page_title: Capital punishment in New Zealand
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Capital punishment in New Zealand / History
caption_attribution_description: On 12 August 1895 Minnie Dean was hanged at Invercargill gaol after being found guilty of infanticide, becoming the only woman ever to have been executed in New Zealand. Scottish-born Dean lived in Winton, Southland, with her husband Charles Dean, where she looked after unwanted children for payment. Known as ‘baby-farming’, this practice reflected the lack of socially-acceptable alternatives for women having unwanted babies, and Dean took in many children throughout the 1880s. However several of the children died while in her care, prompting police surveillance of her activities. In May 1895 Dean was seen boarding a train carrying a young baby and a hat-box, and disembarking later carrying only the hat-box. Police later unearthed the freshly buried bodies of two babies and the skeleton of an older boy in Dean's garden. A coroner’s inquest of one of the dead babies, Dorothy Edith Carter, declared that she had "met her death… through poison administered by Minnie Dean." Dean was subsequently tried for infanticide on 18 June, and despite the defence arguing Carter's death was accidental, on 21 June Dean was found guilty of murder and executed a few weeks later. The execution of a woman was an unusual course of action to be taken by the New Zealand Supreme Court. Before Dean's trial and execution, three other women had been tried and sentenced to death, all in relation to child murder, but in each case those sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Public interest in the case was high, with souvenirs of the hat-box notoriously being sold outside the courthouse during her trial. The story of Minnie Dean entered into New Zealand folklore, and the case lead to major advances in New Zealand child welfare legislation, with the passing of the Infant Life Protection Act 1893 and Infant Protection Act 1896. Archives Ref: J1 1895/917
context_page_description: Capital punishment in New Zealand first appeared in a codified form when New Zealand became a British colony in 1840, and it was first employed in 1842. Capital punishment was first abolished for murder in 1941 by the First Labour Government, with all death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, but the succeeding First National Government reinstated it in 1949. Subsequently, public opinion turned against the use of capital punishment and it again was abolished for murder in 1961, and abolished for all crimes, including treason, in 1989. The death penalty was last used in 1957. During the period that it was in effect, 85 people were executed.
context_section_description: The first person to be executed was Wiremu Kīngi Maketū, who was found guilty of murdering five people on Motuarohia Island, in the Bay of Islands. The people killed were Thomas Bull, employed by Elisabeth Roberton, who was also murdered along with her son aged eight, her daughter of two, and a girl of nearly three named Isabella Brind, the natural daughter of one Captain Brind by a Māori woman, the daughter of Rewa, chief of Ngapuhi in that area. Mrs Roberton's husband, Captain John Roberton, had drowned prior in Paroa Bay, just opposite the island. Thomas Bull had a reputation for strength and brutality. He seemed at all times to have made a set at Maketū and had on several occasions struck, thrown, or otherwise maltreated him. Maketū, was unable to defend himself against such an opponent; nor indeed did it conform with his notions of dignity to do so, he being by virtue of his chiefly rank above combat with one who was a servant and whom he therefore regarded on the same plane as a slave. Maketū, therefore, bided his time for revenge. Maketū then killed Thomas Bull in the night with an axe; he then brutally murdered Mrs Roberton, who was shouting abuse at him and then went to murder the two girls (ransacking the house and then burning Mrs Roberton and the two children within it). The boy ran up Pa Hill, where Maketū chased him and threw him off the 200-foot (60 m) cliff. He was sentenced to death by an all-white jury (his defence had wanted a half-white, half-Māori jury) in an Auckland court, and executed on 7 March 1842.
  Nearly all the people executed were men—with the exception of Minnie Dean, found guilty of infanticide in 1895—and all were convicted of murder, except for Hamiora Pere, convicted of treason. However, before Dean's trial, imprisonment and execution, several other women had been found guilty of Infanticide in nineteenth-century New Zealand, but had had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment. These were Caroline Whitting (1872), Phoebe Veitch (1883) and Sarah-Jane and Anna Flannagan (1891).  The last person to be executed was Walter James Bolton, for poisoning his wife, on 18 February 1957.
caption: Death certificate of Minnie Dean. On 12 August 1895, Dean was hanged at Invercargill gaol after being found guilty of infanticide, becoming the only woman ever to have been executed in New Zealand.
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