Elizabeth Scott: The Female Monster
In October 1863, the intelligent, beautiful and mysterious Elizabeth Scott stood in the dock of the Beechworth Courthouse accused of murdering her husband. Beside her in the dock were her co-accused, Julian Cross and her alleged lover, David Gedge.
Elizabeth was painted by the prosecution as a woman who through her feminine wiles had led Gedge and Cross to their doom. The prosecution believed that while Elizabeth had not fired the shot which killed her husband, she had persuaded Gedge and Cross to carry out the murder.
At five o’clock on a Friday afternoon, the jury retired to consider its verdict. Within twenty minutes, they returned. All three defendants were found guilty. Chief Justice, Sir William Stawell then pronounced the death sentence.
Newspapers in 1863 were the only form of media, as we know it today. They were the opinion makers, the arbitrators of all that was good and evil. Rather than elicit public sympathy and support for Elizabeth Scott, they adopted a vitriolic, scornful and censorious attitude. They might have taken a different approach, if Elizabeth had fainted, screamed or cried when Chief Justice Stawell condemned her to death. Instead, she chose to remain impassive. This impassivity was interpreted as indifference, even callousness – to the extent that Beechworth’s local paper, the Ovens and Murray Advertiser called her the female monster.
At nine thirty in the morning of Wednesday 11th November 1863 at Old Melbourne Gaol, Elizabeth Scott stood on the scaffold with Julian Cross and David Gedge. Moments before the hangman released the trapdoor, she turned her hooded face to David and asked, ‘Davey, will you not clear me?’
For an hour after the hanging Elizabeth’s lifeless body swung from the scaffold. Her head and face were grossly swollen. So great had been the effect of the fall, her head was nearly severed from her body.
