ON THIS DAY – November 7, 1904
Detective-sergeant O’Donnell and Detective Carey arrested in Canada place— a small street running between Cardigan and Madeline streets, Carlton, Melbourne — a young woman named Maude or Margaret Anne Woods, and charged her with vagrancy. That charge, however, was laid only to secure her identification with a girl named Maude Woods, who was wanted in Sydney on a charge of murder.
She was alleged to have murdered her 10 days old son on November 7, 1903. Senior constable F Allen arrived from Sydney, and identified the accused, and the charge of murder was then preferred against her. The woman has made a confession, giving the whole history of the crime. The story is one of dreadful callousness from beginning to end. Her statement is that on November 7 she threw the child over the fence into Ah Sang’s backyard, but then went again in search of it. She then put her hand over its mouth, and held it by the throat until it was dead. She put the body in a box, and left it in the yard all night, spending that night with her paramour. Next day she removed the body from the box and pushed it under the house (which is built on low piles) as far as she could, and the body lay there for nearly three months. In the end of January An Sang and a fellow countryman named Ah Hung were clearing away weeds from under the house, and came upon the body of the child. They drew it out, put it into a bag, and threw the bag into Botany River. Soon afterwards they came to Melbourne.
The photograph which she sent to Sydney was taken in Melbourne, and the child in her arms was one which she borrowed for the occasion from a friend, who was living with a Chinese in Commercial-lane, of Bourke street. The accused does not look more than 19 years. She is a girl below medium height, with brown hair and blue eyes. She was brought before the City Court, Melbourne, and was then taken back to Sydney