Newtown housewife Yvonne Fletcher used poison to kill two husbands

When Yvonne Fletcher’s second husband died in a similar manner to her first, police soon discovered the reason why — poison — which sparked a surge of copycat cases, predominantly by Sydney housewives.

Yvonne Fletcher with her second husband Bertram Henry Fletcher, who died after she poisoned him.

Residents of Ferndale St at Newtown lined up outside their homes in March 1952, heads bowed, to pay their respects as the funeral procession for Bertram Henry Fletcher passed.

Among those watching the silent cortege make its way up the cramped inner-city street was Yvonne Fletcher, Bertram’s wife.

Some of the neighbours huddled and gossiped about the similarities between Bertram’s death and that of Yvonne’s first husband, Desmond George Butler, who had succumbed in 1948 after nine agonising months of paralysing stomach cramps, crippling leg pain, sudden hair loss and a deteriorating mind.

The suspicions were enough for the police to exhume Butler’s body in April 1952. And what they found was no great surprise to Yvonne’s neighbours: Both of her husbands were found to have died of thallium poisoning.

And so began a period in Sydney’s history referred to by newspapers of the day as the “thallium poison menace”.

Intended to help curb the growing plague of rats, particularly in the cramped neighbourhoods of Sydney’s inner-city and inner-west suburbs, Sayers Thall-Rat was sold cheaply and openly at grocers, pharmacies and even by the councils.

Sayers Thall-Rat poison was sold openly in the 1950s.

When Yvonne Fletcher’s sensational murder trial began in September 1952 with newspaper headlines such as “Horror poison easily bought” and “Poison at grocers”, it is feared the coverage sparked a surge of copycat cases, predominantly by Sydney housewives.

Between March 1952 and June 1953 it was reported 10 people died and 36 were admitted to hospital with thallium poisoning in NSW.

At the time of her arrest and subsequent trial, the platinum blonde mother of two was the first person convicted of murder by thallium poisoning in Australia.

Yvonne and Desmond Butler lived in Ferndale St, Newtown with their two young children, Ray and Ellen.

“Desmond was a cleaner at Grace Bros Broadway and part of his job was managing the vermin there,” says Tanya Bretherton, who researched the thallium killings for her book, The Husband Poisoner, published last month.

“There could have been conversations at home about the poison and Yvonne could have had an awareness about it. You could buy thallium in one, two and six-ounce bottles, often placed right on the shop counter, promoted as an impulse purchase.

“And, most importantly, it was tasteless and odourless.”

In November 1947 Desmond started exhibiting signs of unexplainable illness, and soon the neighbours were able to hear the piercing screams that came from the small double-storey terrace on Ferndale St.

As the illness became worse, he was taken to the nearby Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, but doctors were unable to determine the cause of his increasingly desperate symptoms.

Author Tanya Bretherton.

With no other explanation, they concluded the symptoms were a manifestation of Desmond’s mind, that he was suicidal, and he was put in jail because suicide was a criminal offence.

He was later sent to Broughton Hall at Callan Park Hospital in Lilyfield to treat what was believed to be a nervous disorder.

When he returned home in July 1948, neighbours would later tell the court Yvonne had told them: “They are sending Dessie home. I don’t want him. They can take him back … I won’t look after him.”

He died later that month.

The similar death of Yvonne’s second husband less than four years later attracted suspicion.

“You couldn’t get a divorce in those days; it just wasn’t done,” Bretherton says.

“A calculating woman like Yvonne instead turned to thallium to unburden herself. But what I found most shocking throughout my research was that these women could lace the most mundane foods – toast, pea and ham soup – with poison.

“These were all very ordinary recipes used in most suburban homes at the time.”

Bretherton says legislation was changed after the surge of cases, restricting the sale of thallium and requiring purchasers to show identification.

Yvonne Fletcher was sentenced to death, later commuted to life, in 1952.

She was released from Long Bay Jail in 1964.

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AUNT THALLY’S DEADLY GOODIES

Tanya Bretherton’s book The Husband Poisoner is about Yvonne Fletcher.

Around the time Yvonne Fletcher was lacing her husband’s Bonox with thallium, 63-year-old grandmother Caroline Grills was doing the same.

The Gladesville woman would add the thallium to baked goodies such as pikelets, jam roly-poly and cake, and serve it to unsuspecting family members.

She was responsible for the deaths of her stepmother Christine Mickelson in 1947; her husband’s sister-in-law Angeline Thomas and brother-in-law John Lundberg in 1948; and her sister-in-law Mary Anne Mickelson in 1948.

She was convicted in 1953 and sentenced to death, later life, at Long Bay Jail, where she was known to inmates at Aunt Thally.

A TASTE FOR THE MACABRE

The Husband Poisoner is Tanya Bretherton’s fourth book.

The Sydney author has a knack for finding an eerie true crime tale and telling it in the context of historic Sydney.

The Suitcase Baby explores the gruesome trend of murdered babies discarded in suitcases washing up on beaches and bays in the 1920s.

The Suicide Bride tells the story of the ill-fated Sly family of Newtown in the early 1900s and the murder-suicide by the husband, a strangely common occurrence at the time.

And The Killing Streets looks into a spate of female murders believed to be the hand of Sydney’s first serial killer.