Published: 2014
No of Pages: 400
ISBN Print: 978-1-921556-42-5
The Notorious Frances Thwaites
The Notorious Frances Thwaites is a story of betrayal: betrayal of parental duty of care, betrayal of the heart, betrayal of society and betrayal of justice. Set in the 1890s in colonial Australia this is the true story of Frances Thwaites, a beautiful, respectable but disastrously strong-willed and opinionated young woman, who at the age of nineteen became a ‘fallen woman,’ was cast out from her family in Chelsea, London and sent by her father to Australia with no means of support. Within a decade she had a scandalous reputation with convictions for petty crime, adultery and eventually murder. The Notorious Frances Thwaites is a page-turning, meticulously researched, true crime novel set in colonial Australia and like Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, Frances Thwaites has one misdadventure after another and in her time was as well known as Ned Kelly.
Frances Thwaites’ execution in 1894 led the hangman to kill himself rather than perform the deed. She was as divisive as she was fascinating. She was variously labeled a female monster, a thug of her times, a depraved murderess, a misunderstood young woman. Perhaps she was guilty only of having a strong will and exceptionally poor judgment, and became a sacrificial victim of a political agenda to clean up baby farming?
About the Author
Kellinde Wrightson was born in Sydney, raised on the South Coast of New South Wales and educated at the University of Sydney. She is a former Centre for the Book Fellow of the British Library, London. In 2013 she was a resident writer at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, and in 2015 she was a guest author at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. She is currently Associate Professor of Law at the University of Calgary, Alberta, where she lives with her partner, Richard, and where her son, Gérard, and her daughter, Sophie, also reside.
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