“It resonates with troubling themes that echo down the long halls of history …”
Kenton Stevens
3 Shining lights
Venue: Digital Fringe
Melbourne
Dates: to 18 Oct 2026 (as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival)
In a week when arguments and counter-arguments about capital punishment circle after a woman sentenced to death in a southern US state, and suffering the barely imaginable fate of a failed execution, survives; it seems timely to be guided through the history of the executions of women in Australia.
This is the offering of Victorian author and presenter Deb Robinson. In Her Words, is Robinson’s exploration of the five women who were executed, here in Victoria, between 1863 and 1951. These were five of the 25 women executed throughout Australian history (whose broader stories are explored in Robinson’s book of the same name).
Taking the form of a to-camera monologue, or lecture, Robinson steps us through the chronology of events from the execution of Elizabeth Scott at Melbourne Gaol in 1863, to that of Jean Lee in 1951 at Pentridge Prison in Melbourne. The facts of the women’s cases are set out, along with how their stories were reported and viewed by society. Most crucially, In Her Words draws out a broader context, looking at their lives and experiences as women in their times, through a wider lens.
Threads and themes quickly emerge, and they are all too familiar and resonant today. Generational poverty. Family and domestic violence. Trauma. Social instability. Sexual assault. Coercive control. Isolation. Mental illness. And many others. Yet, as Robinson points out, in their cases, and through the judgement of their peers, the defining issues were rarely, if ever, these damaging and oppressive social factors that weighed heavily on their lives. Instead, they were often questions of morality. Whether these women fell from the social expectations of womanhood. Whether they lived up to what a ‘good woman’ should be. Instead, we hear about ‘the wrong kind of woman’ who ‘did not behave as a woman should’. ‘A monster’. ‘The Black Widow’. ‘An unnatural mother’. And the fascination with ‘a glamorous criminal’.
Such Victorian-era labelling may seem outrageous and outdated, until we consider depictions of women like Kathleen Folbigg or Lindy Chamberlain, whose behaviours and presentation were subject to deep judgement, yet whose convictions were overturned. Well might we wonder how much these types of social judgements have shifted.
Robinson clearly points out that her work—a work of history— is not an attempt to excuse murder. Horrific crimes are horrific crimes. Rather, it is to pursue honest remembrance. To reflect more fully the women and their lives. When often what has been left by history, or remembered, if anything at all, are flashes of sensationalist reporting, or perspectives offered almost solely by men (remembering that in the courts of their times, judges and lawyers were men, as were the jurors). Robinson offers the viewer an opportunity to understand a little of these women’s lives. The struggles they faced. The choices (or desperate lack of them) that confronted them. Some of the things they experienced.
As a work of history, it is heavy on facts (albeit in an effort to balance and broaden our understanding of these women and their circumstances). It tends toward a didactic style. Yet, it is a thread well worth following. It resonates with troubling themes that echo down the long halls of history. It feeds directly into contemporary challenges around gendered violence, intergenerational inequality, gender disparity and much more.
It would be a powerful statement were an arts funding body to support the development of works like this, enabling additional creative capacity, perspectives and ideas, to help these stories reach wider and broader audiences.
That these women’s stories, and what we might learn from them, not be lost.
Elizabeth Scott, age 23.
Frances Knorr, age 24.
Martha Needle, age 31.
Emma Williams, age 30.
Jean Lee, age 31.
Kenton Stevens, Theatre Now
