On 12 August 1895 Minnie Dean was hanged at Invercargill gaol after being found guilty of infanticide, becoming the only woman ever to have been executed in New Zealand. Scottish-born Dean lived in Winton, Southland, with her husband Charles Dean, where she looked after unwanted children for payment. Known as ‘baby-farming’, this practice reflected the lack of socially-acceptable alternatives for women having unwanted babies, and Dean took in many children throughout the 1880s. However several of the children died while in her care, prompting police surveillance of her activities. In May 1895 Dean was seen boarding a train carrying a young baby and a hat-box, and disembarking later carrying only the hat-box. Police later unearthed the freshly buried bodies of two babies and the skeleton of an older boy in Dean's garden.

A coroner’s inquest of one of the dead babies, Dorothy Edith Carter, declared that she had "met her death… through poison administered by Minnie Dean." Dean was subsequently tried for infanticide on 18 June, and despite the defence arguing Carter's death was accidental, on 21 June Dean was found guilty of murder and executed a few weeks later.

The execution of a woman was an unusual course of action to be taken by the New Zealand Supreme Court. Before Dean's trial and execution, three other women had been tried and sentenced to death, all in relation to child murder, but in each case those sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Public interest in the case was high, with souvenirs of the hat-box notoriously being sold outside the courthouse during her trial. The story of Minnie Dean entered into New Zealand folklore, and the case lead to major advances in New Zealand child welfare legislation, with the passing of the Infant Life Protection Act 1893 and Infant Protection Act 1896.