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In 1907, Perth woman Alice Mitchell was arrested for the murder of five-month-old Ethel Booth. During the inquest and subsequent trial, the general public was horrified to learn that at least 37 infants had died in Mitchell’s care in the previous six years. It became clear that she had been running a ‘baby farm’, making a profit out of caring for the children of single mothers and other ‘unfortunate women’.

This book retraces this infamous ‘baby farm’ tragedy and a trial which gripped the nation and led to legislative changes to protect children’s welfare.

Cover of The Edward Street Baby Farm

Madness and Marvels is the true story of two flawed but gifted men, both born in the north of Ireland. One, the engineer Charles Yelverton O’Connor, built a world-class harbour at Fremantle, defying the doubters who said it couldn’t be done. He then went on to design the even more remarkable Mundaring to Kalgoorlie pipeline.

The other, Dr Henry Calvert Barnett, began his career as an adventurous ship’s doctor. After settling in Western Australia in 1869, he became the Colonial Surgeon for Fremantle and Superintendent of the Fremantle Asylum. The lives of C. Y. O’Connor and Dr Barnett intersected in Fremantle in 1891 when O’Connor and his family rented Dr Barnett’s house, ‘Park Bungalow’. 

Susan Mason, the child of an Irish convict and his wife, was uneducated but streetwise and canny. From colonial Adelaide to the barracks towns of the British Isles, she fought her way, sometimes literally, through life. One man called her a little whore. Her husband once accused her of being a drunkard. Life often dealt her a poor hand. Yet she managed to survive the poverty of her childhood, the indignities of being an army wife and the joys and tragedies of being a mother with her fighting spirit intact. In following her story and that of her family, the author reveals not only the complexity of Susan’s character, but also what life was like for women on the edges of society in the Victorian era.

Cover of Faith in Crisis

Faith in Crisis

(free download)

Hope in Sorrow

(free download)