriet and William were forced
to leave the sanctuary of the asylum. William’s father, John Flaherty,
had not been heard from since before the birth of the infant, and had
contributed nothing toward his support. It later emerged that he was
serving a jail sentence for an assault on his wife.
Harriet had no family besides a stepmother and two
brothers. It seemed they were either unwilling or unable to help the
young mother and her child.
In desperation, Harriet obtained a position as a
general servant for eight shillings a week and fostered William out to
a Mrs Godfrey of Port Adelaide.
Mrs Godfrey had several other children, but agreed
to care for William for the sum of seven shillings a week, and allowed
Harriet to visit him once a month.
William died at Mrs Godfrey’s place just four
months later.
At a subsequent inquest into William’s death,
several of Mrs Godfrey’s neighbours gave evidence. Many said the child
always appeared clean and well cared for. However, his bed was nothing
more than an upturned box with a bag of chaff as a mattress and a
shawl for a blanket.
Mrs Godfrey fed the baby from a bottle, which she
said contained a boiled mixture of milk, water and flour. The
neighbours said the baby was often seen in the street in the care of a
girl of about nine or 10, and that sometimes that girl placed the baby
into the lap of a another child – aged about three – while she went
off to play.
One neighbour said she sent the older girl home on
a particularly cold day to get a shawl for William.
In any case, all witnesses maintained that the baby
seemed to have been well cared for. Yet, under questioning, two
admitted they had offered to take over the care of the baby and to
give it a nice, soft bed and a change of diet.
Another witness said that, on at least two
occasions, she alerted Mrs Godfrey to the fact that the milk she was
feeding William was sour. She said Mrs Godfrey then immediately threw
it away and sent for some fresh milk.
When William took ill, Mrs Godfrey called in a
doctor, at whose suggestion she changed his diet to one of fresh milk.
However, William continued to weaken, became emaciated and died.
The doctor said he had diagnosed William as
suffering from atrophy, and that while many people believed flour,
milk, and water to be good for infants, he considered it to be
injurious. He said that when he visited William the day before he
died, he found plenty of milk in the house, but that William was
unable to digest anything.
On the evidence presented, the Coroner’s jury found
that William had died from natural causes, and attached no blame to
Mrs Godfrey.
As tragic and avoidable as William’s death might
have been, baby-farming was yet in its infancy. It had not then
reached its vilest aspect, and far more horrific cases would surface.
In a somewhat similar case in Western Australia in
1907, East Perth woman, Alice Mitchell, was charged with the murder of
five-month-old Ethel Booth. Ethel, who had been in Mitchell’s care,
was proven to have been starved to death. Evidence showed that of the
32 infants Mitchell had in her care over a five-year period, 29 had
died. The same physician attended most of the babies, and most of the
deaths were attributed to marasmus (wasting illness).
Mitchell was subsequently found guilty of the
manslaughter of Ethel Booth and accordingly sentenced to five years’
imprisonment with hard labour.
In a Sydney case in 1892, 50-year-old John Makin
was executed, while his wife, 47-year-old Sarah, had her death
sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
They had each been found guilty of murder in its
most vile and repulsive form. The court heard that under the guise of
taking infants into their home to be cared for and given “a mother’s
love and attention,” children were murdered and buried in the yard “as
you would the carcass of a dog”.
The promised “mother’s love and attention” was, of
course, not freely given. The mother of the usually illegitimate child
paid for the service, and continued to pay long after the child had
died. When a mother called to make payment and to visit her child,
various excuses were offered to explain the child’s absence. After a
while, the Makins moved house and left no forwarding address.
Though the full extent of the operation has
probably never been revealed, the bodies of at least eight babies were
discovered buried in the yards of various houses in which the Makin
family had lived.
A Melbourne baby-farming case in 1893 had an SA
connection. A year before her arrest in connection with the case, the
chief offender, 26-year-old Frances Knorr, born Minnie Thwaites, had
spent time around the Port Adelaide area.
During her time there, the SA Police sought to
interview her in connection with at least two minor crimes. They
described her as: “...age about 25 years, height 5ft, 2in (157.4 cm),
fair complexion, very stout build, light brown hair, very large
peculiar-shaped mouth, very talkative, and speaks with a lisp.”
Like the Makins, Knorr ran a clandestine
baby-minding service for destitute and single mothers, with fees paid
in advance. It was thought she sold some of the babies to childless
couples. And, those she could not sell she strangled and buried in the
gardens of the various houses she rented. This proved to have been the
fate of at least three of her infant charges.
After her conviction, and faced with the
inevitability of her execution, came a suddenly renewed sense of
religion. Knorr confessed her guilt in a written statement. It read:
“Placed as I am now within a few hours of my death, I express a strong
desire that this statement be made public, with the hope that my fall
will not only be a warning to others, but also act as a deterrent to
those who are perhaps carrying on the same practice."
