So rich is our nation with the history or travesties. Deeply ingrained in our culture, the trails blazed of posterity, the poor and the treacherous, the scandalous and the scandalized, the murderous and the murdered, bloodstained, miscarriages of justice, the stern hand of deliverance. When cultural icon Ned Kelly stood before the noose in Melbourne Jail and chose as his last words, ‘Such is Life’, it seems he spoke not only of his own destiny, but the destinies of those who had gone before him, and the sorrows of those similarly punished. Unwittingly, the corpses of these have become the headstones and footnotes of our history and our nation’s upbringing.
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You will find her name in the index of only very few of our cultural records. But the story of Mary Ann Brownlow has done as much to shape the legacy of Goulburn’s early moments as any other development, political or social, cultural or criminal. On October 11, 1855, a Thursday, Brownlow was hung on the gallows of the Goulburn Jail for the murder of her husband. The details of the case are familiar. The husband, George Moore Brownlow, was by all accounts a waster and a slovenly man. Contemporary reports claimed he was engaged in an affair with a local woman, and that he had begun clandestine efforts to swindle her out of the land left to her by inheritance. It would be easy to construct an image of Ms Brownlow being completely innocent and defenceless, however it is noted in the record of Mr Erol Lea Scarlett that ‘when Mary Ann was pregnant for the third time she began to drink heavily and became the victim of a disordered imagination...’ The frequent arguments between the two were both fuelled substantially by alcohol, and this goes a long way to explaining the lack of clemency allowed by Sir Alfred Stephen in her trial and sentencing.
Whatever the particulars of the crime, the reaction of the citizens of Goulburn to the decidedly gloomy fate of Mrs Brownlow are noteworthy for their feverance. From the passing of the death sentence to the moment of its physical completion, the media and the general public rose great sympathy and pleas for mercy for the condemned woman. From the Goulburn Herald of the day we read “It is hoped that all the circumstances of the case calmly considered that wretched culprit’s frenzy, beyond dispute, which excited her to the commission of the fatal deed - the fact of her only striking one blow, and the sad, most lamentable position of her three orphan children, the youngest not being two months old, will induce the Governor-General to pause, ‘ere he orders this wretched woman to be hurled by a violent death from here to eternity.”
Petitions were signed, and a meeting convened by the citizens raised a sum of money to help hasten the mail coach from Sydney, should there be the slimmest hope of a last minute reprieve. All the while, the object of the furor, awaited her fate patiently and with a polite composure which served only to add volume to the cries in her defence. “...her melancholy winning manner soon procured her the sympathy of all who came in contact with her. She became deeply impressed with the sinfulness of her previous life, and with a firm conviction of the truths of the scripture.”
Indeed, it appears at times that Mrs Brownlow exerted a most emotional hold upon the citizens and the journalists of the day. Reports make frequent mention of her good looks, her interesting countenance, and, a little perversely, the harmony of her voice. This particular dispatch, from the Herald of October 13, 1855, reminds one of Keats, perhaps more than a servant of the fourth estate. “Of course we are also compelled from the circumscribed limits of a newspaper only to cull few flowers hither and thither, but they are all flowers, and tho’ faded like the lily, they are most assuredly this, blooming in an everlasting ‘fluer de lis.”
And so Goulburn, in this time of death, found love? Another almost too surreal twist to this tragic story, is still a point of conjecture among witnesses at the hanging. That as Mrs Brownlow was being led to the wooden structure of her execution, she paused to feed her baby at her breast. Could this be so? I have heard as much that she was actually standing on the platform of the gallows, the hangman paused, his black mask drawing in and out with his breath of anticipation, while she gave her baby its final nourishment from her. Whatever the truth, this is the stuff of legend, and perhaps it is better left at this. The baby died a short time later. After hanging there lifeless for the time prescribed in law, Mrs Brownlow’s body was brought down from the rope, and a procession led her to the soil of St Saviour’s. All Goulburn fell into mourning for some time, the crepe and black curtains throughout the main street hiding the weeping, and the shame.
