Phoebe Veitch

Case record: Phoebe Veitch

Phoebe Veitch died in 1891.

The offence

Phoebe Veitch drowned her four year-old daughter (also named Phoebe Veitch) in the Wanganui River in 1883.

Drowning of daughter (February 1883)

On Monday 26 February 1883, Veitch drowned her four year-old daughter (also named Phoebe Veitch) in the Wanganui River.

A contemporary newspaper account stated that the body of the younger Phoebe Veitch was found on the Wanganui River beach on the morning of 27 February by Arthur Fitchett, a telegraph linesperson.

Investigation

Dr Earle gave medical testimony.

Dr Earle noted that the drowned child was the product of a cross-cultural relationship between persons of Chinese and European descent.

Mrs Eliza Blight testified.

Mrs Blight noted that Mrs Phoebe Veitch had two children—Albert and “Flossie” (Phoebe)—and that Mrs Blight stated in court that Mrs Veitch had been having difficulty bringing up both of her children and had intended to send her daughter to Fielding, a northern settlement in the Manawatu district in the North Island of New Zealand.

Mrs Blight further noted that Mrs Veitch had tried to make her friend believe that the daughter was in danger from her aunt and might drown her.

Wanganui Police Inspector James was the next witness.

Arrest and police questioning

After then went to the prisoner's house.

At first, Mrs Veitch did not know where her daughter was.

Under further investigation from the inspector and two police officers, she then contended that her daughter had fallen accidentally from the Wanganui River wharf and drowned.

Subsequently, after being taken to witness her child's body, Mrs Veitch changed her story once more and then stated that it was the child's putative father.

She provided the name “Sam Timaru” and gave contradictory descriptions of his ethnicity as either from India or Scotland.

Further evidence disclosed that Mrs Veitch was a lone parent and had been abandoned by her children's father to bring them up alone.

Her partner did not appear during the trial to substantiate these claims.

Trial

The jury retired and found Phoebe Veitch guilty of murder but with a recommendation of mercy.

Given that Mrs Veitch was pregnant with another child at the time, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court then sentenced her to death, although it remained to be disclosed whether the pregnancy could be substantiated by local midwives.

Sentencing

Phoebe Veitch was sentenced to death.

Outcome

On 25 May it was reported that Ministers of the Crown had intervened in the case and commuted Mrs Veitch's sentence to life imprisonment.

Death

She was imprisoned in Wellington at the Terrace Gaol and died on 2 September 1891.

Other details

Bronwyn Dalley suggested comparing the Veitch case with those of Caroline Whitting, Sarah-Jane and Anna Flannagan and Minnie Dean. She suggested that the courts were willing to recognise that arduous social and family circumstances could lead to maternal 'madness' and may have prompted commuted sentences, while Dean's death sentence was related to an element of deliberation absent in the Veitch, Whitting and other cases of parental child murder.