Frederick Bailey Deeming (30 July 1853 to 23 May 1892), alias Albert Williams, alias Mr. Drewin (or "Drewn"), alias Baron Swanson (or Swanston), alias Duncan, alias, alias, alias, was, let us not make bones about it, an absolute freakin' psychopath.

He arrived in Australia in 1882. He worked mainly as a gas fitter when he wasn't stealing brass fittings from some employers or conning others out of money to start a new business in Rockhampton Queensland, a place that he seemed to have an abnormal fascination with, or absconding from bail.

While still in England in 1881 he had married a Welsh woman, the unfortunate Marie, who bore him 4 children and accompanied him on some of his voyages between England, Australia, South Africa and South America including his time working as a gasfitter.

He sort of had a second wife from his time living in Hull in 1889, where he was passing himself off as being a retired sheep farmer from, you guessed it, Rockhampton. (Hint: Sheep like the tropics even less than I do. Rockhampton isn't deep in the tropics (the tropic of Capricorn passes through near there, and there are some sheep producers there... but sheep farming isn't A Big Thing that far north and would have been even less so in the 1880s considering the limitations of transport.) Here he "married" his landlady's 21 year old daughter in 1890 (or would have, had bigamy not been illegal), went on a honeymoon with her... then ghosted her, taking with him all of the wedding gifts. He went back to see Marie and told her that he was going to South America, and he would send for her when he was settled there. Unfortunately for him (and Marie, it seems) he conducted a jewellery swindle before he left and was extradited back to England to face a few months of prison. After his release in July 1891 he moved to the Liverpool area where his "sister and her children" (Marie and their kids) visited him.

However he had a third (or second, depending on how you're counting) wife, the equally unfortunate Emily who he married in September 1891. I don't think this one was bigamous and you'll see why shortly.

She was with him by the time he arrived in Melbourne (under the Albert Williams alias) on 15 December 1891. At that time he rented a house in Windsor in the south east suburbs of Melbourne, paying a month in advance, under the "Mr Drewn" alias.

In March 1892 the owner of the cottage was showing a prospective tenant through it and noticed a disagreeable smell. It was Emily, buried under the hearthstone. As near as can be told, she was murdered on either Christmas Eve or Christmas day the preceding year. Merry Christmas, Mrs Drewin.

The Victorian police contacted their English colleagues, who found Marie and the four children similarly buried in Deeming's old house in Liverpool.

Deeming was defended by the future Prime Minister Alfred Deakin who tried for a defence of insanity, but the jury rejected it. Deeming was hung in May 1892.

I should also mention that Deeming was considered as a suspect for the Whitehall Murders, also known as the Jack The Ripper murders. However that sort of thing gives conspiracy theories a bad name. (The victims were different, the methods of murder were different, etc, etc. The only thing in common were mass murderers.)

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Update Aug 2024: As an aside, this is also one of the rare PBase photos that is still indexed on Google, and which has therefore the highest hit count in this gallery. And not one single comment has been left in the course of 13 years. Yup, life on PBase... (Unless you're reading this on another site, of course.)