The Macdonaldtown Horror

15 Infants, a Quiet Erskineville Terrace and One of Sydney’s Most Disturbing Criminal Mysteries

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By Elliot Lindsay 

On the morning of 12 October 1892, two workmen were digging a drainage trench behind a modest brick terrace at 25 Burren Street, Macdonaldtown (today 27 Burren Street, Erskineville). Their picks had barely broken through a foot of damp clay when they uncovered what they first assumed was the carcass of a cat. It was badly decomposed, wrapped in fragments of cloth and scarcely recognisable. The following day, they found another.

Police were summoned, and within weeks the quiet working-class street had become the centre of one of the most shocking criminal investigations in Australian history. As detectives methodically excavated the tiny backyard, more infant bodies emerged from the earth. By the time the digging was finished, seven infants had been recovered from the property. It was only the beginning.

Newtown Police quickly realised they were dealing with something far more sinister than an isolated burial. They painstakingly retraced the movements of the previous tenants of the house—John and Sarah Makin—and began searching every property the family had occupied during the preceding months.

Their investigations uncovered another four infant bodies buried in the yard of 109 George Street, Redfern, where the Makins had lived immediately before moving to Burren Street. A further body was recovered from Zamia Street, Redfern, and additional discoveries followed elsewhere. In all, the remains of fifteen infants were eventually linked to properties occupied by the family. The discovery horrified Sydney.

Newspapers filled their front pages with lurid headlines describing "Horrible discovery at Macdonaldtown" and "The Great Baby Farming Case." Crowds gathered outside the tiny terrace in Burren Street, hoping to glimpse the excavations or catch sight of the accused as they were transported to and from court. 

John Makin was a labourer. His wife Sarah advertised herself as a "qualified midwife and lady's nurse." Together they moved frequently between rented houses in Redfern, Chippendale and Macdonaldtown, often using aliases including "Hill," "Leslie" and "Wilson." Their principal business appeared respectable enough. They answered newspaper advertisements placed by unmarried mothers seeking someone to adopt or nurse their infants, usually accepting a one-off payment of around £3 or weekly boarding fees in exchange for promising to raise the child "as one of their own."

To desperate young women facing enormous social stigma during the depression of the 1890s, the Makins seemed compassionate. Sarah spoke tenderly of a mother's love. John assured parents their babies would receive every care and affection. Several mothers later recalled leaving reassured, believing they had secured a better future for their children. Most never saw their babies again.

The Macdonaldtown Horror Breakthrough

The breakthrough came through the case of Amber Murray. After giving birth to a healthy son in May 1892, she advertised for someone willing to adopt him. The Makins responded under the surname "Hill," promising to care for the infant in exchange for a small premium. Murray personally delivered her child to their George Street house, together with clothing she had sewn herself.

Whenever she later attempted to visit, excuses were offered. The family, she was told, had moved. The child was ill. They were now living elsewhere. Finally, all contact ceased.

Months later, after the discoveries in Burren Street, police searched the former George Street residence. Buried beneath the kitchen window they found the remains of an infant wrapped in clothing that Amber Murray positively identified as garments she had made and given with her son.

The investigation gathered momentum with remarkable speed.

Neighbours described hearing babies crying inside the Burren Street house before the cries abruptly stopped. One neighbour recalled lending John Makin a shovel and later a pickaxe. 

The Makins' own children became important witnesses. Although their evidence shifted over time, several eventually admitted that more infants had lived in the Burren Street house than their parents had originally acknowledged. They also alleged they had been instructed to tell police that their mother had cared for only a single child while living there.

Yet despite the mounting circumstantial evidence, proving murder proved extraordinarily difficult.

The infant remains had lain buried for months in waterlogged clay.  Government Analyst William Hamlet could detect no poison, while Dr. Frederick Milford repeatedly told the Coroner he could not determine how the infants had died. In several cases, even establishing the children's identities proved impossible.

The Coroner's inquests stretched across weeks, attracting intense public attention. Jurors heard heartbreaking testimony from mothers who had entrusted healthy babies to the Makins, only for them to disappear forever. One by one, open verdicts were returned because medical science could not establish a cause of death. Only one case ultimately proceeded to trial.

The Crown alleged that the infant buried beneath the kitchen window at George Street was the child of Amber Murray. Prosecutors argued that the clothing identified by Murray, combined with the Makins' deception, repeated changes of address, false names and the discovery of numerous infants' remains at houses they had occupied, formed an overwhelming chain of circumstantial evidence.

The Macdonaldtown Horror Trial

In March 1893, after a sensational trial before the Central Criminal Court, John and Sarah Makin were convicted of murdering Amber Murray's infant son. The jury recommended mercy for Sarah. Under the legal doctrine that a wife acting with her husband might be presumed to have acted under his authority, her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. John Makin was not so fortunate.

Despite maintaining his innocence until the end and insisting on the eve of his execution that the child buried at George Street was not Amber Murray's son, he was hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 15 August 1893. 

Today, little hint remains of the case. Burren Street is a quiet residential street where few passers-by realise they are walking by the site that once shocked the colony. The house itself still stands though was renumbered from 25 to 27 Burren Street, while Macdonaldtown's original name survives only in the railway station a short walk away after the suburb was officially renamed Erskineville in 1893 in an attempt to cleanse its reputation of the sanguine stain. 

More than 130 years later, the Makin case remains one of Australia's most disturbing criminal investigations. It was not only the scale of the discoveries that horrified Sydneysiders, but the unsettling realisation that behind the ordinary façade of a suburban terrace, hidden beneath an unremarkable backyard, lay a tragedy that forever altered the history—and even the name—of an entire suburb.