In March 1909, a shocking murder at Meekatharra stunned the people of the Murchison district and became one of the most widely discussed crimes on the Western Australian goldfields. The victim was Katherine Jane Cane, also known in the district as Caroline Jane Scott, a well-respected young woman who had been living apart from Donald Anderson Campbell Scott after an unhappy relationship that had lasted several years. Together they had two small children, one of them only a few weeks old.
Scott, a farmhand and post-hole sinker, had lived with Katherine for about two years, and she was commonly known around Meekatharra as “Mrs Scott.” About eight months before the tragedy, the couple had separated, and Katherine had gone to live with her sister and later at the home of Mrs Wansborough in Meekatharra.
Evidence later given at the inquest revealed that the relationship between the pair had become increasingly troubled. About ten days before the murder, Scott visited Katherine at Mrs Wansborough’s residence and angrily abused her. Katherine, evidently frightened, asked Mrs Wansborough to accompany her to the police station, apparently seeking protection from him. Scott pleaded with her not to go, telling her the police would arrest him the following day over something he had done at Sandstone.
Katherine reluctantly agreed not to report him, and Scott then asked whether she would live with him again once he was released from gaol. When she refused, explaining she was “tired of keeping him,” Scott protested, saying he did not know she had been supporting him. Katherine replied that it “went so near it there was no difference.”
Scott then asked her to kiss him, but she refused.
This was reportedly the last significant contact between the pair until the afternoon of Sunday, 14 March 1909, when Scott encountered Katherine while she was walking to the hospital with John Storey. Later that evening, Katherine returned to her small home after visiting her sister, from whom she had collected a fowl for supper. Shortly after six o’clock that night, neighbours heard terrifying screams coming from her home. Katherine suddenly burst out into the street, crying
“Murder! Murder!” Blood streamed from wounds in her chest as horrified residents rushed to help her.
Despite suffering dreadful injuries, Katherine managed to describe the attack. She said she had gone into the kitchen and was lighting a lamp with her back to the rear door when someone struck her from behind and stabbed her repeatedly. She screamed, and the attacker fled through the back door. Katherine then picked up the knife, placed her baby into a pram, and somehow made her way across to the hotel for assistance. Doctors later counted eleven knife wounds — ten to the chest and one to the knee. Father Corcoran was summoned urgently from Norseman by special motor car and attended Katherine during her final hours. She lingered for some time before dying the following morning in the hospital.
