Daisy Louisa Hancorn Smith

1883 - 1932  (49 years)

• Name	Daisy Louisa Hancorn Smith
  Birth	1 Jun 1883	Assegai River, Eastern Cape, South Africa   [1, 2]
  Baptism	6 Oct 1889	St George's Cathedral, Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa   [2]
  Gender	Female
  1820 Lineage	Yes
  Name	Daisy Louisa Hancorn-Smith
  Death	30 Dec 1932	Pretoria prison, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa   [1]
  Burial	30 Dec 1932	Pretoria prison, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa   [3]
  Person ID	I67399	master
  Last Modified	25 Jul 2021

  
  

  Father	William Stringfellow Hancorn Smith,   b. 21 May 1842, Melville Park, Peddie, Cape, South Africa d. 24 Nov 1898, Rhodes St, Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) (Age 56 years)
  Mother	Fanny Augusta Mathilda Bird,   b. 1853, Island of Ascension d. 29 Jul 1894, Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa (Age 41 years)
  Family ID	F24640	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family 1	William Alfred Cowle,   b. 1873   d. 11 Jan 1923 (Age 50 years)
  Marriage	Mar 1909	Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa   [1]
  Children	1. Rhodes Cecil Cowle,   b. 21 Jun 1911   d. 5 Mar 1932, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa (Age 20 years)   2. Lester Beresford Cowle   3. Alfred Eric Cowle
  Family ID	F24652	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	25 Nov 2017

  
  

  Family 2	Robert Sproat,   b. 1873   d. 6 Nov 1927, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa (Age 54 years)
  Marriage	11 Jan 1926  [1]
  Family ID	F24653	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	22 Mar 2008

  
  

  Family 3	Sydney Clarence De Melker,   b. 31 Mar 1884, Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa d. 1 Nov 1953, Springs, Gauteng, South Africa (Age 69 years)
  Marriage	11 Jan 1931  [1]
  Family ID	F24654	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	22 Mar 2008

  
  

• Event Map

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  Baptism - 6 Oct 1889 - St George's Cathedral, Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa Marriage - Mar 1909 - Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa Death - 30 Dec 1932 - Pretoria prison, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa Burial - 30 Dec 1932 - Pretoria prison, Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa  = Link to Google Earth

  
  

• Settler Photos

  Smith, Daisy Louisa Hancorn Caption Note: Photo taken by Paul Tanner-Tremaine at Somerset East Museum. Keywords: Picture

  
  

• Notes

  "Daisy Hancorn-Smith was born at Seven Fountains near Grahamstown, South Africa. She was one of eleven children. When she was twelve, she went to Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to live with her father and two of her brothers. Three years later, she became a boarder at the Good Hope Seminary School in Cape Town. She returned to Rhodesia in 1903, but apparently found rural life unexciting, because it was not long before she returned to South Africa and enrolled at the Berea Nursing Home in Durban. On one of her holidays in Rhodesia, she met and fell in love with a young man named Bert Fuller who was a civil servant in the Native Affairs Department at Broken Hill. They planned to marry in October 1907. However, Fuller contracted blackwater fever and died, with Daisy at his bedside, on the very day they had planned to marry. Fuller left a will bequeathing £100 to his fiancée. In March 1909, about eighteen months after the death of Bert Fuller, Daisy married William Alfred Cowle, a plumber, in Johannesburg. She was 22 and he was 36. The couple had five children, four of whom died. The first were twins, who died in infancy; their third child died of an abscess on the liver; and the fourth suffered convulsions and bowel trouble and died at the age of 15 months. Their last, and only surviving child, Rhodes Cecil, was born in June 1911. Daisy Louisa C. De Melker (née Hancorn-Smith; 1 June 1883 – 30 December 1932) simply known as Daisy de Melker, was a trained nurse[1] 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 the second woman to have been hanged in South Africa.[2] Daisy de Melker was accused of three murders but was only convicted of one, that of killing her son. The charges of poisoning her husbands were never proved in a court of law. It was William Sproat, the younger brother of her second husband, who accused her because he wanted Robert Sproat's will in favour of Daisy declared invalid. Daisy refused to refund an alleged loan from Mrs Jane Sproat, Robert's mother, to Robert; she regarded it as a gift and argued that it was not stipulated in the will as a loan. William Sproat won the civil case regarding the will, which ran concurrently with the murder trial, and was awarded costs. Daisy withdrew on the date Justice Greenberg sentenced her for murder. William's was a Pyrrhic victory however. To pay her exorbitant legal costs Daisy had to hock all her assets. She was declared insolvent and was eventually buried in a prison pauper's grave." see http://www.africacrime-mystery.co.za/books/fsac/chp6.htm

  
  

• Sources

  [S1361] Ros Dunnico, Hancorns of South Africa, Cornwall and Kent. [S2181] Family Search website, (www.familysearch.org), https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33SQ-GTWM-SQH3?i=104&cc=1468076 (Reliability: 3). [S2181] Family Search website, (www.familysearch.org), https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSK6-3ST2?cat=1159280 (Reliability: 3).