Daisy de Melker was born into a large family (11 children) on June 1, 1886, at Seven Fountains, near Grahamstown. In her early teens, she lived with her father in Bulawayo, but returned to South Africa as a boarder at the Good Hope Seminary School in Cape Town. After another brief stint in Rhodesia in 1903, the young woman headed back to train at the Berea Nursing Home in Durban.
While in Rhodesia on holiday, De Melker met Bert Fuller. A romance developed, but Fuller contracted black-water fever and died on the day the couple had planned to marry. He left De Melker a £100 bequest.
In March 1909, De Melker married William Alfred Cowle, a plumber, in Johannesburg. The couple had five children, four of whom died. In January 1923, William Cowle succumbed to an excruciatingly painful death. One of the doctors examining him suspected strychnine poisoning but could not prove it.
Exactly one year after the death of her first husband, De Melker married Robert Sproat, also a plumber. On November 6, 1927 Sproat died after suffering similar symptoms to Cowle. De Melker was the beneficiary in both men’s wills.
In January 1931, De Melker married Sydney Clarence de Melker. Like the other two husbands, he was a plumber.
Just over a year later, in March 1932, Rhodes Cecil Cowle, De Melker’s son, died – supposedly from cerebral malaria. But it was his death that was the femme fatale’s undoing; William Sprout, a relative of her second husband, raised the alarm.
Exhumations of her husbands’ bodies revealed large amounts of strychnine; but the poison could not be traced back to De Melker. A second autopsy on her son found traces of arsenic, and the purchase of the poison was traced back to De Melker.
De Melker’s trial lasted 30 days and the courthouse was packed – some people even paid for seats in order to be part of the action. De Melker was convicted of killing her son, but there was insufficient evidence to directly link her to Cowle and Sproat’s murders. On Friday December 30, 1932 De Melker was hanged at Pretoria Central prison.