Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society

History's Deadliest Women: The Evil Stepmother

August 21, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

In 1909, a 14-year-old boy in Perth, Australia, fled his father’s home on a bicycle, terrified he would be the next to die. He was right to run. His stepmother, Martha Rendell, had already killed three of his siblings by painting their throats with hydrochloric acid—what was then called “spirits of salt”—while pretending to nurse them through colds. The case became a sensation, and Rendell was hanged, the last woman executed in Western Australia. But as Professor Joanna Bourke explains, the story of Martha Rendell is also a story about how societies explain female violence, how the figure of the “evil stepmother” shapes those explanations, and how those explanations shift over time.

The woman and the crime

Martha Rendell came from an impoverished but respectable background and worked as a servant. When she moved in with Thomas Morris, a carpenter with several children, she gained security and the social respect that came with being a housewife and mother. Prior to the murders, Bourke notes, she was regarded as “just an ordinary, very tidy, very clean housewife” with no history of violence. But after the killings, that image was dismantled. She was called fiendish, devilish, a throwback from the Stone Age.

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What you'll learn

1 (04:53) **Introducing Professor Joanna Bourke & Martha Rendell** - Kate welcomes back historian Joanna Bourke, author of *Five Evil Women*, to discuss the real-life child killer Martha Rendell, the last woman hanged in Western Australia.
2 (08:12) **Martha’s Background & the “Crone” Narrative** - Joanna describes Rendell’s ordinary working-class life and how the press quickly recast her as a degenerate, fiendish figure.
3 (11:50) **Why She Killed: Competition & Resources** - Joanna explains the social context of stepmotherhood and the motives behind Rendell’s murders.
4 (14:22) **The Murders & The Escape** - The grisly details of how Rendell killed three children, and how the fourth survived to expose her.
5 (16:36) **Historical Context: Baby Farming** - Joanna connects Rendell’s case to the wider moral panic over baby farming in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
6 (21:03) **The “Double Deviant” & Poison as a Woman’s Weapon** - How female killers were seen as doubly deviant—breaking both criminal and gender norms—and why poison was their typical tool.
7 (22:35) **Why Neighbors & Doctors Didn’t Act** - The social barriers that prevented intervention despite obvious signs of abuse.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

In 1909, the third and final woman hanged in Western Australia was executed. She had murdered three of her step children.

What drove Martha Rendall to kill these children? Why did others in their neighbourhood stand by and not raise the alarm sooner? And how do our understandings of women who kill factor into the evil stepmother figure factor?

This episode was edited by Tim Arstall. The producer was Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.

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