Her subsequent trial and conviction became a subject of contemporary controversy for New Zealand socialist and feminist campaigners due to the perceived severity of her sentence compared to male criminals.
She left home at fourteen years of age (1903) and undertook a period of initial domestic service in Hastings in the Hawkes Bay area of New Zealand, until she moved to Napier and later became a pantrymaid at the Masonic and General Hotels in that same city, in 1909.
She was convicted of manslaughter due to the perceived provocation involved and Chief Justice Stout sentenced her to life imprisonment and hard labour at Christchurch's Addington Prison.
[4] Parkinson's trial and circumstances were used by the New Zealand Women's Christian Temperance Union and other feminist and socialist supporters to criticise what they saw as the disproportionate punishment of female offenders compared to their male counterparts, such as convicted paedophiles.
Parkinson's supporters took the opportunity to call for female entry to professional occupations like the New Zealand Police, judiciary, jury trial composition reform, prison service and parliamentary representation.