Martha Needle has been known for killing her three children, first husband and future brother-in-law and the attempted murder of her fiancé by poisoning them with the use of arsenic in their food. It all started with Martha’s first daughter, Mabel Needle. Mabel had died on the 23rd of February in 1885 after suffering a short illness. Martha has received 100 pounds from Mabel’s life insurance. Soon after Martha and Henry Needle had another two daughters, and not too much later she decided that Henry’s life insurance of 200 pounds was enough to kill him. Slowly she mixed arsenics in his meals and it resulted in his death on the 4th, October, 1889. Doctors decided that it was an unknown liver issue. Martha then continued her killings by murdering her two present daughters and the brother of her fiancé the same way as her previous husband and daughter, poison. It wasn’t long until her fiancé, Otto Junken, began to be suspicious of her and set her up to be caught, and she was. She was sentenced to death and was the third of four women to be hung in the Old Melbourne Gaol on the 22nd of October 1894.”
Martha Needle was seen as an unexpected person to commit these crimes because she was a woman and the people she killed were her family members and this captivated the public interest.
