Carl and Caroline Whitting were born in Berlin, Prussia, but there are no further details about the circumstances of her birth, emigration to New Zealand, or marriage.
On 25 October 1872, Mrs. Caroline Whitting (38) left her Southland farm with three of her children: Fred (an infant), John, and Carl.
A daughter escaped from her mother and told her older sister, who was 16, about what had happened, leading to a police search for the bodies of the children and investigation as to whether Mrs. Whitting herself was still alive.
However, it seems to have been mitigated to life imprisonment[1] Other than an acrimonious marital relationship and possible family violence between Carl and Caroline Whitting according to the testimony of their surviving children, few other records survive about the case, her conviction or her fate after her sentence to capital punishment was commuted to life imprisonment.
Mrs Whitting was escorted into Dunedin Gaol on November 24, 1872 [2] Comparing the case with those of Phoebe Veitch and Minnie Dean, Bronwyn Daley has suggested that the courts were willing to recognize that 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 [3]