2. Stories in the stones

During the Great Depression, with many out of work, councils were encouraged to employ local men on relief work. In 1930 Brighton City Council decided on a project to protect Green Point and nearby beaches by building bluestone walls. Council employed Sustenance workers, or ‘Sussos’ as they were generally known to work on the project.

The stones in this and other sea walls on the foreshore were taken from the outer walls of the old Melbourne Gaol. Some stones had been inscribed with letters and numbers. When prisoners were executed, they were not given a marked grave or headstone, but were buried inside the gaol walls and a stone was inscribed with their initials and date of death.

The wall below is inscribed with three of these: William Robert Jones who was hanged on 26 March 1900, for the murder of Olive Jones; Frederick Jordan who was hanged on 20 August 1884, for the murder Minnie Crabtree; and Martha Needle who was hanged on 22 October 1884, for the murder of Louis Juncken.

In a sensational trial know as The Richmond Poisoning Case, Martha was accused of administering arsenic to her fiancé’s brothers, making one ill and killing the other. When the bodies of her previous husband Henry Needle, and two of their daughters were exhumed at Boroondara Cemetery in Kew, they were also found to contain arsenic. Evidence was produced that Martha had purchased Rough on Rats – an arsenic based rat poison, from a Richmond chemist shop.