Notes
1. Note on historical veracity: All of the dialogue, except where footnoted, is taken, verbatim, from witness testimonies at the Coroner's inquest. Most of the descriptive details have been gleaned from the testimonies as well; exact descriptions are given in quotation marks. Some empathetic details have been fabricated, and these are acknowledged in the notes. Testimonies from the following witnesses were presented at the inquest between 28 February and 7 March 1923: Arthur Trood, John Coughlan, Leslie Coughlan, Rebecca Male, Samuel Ewing, Richard Thomas, Thomas Cook, Lilian Mueller, Frank Bonfiglio, Horace Solly, Margaret Milward, Florence Spicer, Ilma Clarice Walters, Sydney McGuffie, Frederick Piggott, Edmund Ethell. In addition, the testimonies of Frank Bonfiglio and Hannah Mitchell under cross-examination by Crown Prosecutor, HCG Macindoe, at the trial in April 1923 were relied upon in preparing this account. All case material is contained in PROV, VPRS 30/P, Unit 2001, Melbourne Supreme Court, Case number 151 of 15 March 1923. This includes the police report, Coroner's inquest, Trial transcript: His Majesty vs. Hannah Elizabeth Mitchell, Prosecutor's notes, Police evidence including dried fern-leaves, transcripts of telegrams and letters, transcripts of witness statements, and map of the accused's house.
2. Nurse Hannah Elizabeth Mitchell was called simply 'Nurse' by her daughter and sister, and by her ex-husband Bonfiglio. She was a nurse by vocation, and her home was her workplace. Her daughter Queenie worked under her supervision as her apprentice in the house. Bonfiglio refers to her as 'Nurse' and 'Nurse Mitchell' in the Coroner's inquest and in the trial transcripts.
3. The love triangle: Bonfiglio said later that Nurse and Ridgway had colluded to get him out of the picture. He maintained they had trumped up the charges of cruelty against him.
4. The first (and usually the only) procedure upon unwanted pregnancies was performed with a catheter. This long, sharp instrument was inserted into the vagina and 'poked' into the womb to disturb the foetus, which would detach and be expelled from the womb within a matter of days. Nurse Mitchell's house was 'reputable', insofar as she allowed the patient to remain under her supervision until the miscarriage occurred. Other 'backyard' abortionists sent the patient home to deal with it herself. If the miscarriage was not clean - that is, if there appeared to be excessive bleeding (as was the case with Bertha) or if the foetus and other womb materials had not been successfully expelled - a second procedure was performed. This was called curetting, and involved simultaneously scraping and rinsing the opening of the womb and the birth canal of any remaining matter. The instruments used were a long silver syringe (the curette) and a speculum, to hold the area open and unobstructed. This was a last resort, usually preceded and followed by heavy bleeding. If detached matter remained in the womb or birth canal, the danger was that it might become septic and spread infection which would be fatal to the patient.
5. This conversation has been fabricated from the inquest accounts of Bonfiglio and Margaret Milward. Nurse Mitchell did ask this of Milward.
6. Later Nurse Mitchell told her neighbour Nurse Ilma Walters that while she was 'working on' Bertha she could 'hear her filling up' with blood. Nurse Walter's statement was quoted in the Coroner's inquest.
7. It is unclear from the testimonies and the floor plan sketch whether Nurse's bedroom was on the upper or ground level. Here, Bonfiglio indicates that it was upstairs, but later, when he was shot, he said he climbed out the window (quite a feat from the upper level). There may have been some kind of landing.
8. Mrs Spicer recalls Bertha's cat-and-bird speech in her testimony, but it is not known whether she mentioned this to the other people in the house.
9. This detail may be inferred from the evidence, but is not recorded.
10. John Coughlan said that they stayed at the Bull and Mouth in Elizabeth Street, not Bourke, but he was not familiar with Melbourne.
11. While this detail is not recorded, the testimonies reveal that Bertha worried about her morning sickness becoming conspicuous to her Aunt, and Dr Ewing's prescriptions of mercury and almond oil were nasty and, quite possibly, poisonous.
12. The rural city of Warragul was a township in the 1920s, south-east of Dandenong on the train line back to Gippsland.
13. I have added this detail: Queenie was Nurse Mitchell's trainee, she called her mother 'Nurse' and she attended to patients.
14. It is not clear whether placenta praevia killed Bertha or not. It appears from the inquest and trial that Mrs Milward and Queenie saw the expelled foetus among the bed sheets, and Nurse was known to have said, 'Thank god, I have got the foetus. I have saved the girl.' It is likely Nurse Mitchell told Nurse Walters that the foetus was not expelled, so as to have a blameless explanation for Bertha's death; Nurse Walters was called upon during the inquest and trial as an expert witness, to give a detailed medical opinion.
15. Bonfiglio says 9.30 pm at the inquest and 10.30 pm at the trial.
16. Nurse Mitchell refers to an activity the couple once enjoyed.
17. Nurse Mitchell refers to the other times she has had to dispose of a corpse, and the help she bribed.
18. Thomas Cook was later arrested for sending a telegram under a pseudonym.
19. This is alluded to in the inquest testimony of Emily Elizabeth Tucker, who ran a boarding house to which Bertha applied for accommodation the day before she was admitted to Nurse Mitchell's: 'She [Nurse] told me that a young fellow in the country was responsible for the trouble. She said that the girl had carried on with a married man.'
20. This conversation has been reconstructed from Cook's account of his meeting with Bertha.
21. This was never a whole scene; Nurse and the others were buzzing around the house, in and out of rooms, speaking with one another separately, and not always in the others' company.
22. Bonfiglio's and Milward's testimonies referred to the body being wrapped in a blanket and a sheet, it is not clear which. It is also not clear who wrapped the body.
23. Coombe Cottage, the residence of Dame Nellie Melba, Melbourne's celebrated opera singer. It is mentioned several times throughout the inquest and trial, as a local landmark.
24. Bertha's nasty ear medicine, used by Dr Ewing and the Coroner to identify her at the inquest.
25. The latter part of the speech is a creative addition: I have reconstructed Mrs Mueller's speech to Nurse from her account at the inquest.
26. It is unclear exactly what Nurse said to Mrs Mueller to distract her from Bertha's welfare. Bonfiglio testified that after Nurse lied to Mueller they stood chatting about the horse races for a considerable time.
27. The various testimonies from marginal characters indicate that Nurse Mitchell embarked upon an orgy of extortion and favour-granting, using her regular, large race winnings. In December she had three men remove the body from Coldstream. They took it to a well and reported back. Mrs Milward recalled that the men wanted to move it again, and that Nurse Mitchell approved.
28. Nurse Mitchell told Bonfiglio that she had removed the body from the gully in Coldstream and burnt it. Bonfiglio indicated in his inquest account that he did not believe this (possibly because she had never burnt any other dead patients). He thought it reasonable to believe she had moved it. When he gave evidence to the detectives, he said he suspected that the fern leaves at Coldstream would prove the truth of the matter. It is unclear why Nurse's hired help relocated Bertha's corpse from Coldstream back to Richmond for the hapless Sharkey-Boyd to detect; perhaps they thought that another body in Richmond's Yarra had better chance of decaying unnoticed than it would in the secluded environs of Coldstream.
29. This detail is my own invention.

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