Abstract
This article discusses the sensational trial of the serial poisoner Daisy de Melker in terms of the reaction of 1930s
South Africa to the transgression of white, English-speaking communal ties and values. The discussion focuses on
representations of the events by three writers—Harry Morris, Herman Charles Bosman and Sarah Gertrude
Millin. Each attended the trial, directly observing the court proceedings, yet each presents a different perspective.
Morris, de Melker’s lawyer, provides details of his client’s crimes and personality while exhibiting a subtle
ambivalence towards her; Bosman and Millin’s accounts are less direct and factual, harnessing de Melker for their
contrasting identifications of social ills. For Bosman, alienated from the white social body by his own former
murder trial and conviction, de Melker’s trial emphasised the punitive nature of South African society, providing a
platform to discuss the barbarism of the death penalty. For Millin, however, de Melker embodied the abjection
relating to the criminal disgrace of a white English-speaking woman. Indeed, de Melker’s trial resulted in
conflicting responses that emphasised the ambivalence, fragility and internal contradictions within white South
Africa at the time. These responses reveal race and gender as essential components of sensational trials within the
colonial South African body politic.