The death mask of Frederick Bailey Deeming who was widely
believed to be Jack the Ripper. Deeming murdered his wife
soon after arriving in Melbourne from London.
Picture: State Library Victoria.
believed to be Jack the Ripper. Deeming murdered his wife
soon after arriving in Melbourne from London.
Picture: State Library Victoria.
FULL STORY: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/crime-and-justice/jack-the-ripper-was-infamous-serial-killer-melbourne-murderer-frederick-deeming/news-story/531d2d1055bf2eeed05dca19b68db874
HE may — or may not — have been Jack the Ripper.
But the Melbourne suburb of Windsor was home to one of our city’s most intriguing murderers — Frederick Bailey Deeming.
Deeming — who was known by many aliases — murdered his first wife and four children in the UK in 1891 before he moved to Melbourne and murdered his second wife — burying her under concrete in the fireplace of their rented home.
Meet the man who was a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders, and step inside the incredible Victoria Police investigation that put a noose around his neck.
Frederick Bailey Deeming pictured after his
capture in Western Australia in 1892.
Sketch of Deeming and his first wife, whom he
murdered in Rainhill in the UK.
Deeming, under the alias Albert Williams, emigrated to Melbourne in December 1891 with his wife Emily on board the ship Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The pair rented a house in Andrew Street in Windsor — and on the same day Deeming bought cement and tools from a store in High Street under the name Mr Drewn.
Emily Williams was murdered the same month by her husband, on Christmas Day 1891, and buried under the fireplace and covered in concrete.
Deeming then disappeared.
On the 3rd of March 1892, the owner of the Windsor house was showing a prospective tenant through when they were overcome with a terrible smell.
They moved the stone at the bottom of the fireplace discovered what could be a body and called the police.
It took several officers a few hours to dig the remains out of the fireplace and they described the terrible scene they found in their report — the body oozing and the scalp detached.
“I was quite ill from the sickening smell. The uniform and clothing I wore on that occasion was destroyed as they were completely saturated with the stink,” Constable G.L Webster wrote in his report.
The body was thought to have been in the fireplace for several months and police soon worked out that the last tenant was a Mr Drewn and his wife.
They then quickly discovered that Mr Drewn had ordered concrete, a shovel and other tools from the High Street ironmongers around that time, and the store’s owner gave police a description of Deeming.
Police also found burnt papers in the fire and discovered Drewn was an alias for Albert Williams and they issued a warrant for his arrest for the murder of Emily.media_cameraIllustration of Deeming killing his second wife Emily Williams in Windsor in 1891. Picture: Supplied.
It was then discovered that Deeming had several other aliases — the police discovered his real name Frederick Bailey Deeming.
Victoria police soon established regular communication with authorities in England, and Lancashire police informed them that Deeming’s first wife and four children were murdered in Rainhill and also buried under the fireplace in the same way as his second wife Emily.
Before long the people of Melbourne — and indeed the entire country — were fascinated by the story of Deeming and his many aliases.
The media began publishing serialised columns that released the details of the case and links were made that Deeming could in fact be Jack the Ripper.
After his arrest he wrote a book in jail admitting he was the famous London murderer but it was never proven.
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A news report about Jack the Ripper. Deeming
was listed as a suspect in the famous London
murders in the late 1800s.
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Dr Rachael Weaver from the University of Melbourne says Deeming became a popular figure at a time when dark forms of popular culture were the entertainment du jour.
At the time everyone was reading serialised novels, and each day a new piece of information was coming out about the Deeming case.
“One of the things that made the Deeming case so exciting to people was that it came in the wake of other international murder cases, like the Jack the Ripper sensation which was unfolding a few years earlier in the UK,” says Weaver.
“It unfolded in a way that was similar to the Jack the Ripper case in that it was called a newspaper murder. When they made that link to him being Jack the Ripper it was probably a perverse sense of national pride. Like we’re cosmopolitan too, we’ve got this big murder case too.”
The search for Deeming continued and it was discovered later that he had a new girlfriend who he intended to marry, Kate Rounsefell, and had taken on yet another identity as the aristocratic Baron Swanston.
Deeming’s large ginger moustache would be his undoing — with each of his aliases linked to this distinctive feature.
He was in Sydney with Rounsefell and then moved to Western Australia, and through his correspondence with her, police traced him to Western Australia.
Ms Rounsefell was about to travel to Perth to meet Deeming but after reading a newspaper report soon discovered her fiancee Baron Swanston was the killer.
Deeming was captured in Western Australia and brought back to Victoria as public interest in the case was reaching a peak.
“The railway journey was in every respect remarkable. At every country station the platform was crowded with men, women, and children, who struggled to get a view of the prisoner, and assailed him with loud cries of ‘Murderer’, ‘Jack the Ripper’ and so on. At first the prisoner met these attacks with unmoved composure, but their constant repetition soon told on his nerves,” The Argus reported in 1892.
The inquest jury found that Deeming had been responsible for Emily’s death, and he was then committed to face trial in the Supreme Court on 22 April.
During his trial, the media storm was massive and the public were convinced that Deeming was responsible for the Whitechapel murders committed by ‘Jack the Ripper’ in London in the late 1880s.
London police were unconvinced, as it wasn’t thought that Deeming was in England during the crimes.
Deeming’s trial in Melbourne lasted three days and he was found guilty and sentenced to hang. He was executed on 24 May 1892 at Old Melbourne Gaol.
After his death, the Deeming story continued to capture the public’s imagination and books, plays and even a wax works exhibition were dedicated to the murders.
