We know that depresso toys are not new, but can you imagine selling them at a murder trial?! That is exactly what happened at the trial of Minnie Dean.
Originally born in Scotland, but later moving to New Zealand, Dean was a baby-farmer and it was this job that led to her being the only woman to be hung in New Zealand's history. Baby farming involved caring for children for a sum of money so parents (often single mothers) could earn enough to survive - sadly often in work-houses (a la Fantine in Les Mis), though the term early on covered adoption and fostering too.
Sadly, due to the low amount that were charged for the care of these children, it was more profitable for baby-farmers to have a dead baby than one that needed continued care. Some were neglected, and some were murdered. This practice happened around Britain and its colonies, including New Zealand.
Due to the high rate of infant mortality in New Zealand at the time, many of the infants in Dean’s care died of illness, though it was an instance of one child drowning that drew suspicion and mistrust of Dean. People began to suspect that she was killing the children in her care in order to pocket the extra money from the desperate parents who had given her their babies, though record keeping and a lack of legislation made it difficult to prove that children in her care were going missing.
Her horrible career unravelled when she was seen boarding a train with a baby and a hatbox, but later seen disembarking with only the hatbox - no baby to be seen. Porters at the trial station later said that the hatbox was especially heavy. A woman soon came forward claiming that she had given her granddaughter to Dean, but Dean could not produce the child when the woman and police came searching.
After digging in her garden, they found three bodies of small children, including Eva, with her cause of death as suffocation. One of the other babies, Dorothy, was determined to have died from a laudanum overdose. She was charged with murder of all three children, though her defence lawyer argued that they had all died accidentally and she only buried them due to the negative publicity and reputation she had for previous incidents.
On the 21st of June 1985, she was found guilty of Dorothy’s murder and sentenced to death. According to Dean’s own accounts, she cared for 28 children, six died in her care, five were healthy, happy, and alive when she was raided, and one had been reclaimed by their parents. There are around 14 children unaccounted for, according to her own records.
The story of the hatbox on the train went viral, or whatever the 19th century version of viral is, and during her trial people started selling dolls in miniature hat boxes outside the courthouse. The legend says that she would shove pins through the hat box to kill the babies… but that sounds just like a horrible urban legend and there is no evidence of that really happening.
How do you feel about merch at a murder trial?
