[1][4][6] Louisa's early teenage years were described in the following terms: "With good looks, attractive presence, and winning ways, she was no sooner in her 'teens' than she developed all the qualities of a country coquette, and earned for herself the reputation of being a heartless flirt".

[12] Louisa took the matter to Constable George Jeffes, the watchhouse-keeper at Botany police station, who investigated what had happened but took no action, nor did any of the parties wish to instigate legal proceedings.

During his illness she travelled to Sydney to have a will drawn up on behalf of her husband by a clerk in the insurance office; on the evening of 31 January the document was signed by Andrews and witnessed by two men from the neighbourhood.

Leaving her husband's body on a stretcher in the Pople's Terrace cottage, Louisa travelled to Sydney to inform the bank and the insurance company of his death.

With the money from the bank, Louisa cleared Collins' gambling debts and bought him a new watch and chain and a suit of clothes, as well as new furniture for the house.

[23] After their marriage Mick and Louisa Collins lived in "an indolent, unsatisfactory manner, the wife always drinking, and the husband helping to spend what little money there was".

When he arrived at the Botany cottage he discovered his mother had remarried and found his younger siblings "dirty and uncared-for, playing about the untidy house".

Herbert was taken aback at the turn of events, and pointed out that "had his mother given him his share of the money he might have opened a small business in Botany or Waterloo, and helped her to live and keep the children in comparative ease and comfort".

[23] By June 1887 Mick Collins was again working for Geddes and Sons, carting skins from the slaughter yards at Glebe Island to the Botany tannery.

On 23 June, feeling ill, he dismounted from the cart and vomited by the roadside; after further symptoms of diarrhoea and stomach pain, he returned home and took to his sick-bed.

Michael Collins died at about three o'clock that afternoon, soon after which Louisa sent her son Arthur to take the tram to Sydney to obtain a death certificate from Dr.

[20] Twenty-eight hours after Michael Collins' death, an autopsy was carried out on his body at the South Sydney Morgue by Dr. Frederick Milford, with Dr. Marshall in attendance.

[25][26] On the afternoon of 12 July the Government Analyst, William Hamlet, informed the Coroner that his examination of the deceased man's stomach and other organs had revealed "a large quantity of arsenic, sufficient to cause death".

The following day Shiell issued warrants for the exhumation of the bodies of Louisa's first husband, Charles Andrews, as well as the infant, John Collins, who had died the previous April.

[31] When the inquest into Michael Collins' death resumed on 26 July, Louisa's son Arthur Andrews, as well as other residents of Botany, gave evidence "in which the facts brought out in the earlier part of the inquiry were corroborated".

During his summation of the evidence given at the inquest, Shiell described the widow's testimony as a "long rambling statement", the object of which was to make it appear as if the deceased had poisoned himself by taking small doses of arsenic, "and thereby caused his own death".

He exhibited the symptoms consistent with that cause and, even though arsenic is typically "eliminated by vomiting and purging", traces of the poison were found in his remains.

The young child told the court that on the night of her step-father's death she was dusting a shelf in the kitchen when she noticed a small box was missing that she had been there previously.

[36][33] Louisa Collins was re-tried for the murder of her second husband in a trial which commenced in the Central Criminal Court on 5 November 1888, presided over by Justice William Windeyer.

The judge declared that "the theory of suicide" and "the proposition that the poison had been absorbed by the deceased whilst pursuing his ordinary daily avocation" were each incompatible with the evidence, but concluded by advising the jurists "to give the prisoner the benefit of any reasonable doubt they had in their minds".

[47] The jury retired at noon on the final day of the trial, 8 December, and returned to court two hours later with a verdict of guilty of wilful murder.

[50] Justice Darley, in passing sentence, commented that the murder of Michael Collins was "one of peculiar atrocity", adding: "You watched his slow torture and painful death, and this apparently without a moment's remorse".

[49] An editorial in Sydney's Evening News newspaper expressed its approval of Collins' conviction, claiming there was a prevailing widespread fear "that through the disagreements of juries the perpetrator of two deliberate and atrocious murders might ultimately escape the punishment her crimes deserve".

[53] Darley pointed out that during the trial over which he presided, "the evidence did not go beyond the fact that Andrews died of arsenical poisoning" and that no motive for his death had been discussed before the jury.

[54] By this time, after the extensive newspaper coverage of the case, there was widespread public debate regarding the death sentence imposed on Louisa Collins, with arguments both for and against a reprieve.

[56] That evening a public meeting was held at the Sydney Town Hall, convened by a group of men that included members of the New South Wales parliament, for the purpose of forestalling the execution of Louisa Collins.

The meeting carried a motion calling for commutation of the death sentence passed upon Collins and a deputation was formed to present a memorial to the Governor, Charles Carington, urging him to extend the royal prerogative of mercy to the prisoner.

[57] The Executive Council held a special meeting on 4 January to consider the implications of the "large number of memorials, petitions, police reports, and other correspondence" relating to the Collins' case.

[59] On 7 January the condemned woman herself wrote a final appeal to Governor Carington, in which she "drew attention to the extreme circumstances and hardship of her case".

[67] The first full-length examination of the case, Last Woman Hanged: the Terrible True Story of Louisa Collins, by Australian author and journalist Caroline Overington, was published in 2014.