On 23 May 1892 conman, bigamist and multiple murderer Frederick Bailey Deeming was executed at Melbourne gaol, in the British Colony of Victoria, Australia. He was convicted of murdering his wife  Emily, whose naked body was discovered with a fractured skull and cut throat under the hearthstone of their rented house in Windsor, suburban Melbourne. In England when the mother of his victim was told the gruesome circumstances of her daughter's death, she recalled work Deeming had done the previous year to his then home, Dinham Villa, in Rainhill, east of Liverpool. This recollection resulted in the discovery of the remains of his first wife Marie and four young children, entombed in concrete under the floorboards.  After murdering Emily on 24 December 1891, Deeming made his way to Perth in Western Australia, where he was arrested on 11 March 1892 under the alias, Baron Swanston. He was extradited back to Victoria to stand trial. The press had a field-day. The sociopathic savagery of the crimes guaranteed sellout editions of any newspaper hyping the story. The unsolved Whitechapel murders still fresh in the public mind, combined with Deemings British origins, made it almost inevitable that the sensation seeking press would accuse him of being Jack the Ripper. Initiated and given credence by the reports, he confessed in transit to committing two of the Ripper murders. Soon articles appeared nationwide advancing theories that suggested his motive for the Rainhill murders was to silence a wife who had discovered his awful secret. They labelled him the 'Jack the Ripper of the Southern Seas'. His lawyers, including future Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, strenuously denied this prejudicial publicity, seeing their client's chances of receiving a fair trial fade with each headline. Deeming's handwriting was compared to samples accredited to the Ripper, as foreign and domestic papers alleged his acquaintance with Ripper victim Catherine Eddowes. Eddowes, it was reported, had written to Deeming during his travels. Like many other claims, however, this too remains unproven.  the jury at Deeming's trial On 8 April 1892 a report was published in the Melbourne Evening Standard claiming he had been identified by a London dressmaker as being in the East End the night Eddowes was murdered. Seeing a photograph of Deeming she had recognized him as a Mr Lawson, whom she had kept company with on 30 September 1888. Meeting him again the following day she claimed he had displayed an intimate knowledge of Eddowes' mutilations. In Australia the belief that Deeming was the Ripper was reinforced by accounts of his conversations with doctors at Melbourne Gaol, who were sent by the Court to determine his sanity. He told Dr Andrew Shields that he had, on occasions, gone searching for a woman (prostitute) who had given him syphilis. He had intended to kill her, and believed in the extermination of all such women. Lamenting his contraction of a venereal disease he said with a peculiar intensity: "I've had my own back, as more than one of them found out". The case also proved a sensation in Britain where questions were asked in the House of Commons. Meanwhile in Rainhill, extra telegraph lines had to be connected and 22 clerks hired to handle the demands of journalists covering the inquest into the Deeming family murders. Public interest in the case necessitated the scheduling of extra rail services as the morbidly curious descended on Rainhill and slowly shuffled passed Dinham Villa. Over ten thousand lined the streets and crowded the cemetery to watch the funeral of Marie Deeming and her children. Flowers were left anonymously on their graves for years afterwards.  |