In February 1892, Victoria was in the midst of a depression and jobs were scarce when Rudolph Knorr was sent to prison for selling furniture he had bought on hire purchase.

Pregnant and penniless, Frances decided to set up business as a child minder (or more specifically baby farming), and moved around Melbourne, frequently using both her maiden and married names.

While she was living on Moreland Road in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick, she buried a victim in the garden, then two others at her subsequent residence in Davis Street.

The police soon traced them to Knorr, who was ascertained to have moved to Sydney with her husband, and dug up the gardens of other properties around Melbourne where she had lived, finding the corpses of two boys buried in the yard at the Davis St house.

[7] A letter written by Knorr to "Ted Thompson" was presented to the court, which stated that the baby had died of consumption and was buried by another man.

Knorr gave a statement from the witness box and admitted that she had buried the babies in Moreland Road, but claimed that the children had died of natural causes.

[8] The prosecution dropped the further charges relating to the bodies found at Davis Street, and Rudolph Knorr was discharged by the supreme court on 16 December.

[9] In a statement made after the trial, he insisted that the babies which had been seen alive with him had been adopted to interstate families, and were not the same ones found buried at the Davis St house.

Thomas Jones, the state's hangman, committed suicide nine days before the execution after his wife threatened to leave him if he hanged Knorr.

It read, in part: Placed as I am now within a few hours of my death, I express a strong desire that this statement be made public, with the hope that my fall will not only be a warning to others, but also act as a deterrent to those who are perhaps carrying on the same practice.