The Story of Mary Shaw
One day in 1886, Mary Shaw of Cloncurry, Queensland, mixed a little strychnine in a cup – or did one of her male visitors mix it for her? Either way, she drank it down, and they found her dead in her chemise. She was only thirty-six.
Mary lived in a cottage between the Grand Hotel, Cloncurry, and the copper mine. It was a simple place, most likely dirt-floored, clad with timber slabs and roofed with tin. Cloncurry, back then, was a busy town, with three pubs filled with teams of drovers heading for the Gulf Track, drinking and fighting their way through the town. The mine, then operated by the Cloncurry Copper Mining and Smelting Company, employed two hundred labourers. The term Wild West doesn’t begin to apply to a place such as this. It was frontier country, ruled by guns and men ready to use them.
Mary was born Mary McKeeand in 1850 in Glasgow, Lanarkshire, the daughter of Mary Beattie and Joseph McKeeand. She married a lovable rogue called Bill Smith and immigrated to Australia on the Selkirkshire in 1879. They were a young couple in love, planning to start a new life in a new land, filled with hopes and dreams for the future.
Sadly, Bill fell sick on the journey. Mary nursed him tirelessly, over long nights on the tossing seas, but he did not survive. In the close and terrible confinement of the steerage cabin, he closed his eyes for a final time.
Alone in a new land, Mary married Robert Miles Shaw on 1 March 1880 in Queensland. The marriage was a turbulent one, and it lasted only a few years.
The couple separated, and Robert Shaw moved to Townsville. Mary drifted from town to town, living with a succession of men. Settling in that cottage near the Grand Hotel in Cloncurry, Mary entertained frequent male visitors. Miners and ringers alike would line up outside her door like they were going to the theatre. Poor Mary. And drink? She learned to put the gin away.
On the morning of October 17, 1886, Mary’s first visitors were early starters, arriving at around 8 am. There was Jacob Thomas, a carter, and his mate Joe Petty. A bottle of gin was opened, and a day of indulgence began.
Later in the morning, when a copper miner called Evan Jones called in, Mary was lying on the sofa, partly dressed. Jones later told the inquest into her death that she was under the influence of alcohol, and a little wild.
Jones and another miner called John Williams returned (at about one pm) to the house and stayed half an hour. Jacob Thomas was also back at the cottage by then, and the stocks of gin were running low. Jones went to the pub to fetch more grog, while Williams and Thomas stayed.
When Jones came back, Mary was lying in bed. She asked for a Bible. She started vomiting and complaining of pain in her stomach. She asked for water and Jones gave it to her (John Williams recalls that she was shrieking when Jones gave her the water). She refused the offer of strong spirits.
Meanwhile, Jacob Thomas was seen to have a bottle of strychnine in his hands, while Mary calmed down at last, falling asleep on her bed.
At the coroner’s inquest, Thomas denied that he had ever touched the poison bottle, instead saying that he saw Mary mixing something in a cup, before he went out to buy more bottles of beer. This conflict of accounts must hold the key to her death, but what motive was there for a murder?
Evan Jones sent for a doctor while Jacob Thomas returned with a man called Bragg and found her dead in the bed. Jacob Thomas was seen to wash the poison from the cup. Later he said that he did this because he was afraid someone might drink out of it.
Word finally reached Cloncurry’s policeman, Sergeant Hamilton, that a woman was dead. He fetched the doctor, and they went to the cottage, now deserted by the men who had been there that day. Her body was taken to the hospital morgue and a postmortem done.
Death, the official word went, was by strychnine poisoning – self-administered. No man was charged or detained in relation to the matter. No effort was made to learn how the bottle of poison came to be in the house. Someone was guilty. But who? And what was their crime?
Those grubs who came and went from her cottage that day, knew more than they told at the inquest. All we know is that someone mixed a little strychnine in a cup. Mary drank it down, and they found her dead in her chemise – and she was only thirty-six.
Researched and written by Greg Barron 2025
Thanks to Julie Palethorpe for her assistance.
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