Daisy Louisa C. De Melker (1 June 1886 - 30 December 1932), simply known as Daisy de Melker, was a trained nurse who poisoned two husbands with strychnine for their life insurance while living in Germiston in the central Transvaal (now Gauteng), and then poisoned her only son with arsenic for reasons which are still unclear. She is historically the second woman to have been hanged in South Africa.

De Melker has become somewhat of a South African icon, and has entered popular myth. If a door blew shut in the wind they[who?] would say "it was the ghost of Daisy de Melker". If a child's hair was unkempt and wild, they said "you look like Daisy de Melker".



Rumour has it that De Melker's spirit haunts Ward 7 of the Transvaal Children's Hospital (now the Florence Transition Home) in Braamfontein. It is here that she worked as a nurse and learned about poisons.

In 1934, Sarah Gertrude Millin wrote the novel "Three Men Died," based on the de Melker case.

In 1993, a television mini-series was made about Daisy de Melker, with Susan Coetzer in the title role.

In September 2005, a drag musical "Daisy's Well Hung" starring Robert Coleman as "Daisy" was staged at the Women's Jail on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, where de Melker had been imprisoned prior to her hanging. This show attempted to transform the dour figure of De Melker into a poltergeist of a husband-killing femme fatale.

By this time, William Sproat, Daisy de Melker's second dead husband's brother, had become suspicious and these suspicions were conveyed to the authorities. On 15 April 1932, the police obtained a court order permitting them to exhume the bodies of Rhodes Cowle ( First Husband ), Robert Sproat ( Second Husband ) and William Cowle ( Her Only Son ).

The first body to be removed was that of Rhodes Cowle. The corpse was found to be in an unusually good state of preservation, which is characteristic of the presence of arsenic in large quantities.[citation needed] A state forensic pathologist was able to isolate traces of arsenic in the viscera, backbone and hair. Although the bodies of William Cowle and Robert Sproat were largely decomposed, traces of strychnine were found in the vertebrae of each man. Their bones also had a pinkish discoloration, suggesting that the men had taken pink strychnine, which was common at the time.

Traces of arsenic were also found in the hair and fingernails of James Webster, Rhodes' colleague who had survived.

A week later, the police arrested De Melker and charged her with the murder of all three men. Public interest in the De Melker case grew, and the newspapers gave the story a great deal of coverage. The Turffontein chemist from whom she had bought the arsenic that killed her son, recognized De Melker from a newspaper photograph as being "Mrs D.L. Sproat", who had signed the poisons register, and went to the police.

The De Melker trial lasted thirty days. Sixty witnesses were called for the Crown and less than half this number for the defense. To present the forensic evidence, the Crown employed the services of Dr. J.M. Watt, an expert toxicologist and Professor of Pharmacology at the Witwatersrand University. In summing up, before giving his verdict, the judge pointed out that the Crown had been unable to prove conclusively that Cowle and Sproat had died of strychnine poisoning. "It does not convince me, nor does it convict the accused," he said.

On the third count, however, he had come to the "inescapable conclusion" that De Melker had murdered her son. This was evident because:

* Rhodes Cowle had died of arsenic poisoning
* The coffee flask held traces of arsenic
* The accused had put the arsenic into the flask
* The defense of suicide was untenable

When the judge finally turned to pass sentence on de Melker, her face whitened but she still proclaimed her innocence.

Daisy de Melker (aged 46 years) was condemned to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on the morning of 30 December 1932 at Pretoria Central Prison.

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