The haunting last words of the first woman hanged in Victoria

Before Elizabeth Scott was hanged for murdering her abusive husband, she turned to her lover and said these haunting last words.

Old Melbourne Gaol in 1952.

Elizabeth Scott’s last words before she was hanged at the Melbourne Gaol speak volumes.

Moments before the 23-year-old barmaid and her alleged lover were executed for murder, she reportedly turned to him and pleaded: “David, will you not clear me now?”

But the trapdoor opened before he could reply.

Elizabeth, whose ghost some believe still haunts the Old Melbourne Gaol, is the subject of the fifth episode in the Haunted Melbourne series of the In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters, out today.

Ben Oliver, founder of Melbourne’s Drinking History Tours, says Elizabeth was not even in the room when the 1863 murder in Mansfield occurred.

Old photo of the Melbourne Gaol from The Argus newspaper collection.

The murder victim was her husband, Robert Scott, an abusive drunk who Elizabeth had been forced to marry when she was only 13 and he was 35.

Elizabeth denied knowing anything about the murder, she was never called to testify at her trial, and her lawyer made no attempt to dispute the flimsy case against her.

But the weight of public opinion turned against her for one simple reason – she was considered an adulteress.

Writing on a cell door at Melbourne Gaol in 1937. Picture: State Library Victoria.

Inside the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1969.

Executed alongside Elizabeth were Julian Cross, who admitted he shot Scott, and David Gedge, the 19-year-old groom believed to be her lover.

“The popular story doing the rounds was that … this adulterous lover conspired and schemed to kill her husband through this patsy, Julian,” Oliver says.

“The fact that she was an adulteress really painted her in quite a negative light, and because of that most newspaper coverage was more than happy to paint her as this kind of conspiring, shadowy figure who was pulling the strings behind the scenes in order to be with her lover, David.”

Old Melbourne Gaol. Picture: AAP/Andy Phillips.

The jury took 30 minutes to find Elizabeth guilty and she became the first of only five women hanged in Victoria between 1842 and 1967, compared with 182 men.

The Melbourne Gaol in 1907. Picture: The Argus newspaper.

Oliver says Elizabeth’s last moments, when she asked her lover to clear her just before both were executed, were incredibly sad.

“Elizabeth was, I guess you could say, betrayed not by one man but two in the end – her husband firstly as an abusive drunk, and then her lover as someone who wasn’t prepared to speak in her defence during their trial or at the gallows,” he says.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW WITH BEN OLIVER IN THE IN BLACK AND WHITE PODCAST ON ITUNES, SPOTIFY OR WEB.

Don’t miss the earlier stories and podcasts in our Haunted Melbourne series: John Batman’s ghost at the Queen Vic Market, the twisted tale of romance and tragedy behind Melbourne’s Mitre Tavern ghost; Federici, the Princess Theatre ghost, and does the ghost of Jack the Ripper haunt Hosier Lane?

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.