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THE MURDER OF MISS MATHER, 1891

Barristers defending persons accused of murder quite often claim that the defendant is insane. How else can the accused’s apparently normal behaviour before and after the horrible event be explained? Sometimes, indeed, more time is spent on discussing medical theories about mental states than on the actual circumstances of the murder. In these instances, the defence usually suffers from the difficulty that the defendant looks and sounds far from mad, and is on the contrary the very picture of an agreeable, sometimes good-looking person, wrongfully accused and naturally aggrieved at being so. Seventy years ago and more, juries appear not to have been too bothered with technicalities and took a simpler, black-and-white view of right and wrong. They were not too worried, it seems, whether the accused was mad or not, since oddness, eccentricity and even abnormal behaviour were perhaps more usual – and more tolerated – than they are now. The question then was whether or not the accused had been satisfactorily proved to have done the murderous deed – and if he had, then he deserved to hang.

Frederick Bailey Deeming was certainly an unusual man, an adventurer in every way, engaging, larger than life, dedicated to enjoying himself and avoiding work whenever possible. Other members of his family also seem to have been rather odd. According to Fred’s older brother Edward, their father, a tinsmith, ‘died an imbecile in Tranmere Workhouse, Birkenhead’ and before this had tried four times to commit suicide by cutting his throat. Fred himself, born on 30 July 1853 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, on the River Mersey opposite Liverpool, was the youngest of seven children and spoiled by his puritanical, Sunday School teacher mother. As a boy he was, according to Edward, ‘hysterical and peculiar in his habits’ and known as ‘Mad Fred’. It seems he was supported by his parents for many years, only doing enough in the way of work to pay for his pleasures in Liverpool. It is said that when he was eighteen he became a steward on a liner and disappeared for several years. On his return he was, it seems, transformed, full of tales of adventure in the South African gold fields, and flamboyantly attired. From then on he kept disappearing overseas and reappearing, bejewelled anew, with a new suit and a new lady-friend by his side. Women, it seems, were fascinated by him. But he never exploited them financially, acquiring his money instead through theft, extortion and fraud. He was a plumber by trade.

When his mother died in 1875, her youngest son (according to brother Edward):

… was greatly distressed and very ill, and subsequently went on several voyages, visiting, amongst other places, Calcutta, where he had a severe attack of brain-fever … Afterwards his mind appeared to be affected [and] he did the most extraordinary things … He represented himself as being a person of distinction and would dress in peculiar ways. Sometimes he insisted on going out of doors in the morning wearing an evening dress coat [and] on other occasions he would go out as if dressed for a funeral, wearing deep mourning. [He was] subject to delusions, and frequently, after his mother’s death, declared that he had seen her vision, and that she had directed him to do certain things.

His travels took him not only into Europe but to America, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. At some point he married an English girl, of whom little is known except that she bore him four children, was abandoned in Australia (where she sang in the streets of Sydney to earn money) and again at Cape Town in South Africa when she managed to follow him there. He was imprisoned for bankruptcy in Australia in 1887 and was apparently also in prison in Johannesburg in 1888.

In 1890, Frederick Deeming was forty-seven, a large, muscular, hard-faced, handsome man with fair hair, a ginger moustache and light-blue eyes. Early in 1890, he was in Antwerp, posing as Lord Dunn, and was accepted as such by the town’s smart society. But some piece of embezzlement or other misdemeanour soon occasioned his departure and he returned to his home territory on Merseyside.

He took up residence at the Railway Hotel, Rainhill, a few miles south of St Helens and east of Liverpool. He informed people that he worked for the government and was an Inspector of Regiments. Such was his ostentatious style of living that the hotel proprietor ventured to suggest that his hotel was too humble, even inadequate to cater for such a guest. Deeming was gracious. He said he was in Rainhill to look for a modest but comfortable little house within convenient distance of Liverpool on behalf of a friend, Baron Brook. The proprietor was pleased to recommend a charming villa near Rainhill, which an acquaintance, Mrs Mather, wished to let furnished to a good tenant.

Supplied with a letter of introduction, Deeming visited Mrs Mather that afternoon and viewed the property, Dinham Villa, which he pronounced to be entirely suitable and satisfactory. He was shown over the house by Mrs Mather’s twenty-six-year-old daughter, Emily, a small brown-haired woman, five feet tall and slightly built.

Captivated by Deeming’s personality, persiflage and protestations, Mrs Mather let him move into the villa without paying any rent in advance. Believing her handsome tenant to be a single man, she was intrigued to hear that Baron Brook had insisted on being Deeming’s best man when he married. To everyone’s satisfaction, the courtship of Emily Mather proceeded apace.

Before long, however, Deeming’s wooing of Miss Mather was interrupted by the unexpected arrival – by cab and with little luggage – of his incorrigible wife and her four children. She had found her way back to England, to his brothers’ families in Liverpool, and thence to Rainhill. She was determined to live with him as his wife.

Miss Mather heard about the new arrivals and wondered who they were. Deeming teased her, mocking her casual curiosity and revealing at last that the woman was not his wife but his sister. Her husband, he said, had recently obtained a lucrative position abroad, and she had come to holiday briefly with her brother to discuss some private financial matters that had to be settled before she left England.

From Deeming’s point of view, the sooner she went the better. Her presence and that of the children was inconvenient. When he quarrelled with her, the children cried – it was intolerable. People would soon find out who she really was and then his flourishing romance with Miss Mather would be ruined. As Mrs Deeming refused to leave him – and he was reluctant this time to abandon her yet again (he was planning to marry Miss Mather) something had to be done.

After some thought, he went to Mrs Mather and said that, with her permission, he proposed to make one or two alterations to the villa, which would render the house more desirable to Baron Brook, who possessed a number of valuable carpets acquired in his travels. The floorboards at the villa were poorly laid, uneven, and let in the damp, and Deeming proposed at his own expense to cement the ground beneath the floorboards and then to re-lay them, so that they were flat and formed suitable surfaces for the Baron’s carpets. Mrs Mather agreed.

Deeming then called on a local builder, buying a pickaxe and a large quantity of cement. He said his sister and her family had just left, and so, with the house to himself, he proposed to begin the alterations at once.

Over the next few days he cemented the ground-floor rooms himself, with a local carpenter re-laying the floorboards. As soon as this was done he celebrated by giving a little party in the villa. There was dancing in the kitchen, light refreshments being served in other rooms. The culmination of the party was the announcement of the engagement of Miss Mather and Mr Deeming – he had proposed that night and she had accepted. The healths of the happy couple were drunk and the merry guests danced happily over the now even floors – under which, encased in cement, lay the bodies of Mrs Deeming and all four children.

The Inspector of Regiments then suddenly announced that his duties required him to visit Australia. The wedding must therefore take place before he left. At the same time he revealed that Baron Brook had abandoned the idea of acquiring a house near Liverpool, and Mrs Mather was obliged to agree that it would be convenient if Deeming vacated the villa and stayed with her until he married her daughter. For some reason the marriage took place, on 22 September 1891, at Beverley in East Yorkshire.

Weeks later the couple, now known as Mr and Mrs Williams, set sail on the Kaiser Wilhelm II. They arrived in Australia, at Melbourne, in December 1891, and rented a small furnished house in Andrew Street, Windsor. Within a few days, on or about 20 December, Emily Mather was cemented in under the dining-room hearth and Mr Williams had disappeared.

The carelessness of a hurried repeat performance meant that, without the benefit of professional assistance, the floorboards were badly re-laid. The owner of the house was compelled to put right the poor workmanship, and in doing so uncovered part of a trussed and naked body. The police were sent for. They eventually dug out the remains of Miss Mather, who had been hit on the head six times before her throat was cut.

Deeming was not traced until March 1892, by which time his real identity had been established. He was found in Western Australia, in Perth, where he had been making plans to marry yet again, in this case a certain Miss Rounsevell. Arrested by Detective Cawsey, Deeming was brought in the last week of March by train to Albany, a sea port on the state’s south coast. On the way to Albany the train stopped at York and a large, hostile crowd demonstrated at the railway station. When the train pulled out Deeming had a fit – whether real or faked is not clear – writhing and kicking for about an hour. At Albany, where Deeming and his captors embarked on a steamer for the 1,500-mile voyage to Melbourne, the prisoner shaved off his moustache. He subsequently denied that he had ever had one. Nonetheless, he was identified by several people when he was paraded before them in the yard of Melbourne jail.

He appeared at Melbourne’s criminal court in the last week of April 1892, charged with the murder of Emily Mather. The judge was Mr Justice Hodges; the prosecutor was Mr Walsh; and the accused was defended by Mr Deakin. Meanwhile in England, Mrs Mather, informed of the method of her daughter’s burial, had been horribly reminded of the cementing of the floors of Dinham Villa. When they were dug up, the remains of Deeming’s wife and four children were found where he had laid them. Their throats too had been cut.

In Melbourne, Deeming’s trial aroused a great deal of local interest, and crowds mobbed the court house every day. His defence was that he was insane. It was suggested that he suffered from epileptic fits. He was certainly infected with VD, and this may have impaired his mind, for he was moody and loquacious and fantasised about his past. He claimed that his dead mother had told him to kill Miss Mather, and that he had sometimes been overwhelmed by an irresistible impulse to slaughter the current lady in his life. He was thoroughly examined by at least six doctors, who were interested in the criminal mentality, and was even examined by an eye specialist, Dr Ruddal – who said the prisoner’s eyes were perfectly normal.

Dr Shields, a prison doctor, said of the accused: ‘I have frequently conversed with him, but I cannot believe anything he says.’ Asked by Dr Shields whether he had any standards of right and wrong, Deeming had replied that stealing, for example, was a matter of conscience. If a person in needy circumstances stole money from one who could well afford it, that was quite justifiable and proper. Murder, he said, was also permissible in certain circumstances – he had several times gone out with a revolver searching for the woman who had given him VD, intending to kill her. He believed in the extermination of such women. Mr Dick, Inspector-General of Lunatic Asylums in Victoria, examined the prisoner five times, testing his memory and inspecting his eyes, head and general appearance. He was unable to detect any signs of insanity and he concluded that Deeming was ‘an instinctive criminal’. During the trial no doctor, not even those who spoke for the defence, would unequivocally say or concede that Deeming was insane.

Towards the end of the trial, on Monday, 2 May, Deeming, with the judge’s permission, made a speech – ‘I wish to say a few words in my defence.’ He spoke for nearly an hour, rambling on without hesitation or nervousness, denying the accusations against him and making some of his own. He began: ‘I have not had a fair trial. It is not the law that is trying me, but the press. The case was prejudiced even before my arrival by the exhibition of photographs in shop-windows, and it was by means of these that I was identified … If I could believe that I committed the murder, I would plead guilty rather than submit to the gaze of the people in this court – the ugliest race of people I have ever seen …’ He ended: ‘I am as innocent as a man can be. That is my comfort.’ The Reuter’s correspondent in the court wrote: ‘While this extraordinary scene was being enacted, daylight faded into darkness. Gas and candles were lighted, and the whole scene was weird in the extreme. The judge then summed up.’

The all-male jury were out for just over an hour. To their verdict that Deeming was guilty they added a rider that he was not insane.

After sentence of death had been passed, Fred Deeming thanked the judge, smiled at the jury, waved at friends and with his hands in his pockets disappeared from view.

In the three weeks before his execution, Deeming wrote his autobiography, which was destroyed with all his papers after his death. His writings were said by the authorities to have been ‘a compound of ribaldry and folly’. In prison, Deeming, who was alternately angry and depressed and at times incoherent, upbraided his solicitor, Mr Lyle, bewailed his fate, declared his innocence and said he would kill himself if he could. He also made a will leaving the little he had to Mr Lyle and Miss Rounsevell, whom his mother’s spirit, he said, was nonetheless still urging him to kill.

A long and closely argued petition was prepared by Mr Lyle and sent to the Melbourne Executive, asking for further enquiries and medical examinations to be made as well as for a stay of execution. The petition was dismissed on 9 May. Another petition was then sent to the Privy Council in England in a last attempt to have the case reconsidered. It included evidence from Edward Deeming and his wife concerning the prisoner’s insanity. This petition was lodged at the Privy Council’s office in Downing Street on 18 May, and the matter was discussed the following day with the Lord Chancellor in the chair. On the morning of Friday, 20 May, the Lords of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council reported to Her Majesty that the petition for special leave to appeal should be dismissed.

On Monday, 23 May 1892, just before ten o’clock, Frederick Deeming walked to his execution smoking a cigar. A very large crowd of ticket-holding officials and pressmen were present, and in an attempt to remain incognito the hangman wore a false white beard while his assistant wore a false black one. Asked by the sheriff if he had anything to say, Deeming replied faintly: ‘May the Lord receive my spirit.’ The cap was put over his head and the entire burial service was read remorselessly by a chaplain before the lever was pulled.

While he was in prison Deeming claimed to be Jack the Ripper – an impossibility, as he had been in jail in South Africa at the time of the Whitechapel murders. Nonetheless, after his execution a plaster death mask was made of his head in case his claim was verified, and his brain and skull were studied by doctors interested in phrenology and the criminal mind. His body had also been examined to determine whether there was any evidence of degeneration, which would assist in identifying the ‘criminal type’.

The head, sent to Scotland Yard, soon found a home in the Black Museum, where it was actually displayed for some time as the death mask of Jack the Ripper – thus perpetuating yet another myth.