DASTARDLY DADS FROM THE ARCHIVES (Liverpool, England - 1892)

Account is from Martin Fido and David Southwell, True Crime: The Infamous Villains of Modern History and their Hideous Crimes (2008).

Liverpool Murderer Caught in Australia (1892)

FREDERICK DEEMING left England last October, and turned up in Australia, using a false name and passing himself off as a gentleman. His actual station and skills were those of a plumber and gas fitter.

In March of this year, the authorities were called in over an unpleasant smell emanating from a house Deeming had been occupying under the name of Albert O. Williams. The smell proved to be "Mrs Williams", cemented under the kitchen hearth.

"Williams" was traced to Sydney and arrested, and when his identity and recent immigrant status were established, the Home Office asked to find out what they could about his activities in England.

They turned out to be worse than his wife-murder in Australia. Cemented under the kitchen floor of Deeming's former house at Rainhill, Liverpool, were the bodies of his previous wife and four daughters. He apparently cleared them out of the way tidily before moving on to his new life on the other side of the globe.

Full details of how and why Deeming committed the Rainhill murders may never be known, for the Australians quickly tried and executed him for his activities in Melbourne. A persistent rumour that he confessed to "the last" Jack the Ripper murders has been denied by his solicitors.

Nevertheless, the Australian police have sent his death mask to Scotland Yard, feeling that Deeming's is a peculiarly fine specimen of the ape-like skull that Professor Lombroso assigns to the natural criminal.