Hicks, Mary Jane

Sixteen year old domestic servant who had recently arrived in Sydney from regional New South Wales, and was the victim of a gang rape at Mount Rennie (now Moore Park) in September 1886. The trial of eleven of her assailants polarised the colony, especially when four of the men were hanged for the crime in January 1887. The nuns of the Convent of the Good Samaritans took her in after the assault and helped her move to Christchurch, New Zealand in February 1887.