True Stories. Real Women. Their Voices Remembered
Remembering the Women History Forgot
In Her Words isn’t just a book or presentation — it’s an act of remembrance. Each story is drawn from authentic records, court transcripts, and final letters. These women were daughters, wives, and mothers whose lives were judged and ended by a harsh colonial justice system.
By revisiting their words, we ensure their stories are not lost to time — and that history speaks with empathy and truth.
Presented and researched by Deb Robinson, historian, author and researcher behind the Locked Up With History podcast and at the National Crime & Justice Museum at the Geelong Gaol.
The Presentation: In Her Words
In Her Words is a moving presentation that gives voice to the women executed across Australia’s colonial history to the 20th century. Through many hours of research and respectful storytelling, historian Deb Robinson shares the lives and last words of these women — exploring justice, morality, and the power of remembrance.
This is a 90-minute presentation where Deb relays the stories of these 25 women along with the background of their society, their justice system and their laws – which sometimes had deadly results.
The presentation is supplemented with several artefacts to illustrate these womens lives and a Q and A at then end.
If you would like to see this presentation in your local area, please email Deb at lo*****************@***il.com for more information, booking and pricing.
In Her Words: The Book
They were labelled murderers, monsters, madwomen. Their names, if remembered at all, are whispered in footnotes or buried in brittle court transcripts. Yet behind each headline and hanging was a woman—flesh and blood, frightened or furious, often failed by the very systems meant to protect her.
Between 1789 and 1951, twenty-five women were executed in Australia. Their stories are scattered, silenced, or sensationalised. This book gathers them back together—not to pardon, excuse, or rewrite history, but to give them what they were so often denied: their voice.
In In Her Words, we step beyond the gallows and into the lives of these women. We walk with them through dusty courtrooms, crowded prison yards, and the final quiet moments before the noose. We hear their words, read their letters, examine their trials—and we ask not only what they did, but why.
This is not a story of murder. It is a story of justice—and injustice. Of survival, desperation, resilience, and rage. These women were daughters, sisters, wives, mothers. They lived in a world that judged them not just for their actions, but for who they were.
It’s time to listen. It’s time to remember. It’s time to hear them—in their words.
Copies are available at presentations or by clicking the My Book Shop link on this site