Falling (concerning Minnie Dean’s final journey, 1895)

(Radio series and podcasts: 4 episodes)

Written for radio by Karen Zelas, 2022 
Director: Yvonne Martin
Produced and recorded: Nicki Reece and Plains FM 96
Featuring Eilish Moran as Minnie Dean
Recorded by Nicki Reece, Plains FM
Written & produced by Karen Zelas

Falling is a radio drama in which Minnie Dean is brought to life by actor Eilish Moran. Listeners become party to Minnie’s thoughts and feelings, hear her wrestling with her past and present circumstances and the injustice she believes has befallen her. The drama allows us to explore the mind of a person who knows she is about to die, perhaps wrongly convicted.  

Radio series and podcast episodes: https://plainsfm.org.nz/prog/falling
from 18 August 2022.

To learn more about the creative team behind this production, click here.

Coming soon!
Video clip
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4

A Short Biography of Minnie Dean

Minnie Dean was born Williamina McCulloch in Greenock, Scotland, on 1 September 1844 into an upper working class family. Her father John McCulloch was an engine driver. The family lost three infant daughters and the mother, Lizzie (neé Swan), died of cancer in 1857 after a prolonged illness. Minnie’s father remarried two years later, to another Lizzie. (Minnie’s older sister was also called Lizzie.) By 1861, Minnie was no longer living at home.

In 1863, Minnie arrived in Invercargill, New Zealand, at the home of her maternal aunt, Christina (née Swan), known locally as Granny Kelly, who, with her husband, was one of the first settlers of Invercargill. There is no formal record of Minnie between these dates. It is thought she may have been in Tasmania. She arrived in New Zealand with one young daughter, Ellen, and pregnant with another (Isabella).

Minnie worked as a governess and school teacher, with the support of Aunt Christina, until she married Charles Dean in 1872. No record has been discovered of her having been previously married as she claimed. The marriage of Minnie and Charles was childless and they adopted Margaret Cameron around 1880. The year before, Ellen had married a landowner farmer, and in 1882 seemingly drowned her infants and herself in their well.

The financial circumstances of Charles and Minnie took a downturn from early in the marriage, until in 1884 when Charles became bankrupt and Minnie responsible for making ends meet. Conveniently, the law changed in New Zealand in 1884 with the passage of The Married Women’s Property Act, and Minnie expanded her business of caring for and sometimes adopting, unwanted children. She adopted Esther Wallis to assist her with the infants and young children. Minnie soon became labelled as a ‘baby-farmer’, attracting the attention of the local policeman, Constable Hans Peter Rasmussen. Deaths and disappearances of some young children in her care increased concern, although inquests cast no suspicion upon her. Deaths of infants and young children were commonplace in Victorian times, even in intact caring families, and reached over 90% for infants placed in institutional care.

Eventually, after police discovered the bodies of two recently deceased infants and a skeleton in the garden at their home, Minnie Dean and Charles Dean were arrested on 9 May 1895. The charges against Charles were subsequently withdrawn. Further inquests followed and a magisterial hearing, then on 18 June 1895 the trial of Minnie Dean commenced in the Invercargill Supreme Court before Mr Justice Joshua Strange Williams. There was wide newspaper coverage of both the inquests and the trial and these provide the most complete record of proceedings. Minnie was convicted and sentenced to death five days later.

The appeal was unsuccessful, as was the plea for clemency from the then Governor George Grey, and Minnie Dean was executed in Invercargill Prison on 12 August 1895, the first and last woman hanged in New Zealand.

‘Baby Farming’ and the Care of Children

What is meant by the term ‘baby farming’ and why was there such a strong reaction against it in mid-19^th Century New Zealand?

People have always cared for each other’s children to some degree, usually within extended family groups. But in the 1800s, Victorian morality and economic hardship resulted in an increasing number of unwanted children being placed outside their families, either temporarily or permanently.

At that time, it was almost impossible for a young unmarried woman to care alone for a child, due to a combination of poverty and bigotry or false morality. Some women were obliged to make their newborn ‘disappear’; others managed to make part-time care arrangements while they worked. While many infants were adequately cared for, some were tragically neglected by their caretakers, even murdered for fiscal gain.

The infant mortality rate was universally high in the 19^th Century, even in intact, well-to-do families. Multiple factors contributed: malnutrition, lack of understanding of transmission of illnesses, poverty and lack of nutrition, lack of hygiene, no vaccines, few effective medical treatments.

Breast fed infants had the best chance of survival. For those infants banished to institutional care, the mortality rate rose to above 90%.

Women who provided a service by caring for infants and children in their homes might best be compared with present day foster parents. It was the latter part of the 20th Century before it was thought ‘safe’ to recompense foster parents for caring for children, for fear the payment of money would risk exploitation or harm of children.

What type of ‘carer’ was Minnie Dean and what motivated her to take children into her home? You be the judge.