2011: A Year of Doing History to Death

It can be tricky writing about a place that's going to be closed until 2013, so looking back at the first full year of the Boggo Blog I wasn't too surprised at the variety of topics covered in the articles here. What I was surprised about was the bloody morbidity of the subject matter - cemeteries, capital punishment, sharks, plagues, ghosts, plagues of ghosts... Still, the Boggo Blog was never going to be about crocheting doilies for scrapbooks about kittens.

The Boggo year got off to a boggy start with devastating floods hitting Queensland and stories of sharks swimming the streets of Ipswich. The old prison itself is on high ground and is perfectly safe from flood damage, barring any biblical-scale deluges, but parts of our other stomping ground at the South Brisbane Cemetery went under, prompting two huge community cleaning efforts in there. these were the 'Sister Suburbs' event in January (below, right) and 'Clean Up Australia Day' in March. Cyclone Yasi hit the north of the state a few weeks later, indirectly affecting the gaol by adding to Queensland's financial woes.   

This was also the year when the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society managed to get access to the prison for the first time since 2006, first to assist with a couple of film shoots, then to 'inspect' the place in the company of Public Works, and then we began our monthly cleaning bees (above, left). By the time the weekly Boggo Road Markets started up in October I was going into the old gaol every week, at one point four days in a row for different things. 

We also had movement with the whole Boggo Road reopening saga, with developers appointed to come up with a management plan for the place. Watch this space!

A rolling issue through the year, and by the looks of it next year too, was honesty and/or accuracy in the tour industry. One article that had legs was about the claim by Brisbane's 'Ghost Tours' company that National Geographic had voted Brisbane the 'world's second most haunted city'. This alleged poll has proved to be very, very elusive - even National Geographic deny it exists - and eight months later Ghost Tours' owner Jack Sim has still failed to provide evidence to back up his claim, instead finding it easier to delete simple questions about it from his Facebook page and insult commenters. With the matter now referred to the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission and other people demanding answers, expect interest in this matter to be maintained until questions about the poll are answered one way or another.

It's what we do

Further questions about the credibility of Ghost Tours emerged later in the year when a doctored photo and email appeared on their Facebook page. The pic was allegedly of a ghost from a cemetery night tour the previous weekend, but it turned out to have been taken in broad daylight in Tasmania back in 2006! Whoops. My article exposing this 'mistake' drew fire from Ghost Tours, as shown in the 'Sticks and Stones' article. As it was, the most-commented-upon article of 2011 was about the strange little threats and insults we as a historical society have to put up with. Controversy sells! 

The trifecta of dodginess was completed when the dubious evolution of a cemetery ghost story was explained in another article. Similar articles on the excellent 'Haunts of Brisbane' blog, such as one about an imaginary morgue at the cemetery, highlighted the need for a thorough stocktake and correcting of the historical misinformation floating around about South Brisbane Cemetery, which will take the form of this 2012 project. After all, if a tour operator was telling tourists that Brisbane was established in 1987 by Walt Disney you'd expect them to be pulled up on it. Same goes for all blatantly wrong history - people need to be held to account. Customers paying good money for a history tour need to know that they are getting the facts and not fiction.

In fact, cemeteries continued to be a pretty regular source of material here, with other articles this year covering a victory on cemetery laws, Brisbane's lost plague cemetery, plans to reuse city council graves, an Ipswich Cemetery history project, a Boggo Road burial mystery, and Brisbane's oldest municipal cemetery.

Throw in a bunch of other articles on tattoo machines, execution machines, the Houdini of Boggo Road, the late Bill Kearney,  (yet more) ghosts and ghost hunters, the meaning of the name 'Boggo', the relationship between officers and inmates, a new play about the only woman hanged at Boggo Road, heritage gaol prices, and weird Spiritualist arguments against the death penalty, and you have quite a varied menu right there.

With a monthly readership now well into four figures, the 'Boggo Blog' ends the year with plenty of reason to celebrate. A big, big thanks to all of you who have visited this blog, and especially those who left comments. All feedback is welcome (yes, even you 'silver strychnine'). 

Resolutions for 2012? To keep the mixed bunch of articles coming, to keep everyone updated on the redevelopment plans, to celebrate Good History and to hold Bad History to account, and to hopefully hear more from the readers of this here Boggo Blog. 

Here's to a great 2012 for us all...

Slim Halliday: Man or Spider-man?

Arthur Ernest 'Slim' Halliday, convicted murderer and infamous Boggo Road escapologist during the 1930s-1960s, is the subject of some incredible tales, some tall, some true. Like the time he bent a solid metal cell door back with a winch made from bits of wood and bed sheet. Or the time he burned a hole in roof of the mattress workshop in a bid to escape. Or when he made a replica gun from bits of leather. These are some of the true tales. 

Arthur 'Slim' Halliday, 1937 (BRGHS)

There is, however, one particular story that is as tall as it gets. During one of my first visits to Boggo Road I took a tour with a highly-respected former prison officer who told our group all about 'Halliday's Leap', the place where Slim Halliday jumped off the roof of E Wing cellblock in 1940 and landed on the top of the perimeter wall before making good his escape. At the time I totally believed it - such is the authoritative power of the tour guide - but after I worked at the museum and spent more time in the area, I realised that the story and the numbers just didn't add up. 

The legendary leap would have involved jumping from a three-storey cellblock roof onto the top of the red-bricked outer prison wall, a near-impossible feat involving a drop of eight metres over a width of four metres. The curved top of the wall itself is no more than 30cm wide and is over seven metres high – not the safest landing spot for someone jumping from a great height. Imagine jumping off the roof of a two-storey house, aiming to land perfectly on a 30cm-wide ledge, without breaking your legs or spine or falling over when you do land, because that ledge is seven metres off the ground - and someone with a rifle on the neighbour's roof will shoot you if they see you. It is, basically, a feat requiring all the abilities of Spiderman, and Slim may have been a lot of things but he was no superhero.

Track, outer wall, and cellblock at Boggo Road.

I delved into the official records at Queensland State Archives and a very different story emerged, but one that was no less impressive. To run through it briefly; Halliday had planned this escape for months, secretly making and hiding escape ropes, grappling hooks and wire cutters in the prison workshops. One day he slipped unnoticed from a line of prisoners and scaled the 10-foot high fence of the exercise yard to gain acces to the Track that ran around the inside of the perimeter walls. He climbed onto the workshop roof and dropped down through a skylight that gave him access to the inside of the workshop, where he cut through wire mesh walls with the hidden wire cutters to get to his escape ropes. He climbed up onto the roof again and hooked the longest rope over the outer wall, at a place he had worked out to be a blind-spot from the towers. He dropped the shorter rope down the side of the workshop and climbed down onto the Track, then climbed up over the prison wall using the first rope before changing his clothes and making his escape.

 

     A – Location of ‘Halliday’s Leap’

B – Workshops

T – Towers

No.2 Division, Boggo Road, in the 1940s. (BRGHS)

 

Halliday's escape route 1940 (BRGHS)

There is no room in this article for the tale of the massive manhunt, shoot-outs and high-speed car chases that led to Halliday’s recapture, which is all covered in detail in my book The Houdini of Boggo Road. Of more relevance here is how the myth of 'Halliday's Leap' grew. One clue comes from discussions with local residents who were children when the escape happened. When news of the breakout got out, local parents ordered their children to stay home, but the kids had other ideas and formed themselves into 'posses', excitedly roaming the local streets in nervous pursuit of the escaped prisoner. They circulated a story that Halliday had jumped from a roof during his escape, and in the process of ‘Chinese Whispers’ this became a cellblock roof. This story took hold, and 50 years later it had become accepted even within modern prison officer circles.

Halliday escaped over the blind spot at this section of the wall again in 1946, and it gained the name of of 'Halliday’s Leap’ quite early on. Following yet another escape attempt by Slim, this time in 1953, a newspaper ran an article with the headline 'HALLIDAY’S LEAP HEADACHE FOR BOGGO ROAD STAFF: WEAK SPOT IN THE PRISON WALLS'. However, the blindspot had in fact been fixed in 1947 with the erection of a new stand-alone guard tower (called E tower) in the prison grounds to the southeast of the workshops. The workshops and Halliday’s Leap were later demolished as part of the prison modernisation of the early 1970s. The myth of Halliday's Leap has only been demolished in more recent years.

The Woman in Black: Solving the mystery of a vanishing ghost

Every town has a 'white lady' ghost story. I know my hometown does, and they're pretty much par for the course as generic ghostlore goes. ‘White Lady’ stories have been around for centuries in Britain, and are generally associated with some romantic tragedy or other, usually being women who have lost a husband or lover and wear Victorian-era clothing. A variation on this theme are 'Lady in Black' stories, and the South Brisbane Cemetery has one of its very own. In recent years, however, this particular Lady in Black has been suffering something of an identity crisis, but I think we can now resolve some of those issues for her. 

Tracey Olivieri, author of 'The Ghosts of South Brisbane Cemetery', grew up in the local area during the 1970s and recalls children trying to scare each with ‘lady in black’ tales back then, telling each other of a dark figure moving through the cemetery. The most common theory was that it was the ghost of a heartbroken young 19th-century widow who used to visit  the grave of her dead husband every day. She died unexpectedly, but had not realised this and still tended the grave, wearing her mourning clothes. According to Tracey, "If anyone approaches her she just lowers her head and simply disappears amongst the graves. She is not menacing and is not a ghost to be scared of". She was only ever seen within 'the Teardrop’, which is the part of cemetery on the hill near the main entrance. The cemetery roadway circles around it to form the shape of a teardrop.

 

By the late 1990s, however, ghost tours had started in the cemetery and the backstory changed dramatically. This online version dates from 2001: 

"A woman in a black Victorian dress often walks down the road through the cemetery towards the prison... Many old-timers claim she's the tormented spirit of the only woman who was ever executed in Queensland!" 

The woman that the 'old-timers' refer to here is Ellen Thomson, who was executed at Boggo Road in 1887 and is a rather obvious candidate for a ghost story. She was the only woman hanged, a mother of six, a convicted murderer, and an Irish Catholic who died clutching a crucifix and proclaiming her innocence. If you are doing a tour in the cemetery where she was buried, next to the prison were she was hanged, it's a no-brainer. The basic story, as it was relayed to me, went something like this: Because she was a woman, she was given special dispensation to be buried outside section 6B, where executed prisoners were normally buried, and now her ghost could be seen wandering near section 10C, wearing the black dress she was buried in and clutching a string of rosary beads to her chest etc etc...

Ellen Thomson, 1887
(QSA, #ID2947)

What is interesting about this tale, however, is the fact that it was the headline story for the cemetery tour for a few years before it completely vanished without trace from the itinerary. A new story with an all-new 'lady in black' suddenly appeared, this one featuring a nun with a ‘skull’ face. So what happened to Ellen? Why was her story dropped so abruptly, never to be spoken of again? Surely her story and character were sufficiently interesting, and much more believable than a skull-faced nun?  

Scooby Doo, where are you?

After recently speaking to people who went on those early tours, I think the mystery of the vanishing ghost has been solved. It turns out the ghost tour had been taking people to the WRONG GRAVE! The hanged Ellen Thomson actually had been buried in section 6B after all, back in 1887. The ghost tour people had been taking customers to the grave of a different Ellen Thompson, who died in 1903 and was buried in section 10C. Whoops. 

South Brisbane Cemetery

This was a glaring mistake that couldn't go undetected for long, and sure enough the truth was realised at some point prior to 2004. Unfortunately, this left the ghost of the executed Ellen Thomson haunting the wrong part of the cemetery, so it seems the story was quietly disappeared while a new one appeared in its place. The Catholic element was retained, but the action moved to the Teardrop, a different part of the cemetery.

And what happened to the older ghost? The one that used to wander around in the black dress with the rosary beads? If that part of story was true (even if this was the wrong Ellen Thompson grave) surely the same ghost would still be around there anyway, right where ghost tours had so long claimed it was? Apparently not. When the mistake was realised, the tour spot vanished and it seems that the ghost went with it.

This is a nice little example of why things like the Friends of South Brisbane Cemetery and Moonlight Tours become necessary, to make sure that the ever-unfolding history of a place like South Brisbane Cemetery stays on the straight and narrow. 

PS: I am not going to get caught up in any debate about who the so-called Lady in Black actually is, because I don't know if ghosts even exist, or what they are, or if we can attribute identities to them. If we can connect ghosts to specific tragic tales, then a good candidate in this case would be the local woman whose husband drowned at sea in 1899, several weeks before her two-year-old daughter burned to death, and six months before she killed herself. Her other children found her suicide note at dawn, and her movements were traced to the South Brisbane Cemetery, where her hat and cloak were found near footsteps leading to the riverbank. Later that day the police recovered her drowned body from near the same spot. 

She was buried with her little girl in a grave near the Teardrop.

How to Build a Boob Gun... & Why You Shouldn't

Some of the most popular objects in the Boggo Road Gaol Museum collection were the 1980s prisoner-made tattoo machines, or 'boob guns' in jail slang. These illegal items were not only testament to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of some inmates, they were also an artefact of resistance against the powers-that-be. Our tour guides had working models of these things that were always a big hit with visitors, and I once put together a display about these tattoo machines at the Anthropology Museum at the University of Queensland. The sight of passing uni students stopping to take notes is always a good indicator of interest!

Tattoo machine from the Boggo Road museum collection.

Tattoo machines like this were an illegal item in prison, not only because prisoners were required to maintain the same  appearance during their sentence, but also because they could be used as weapons. Another important reason for restricting their use in more recent years has been to minimise the spread of communicable diseases such as hepatitis C by sharing needles. However, none of this stopped inmates from getting tattoos, and there were over 100 tattooing items in the Boggo Road collection, including both complete and incomplete machines and components, showing that tattooing was a widespread practice within the Queensland prison system.

These machines could be cobbled together using bits and pieces found around a 1980s prison. The diagram below shows what the components were, and the table below this shows where these bits and pieces came from:  

Image: C. Dawson

Component	Material	Probable source
Drive rod and barrel	Pen	Issued for hobby work, etc, in cells
Needle and connecting pin	Needle or pin	Sewing needles and pins from industry workshops
		Wire (later sharpened) from workshops, or paper clips issued as stationery
		Diabetic needles from the prison hospital surgery
		Mathematical compass, issued for hobby work
		Guitar string
Frame	Toothbrush	Prison issue
Connecting pin	Matchsticks	Prison issue
Spindle	Buttons	Prison clothing
Motor	Motor	Extracted from audio cassette players or radios (allowed in cells)
Wiring	Electrical wiring	Same as above
Tattoo ink	India ink	Issued for hobby work in cells
	Charcoal	Ground from spent matches, mixed with oil
	Pen ink	Obtained from split tube of pen and mixed with margarine
Binding for frame and components	Cotton thread	Prison clothing or workshops
	Adhesive tape	Industry workshops
	Glue	Industry workshops

Ink was applied to the skin prior to puncturing with the needle, although sometimes a mix of ground charcoal and water was used. Professional tattoo shops use special inks that do not irritate the skin and are unlikely to cause allergic reactions. Makeshift inks used in prison tattoos may be unsafe and damage the skin, causing permanent scarring. They can also contain dangerous chemicals.  

This is how the machine worked:

Image: C. Dawson

AND HERE IS WHY YOU MUST NEVER ACTUALLY USE THESE THINGS

Apart from the obvious risk that an inmate could leave prison with some bloody awful tattoos, there are SERIOUS health risks involved with prison tattoos, as sterilising the makeshift equipment is difficult or impossible. Apart from basic skin infections, deadly diseases like hepatitis and HIV/AIDS can be passed from one prisoner to another when needles are re-used. The playing card on the left below is from a deck issued to prisoners, while the poster to the right was also used in Queensland prisons. 

So all-in-all, brilliantly clever devices but potentially fatal to use. So don't.

Did I mention the bad tattoos?

More about tattoo machines and other prisoner-made illegal devices and objects can be found in the book Shivs, Bongs & Boob Guns: Made in a Queensland prison cell.

Brisbane's Lost Plague Cemetery

There are a few places around Brisbane that housed specialist burial grounds in the past, such as Peel Island ('lepers') and Saint Helena Island (prisoners), but one of the most forgotten spots has to be Gibson Island, in the Brisbane River near Hemmant. Today it is the site of a fertiliser factory, but back in the 1900s Gibson Island was home to Brisbane's plague cemetery.  

Gibson Island, on the Brisbane River near Murrarie, as it
looks now. The Gateway Bridge can be seen in the background.

Bubonic Plague, or the 'Black Death', is something more usually associated with the Middle Ages but outbreaks of plague, spread by rats and introduced by ships from overseas, were common in Queensland at the turn of the 20th century. The first case was on Hawthorne Street, Woolloongabba, in April 1900. Over the next ten years there were 499 cases of bubonic plague officially reported in Queensland, resulting in 219 deaths, many of these in Brisbane. 

Medical staff in plague protection gear, Maryborough, 1905
(John Oxley Library #53460)

The outbreaks led medical authorities to implement strict public health and sanitary measures. Plague-affected houses were quarantined, cleaned and fumigated, bed linen and curtains burned, and an iron stockade was erected around the property and two neighbouring houses. Rat-catching teams went to work, and over 90,000 rats were destroyed.

Destroyed rats, Brisbane, circa 1900-02 (John Oxley Library #108588)

Precautions also extended to the care and burial of victims. During the 1900 outbreak, plague victims were often sent to Cairncross House, the quarantine station on the riverbank at Colmslie. In May 1900 the highest spot on Gibson Island was selected as an isolated burial ground for those who died. The bodies, wrapped in sheets soaked in carbolic acid and placed in lime-slaked coffins, were transported on a special ‘plague boat’ and accompanied by only two warders and a doctor from the quarantine station, who was specially authorised to read the funeral service. 

The first burial, that of 18-year-old Richard Shanahan, took place in May 1900. Family members often wanted to make other arrangements, and in July 1900 there was an emotional scene at the North Quay wharf when the mother of 15-year-old victim David Fihelly 'strongly objected' to him being taken to Gibson Island. The authorities finally consented to her wishes and interred the boy at Toowong instead.   

At least 14 people were buried at Gibson Island during 1900, and in April 1901 a decision was taken to cease the practice on the grounds that it was 'cruel and unneccesary' and 'bitterly resented by relatives of the victims'. The funerals were also felt to take the medical officer away from the quarantine station for too long. Families were now able to make their own arrangements, but only after the bodies had been carefully coffined by Health Board officials.

After this time plague victims were buried in different Brisbane cemeteries, including at least three people in South Brisbane Cemetery. After 1909 there were 12 plague-free years in Queensland, and after an 1921 outbreak that caused 63 deaths, the last reported case of plague in the State was in 1922.

For such a relatively unknown part of Brisbane, Gibson Island actually has a surprising history. The island was originally known to the locals as Brophy (not Brophe, as is often stated) Island after a hermit farmer who lived there. It was also known as 'One Man Island' for the same reason. By the late 1880s it was known as Gibson's Island, after an engineer who was in charge of dredging the river.  

Aquarium Passage, the waterway on the southern side of the island, was so named because an aquarium opened there in 1889. In addition to the aquarium there was a 'dance hall, a zoo, a roller coaster, and a cycle track'. The aquarium was washed away in the big river flood of 1893, although most of the zoo animals were saved. It fell into decline after this, but after the world wars Gibson Island became something of a resort again. The Friend family opened a kiosk on the island in 1919 when the island was all bush, and beaches attracted many Brisbanites every weekend.  By the 1920s a popular sports recreation ground had been developed, but a power station opened on the island in the 1950s. It is likely that the construction projects on the island have destroyed any remains of the plague burial ground.

Gibson Island Power Station, circa 1953 (John Oxley Library #203755)

P.S. A few years back I heard speculation that the bodies at Boggo Road might have been plague victims, but anybody thought to have the plague would not have been kept in a crowded prison, given the potential for an epidemic to break out. 

Australia's Next Top Bizarre Death-Contraption

That some better method of inflicting death than hanging should be adopted we readily admit. It is at best a disgusting method of execution, and is liable either to degenerate into something like torture, or else to lead to a shocking mischance such as happened yesterday. There are many well-known methods of producing painless extinction, and one or other should be adopted. (Brisbane Courier, 14 June 1887)

So wrote one reporter after the execution of Ellen Thomson, during which the rope cut into her neck and blood gushed over the floor. And he was right. Hanging is one of the most unpredictable methods of execution and often did not go according to plan, which in the late 19th century was to break the prisoner's neck quickly and cleanly. However, some prisoners in Brisbane were strangled to death as a result of the 'drop' not delivering enough force to the neck, while on other occasions the head would be almost removed due to too much force. In fact, on one memorable occasion in 1879, the prisoner's head WAS completely pulled off when he reached the end of the 'drop'. 

There was much debate around this time as to the best method to use, and while the French still used the much-more predictable guillotine, the electric chair was being developed in the USA. The unpredictability of hanging drew occasional comment in Queensland newspapers on the subject of alternative execution methods. These correspondents apparently gave a lot of thought to the subject, some of them much more than seemed healthy.

When convicted murderer Patrick Collins was hanged at Petrie Terrace in 1872 he was given an unusually high drop and the shock of the fall resulted in in his head almost being severed from his body. The sight was apparently ‘sickening to behold, and many turned away from it in horror’, and prompted John Kelly of Fortitude Valley to write to the Brisbane Courier to complain that hanging was ‘barbarous and unscientific’. He helpfully suggested that garrotting be used instead, in order to make the ‘the operation as physically painless as possible to the victim, and as little revolting as possible to the beholden’:

The “garotta” is an instrument which fulfils these conditions. An armchair, in which the victim is seated, his legs and arms secured to those of the chair, an iron collar, having inside the back, in a recess, a sharp chisel-shaped cutter, which can be shot forward by some mechanical contrivance, is adjusted around his neck; a touch from the executioner, and the cutter, entering the neck, severs the spinal cord, and, without a groan or a sigh, earthly life ceases to exist. No red torrent gushes forth, no nervous struggles shock the onlookers. Is not this a more scientific and more humane way of severing the spinal cord, than our rude way of wrenching asunder the cervical column? In many parts of these colonies, people kill their cattle in an analogous manner, but by simpler means. (Brisbane Courier, 15 June 1872)

Humane and civilised execution in the Philippines.

A Queensland Times correspondent of 1874 suggested that it was ‘by no means certain that in hanging and beheading that death is instantaneous’, and so suffocation by carbolic acid gas should be used. The writer recommended that, after the prisons of the colony had been ‘furnished with air-tight cells and other proper apparatus’, execution could be carried out in what amounted to a gas chamber. 'D.H.F.', another advocate of carbolic acid gas, went to greater lengths in 1892 and described the required apparatus, which he felt was ‘far preferable to hanging, decapitation, garroting, or this new-fangled “electrocution”’.

Construct an air-tight perpendicular shaft, say 3ft. square by 10ft. in height, open at the top, and provided with a close-fitting door. The floor would consist of perforated metal, which would form the top of a small chamber airtight at the bottom and sides. Inside the shaft would be a seat on to which the criminal would be strapped, after which the door would be closed. A strong iron vessel containing lime and sulphuric acid and provided with a stop-cock would be placed in the airtight chamber below the floor. When all was ready this vessel would be opened and the gas would pass up through the perforated floor carrying the ordinary air above it. If a sufficient supply of carbonic acid gas is generated death must ensue very rapidly. Anyone wishing to experiment on a small scale with this method of causing death may easily do so with a glass tube about 1ft. long and 3in. or so in diameter. It would be very easy to fasten a floor of wire gauze about 3in. from one end. An ordinary bottle will take the place of the iron vessel, and the carbonic acid gas can be produced with the ordinary tartaric acid and soda of commerce. By some such apparatus the effect of the gas could be watched on a mouse or some other small animal. (Brisbane Courier, 27 April 1892)

Lord Carbarlick-Skullface, no doubt coming to a
Ghost Tour near you soon. *sigh*

Just before the first Boggo Road hanging took place in 1883, 'Verdugo', a correspondent to the Brisbane Courier, described hanging as ‘a troublesome, difficult, and illiterate', and advocated poisoning condemned prisoners in their sleep and then hanging them afterwards for the statutory hour. 

In 1893, 'Humanity' wrote that he had ‘often thought that drowning would be an excellent method of execution, and one free from many of the disagreeables associated with execution by hanging, beheading, and electricity.’ He had, in fact, given the subject enough thought to devise the following:  

Requirements: An iron tank, 10ft. by 4ft. in diameter, open at the top, and filled with water, placed in position so that the top would be level with the floor on which the officials and the victim would stand. The victim, having had his hands tied behind him, and a weight of 100lb. or so fastened to his feet, would be lowered foot first into the water, and after remaining submerged half-an-hour, would be lifted out, and the customary ceremony of pronouncing life extinct performed. (Brisbane Courier, 18 July 1893)

Despite all this 'expert' advice, no garrotting chairs, gas chambers, midnight poisoners or drowning tanks were ever required at Boggo Road and the Queensland government persisted with hanging until the last execution took place in 1913. They must have been reassured, however, that upstanding citizens were out there devising new-fangled murder contraptions and sharing their plans in the newspapers. 

Have YOU ever designed an unnecessarily-complicated 'Mousetrap'-style death machine and had it published in the local newspaper? Share your stories here.