George Francis Toffts

A Proposal Rejected. A Father's Disapproval. A seventeen Year Old Girl Chased Into a Field.
Eliza Maud Fletcher was seventeen years old when she ran. George Toffts — the young man she had been secretly meeting in fields and laneways, away from the disapproving eyes of her father — was behind her. He was drunk, raging with jealousy, and carrying a gun.
He fired two shots. One found its mark, hitting Eliza in the hip and bringing her to the ground. Approaching the wounded girl and finding her still alive, George Toffts finished what he had started — hammering her skull with the stock of his gun until his deadly work was complete.
He was twenty-three years old. She was seventeen. And a young man who had asked Eliza to marry him had just murdered her for saying no.
The Life & Death of George Toffts tells the complete true story of both killer and victim — from their separate beginnings in the district of Quirindi to their devastating collision in a field that would end one life and destroy another. Author Helen Cottee traces every detail of the secret courtship, the rejected proposal, the murder, the manhunt through the bush, the trial at Tamworth, and the final walk up thirteen steps to the gallows of Tamworth Gaol on 26 November 1907.
The execution of George Francis Toffts, carried out by hangman George Russell and assisted by James Goulder, was recorded in the cold language of the time as — "satisfactory."
He climbed those thirteen steps nervously. He showed no remorse.
Drawing on court transcripts, police files, inquest records and newspaper reports, this meticulously researched account reconstructs every chapter of both George Toffts and Eliza Maud Fletcher's short lives with unflinching honesty and deep sensitivity. Richly illustrated with historical photographs, maps and documents sourced directly from colonial records, the book concludes with the complete family trees of both George Toffts and Eliza Maud Fletcher — honouring the memory of a young woman whose only crime was saying no, and telling the full story of the young man who could not accept it.
Part of the Life & Death series — preserving the untold stories of colonial Australia, one execution at a time.
For readers who believe that every victim — however forgotten, however young — deserves to be remembered.