The Windsor Tragedy.

Manawatu Herald, 29 March 1892, Page 3

The Windsor Tragedy.

♦ Owing to the extra-ordinary multiplicity of details that have been showered upon us by the cable news from Australia and England, we Ihave been requested to give a precis ■of the Windsor tragedy. On Thursday the 3rd March a ■discovery was made at Windsor, a •division of Pvahran, one of the principal suburbs of Melbourne, of .the murder of a woman in a house numbered 57 Andrew Street. The discovery was due to a tenant who purposed taking the house which jhad laid empty since Williams had jleft, noticing a fearful smell. Under ,the hearth in a bed-room fireplace ;the nude body of a middle-aged woman was found huddled together. The skull had been smashed in and had apparently been buried two months. The police traced that a man calling himself Albert Williams bad arrived in Melbourne by the 1 Kaiser Wilhelm steamer in the middle of December, and had rented this house. On the 80th December, Williams was still in the house in Andrew street, but directly after he lived at the Cathedral Hotel, Swan:ston street, and between the 80th December and 11th January moved into a shop in Little Gollins street. On the 11th January he had a sale of his efieots and left next day for Sydney. On the 12th January he went by steamer to Sydney, and on the way proposed marriage to a lady, under the name of Barron Swanson. At Sydney he was successful in .obtaining the ladies promise to anarry him and then left for West Australia. He returned by rail to Melbourne and left by the s.s. Albany for Freemantle on the 23rd January. On arrival he obtained work atFraser's mine where he was arrested about the 11th March. It has been ascertained that this man Williams is identical with a man who in July last arrived at the villiage of Rainhill, in Lancashire, and on 24th September married a Miss Mather and left for Bombay, but really went to Melbourne, from where he wrote to his wife's relatives to say that they were well and happy. Previous to his marriage with Miss Mather, he occupied a house at Bainhill where he was visited by a woman and two or three children, which proved to have been his wife and four children who were found under the floor of the house on the 16th March. The children had only their night dresses on, but the woman was fully dressed. The medical evidence given at the inquest on the bodies attributed the death of the wife and three of the children to their throats being cut, and one child to having been strangled. - Williams past career is stated to be a very bad one. He is believed to be identical with the man who robbed the South African mail in 1877 ; That he was concerned in the Iberia gold robbery several years ago ; that he served a sentence in * Sydney in 1882 for larceny. He is known to the police under the names of Deeming, Lawson, Drew or Drouin, and Bailey. He ,-was bom in London and served J\ as steward in various sailing ships. j brlßßl he married Mary James at Birkenhead under the name of Frederick Deeming, and it is this woman's body and h«r children which h.M b«in found uufl« the

In 1890 Deeming, under the name of Harry Lawson married a daughter of Mrs Matheson at Beverley and deserted her at Hull. Having obtained goods by false pretences he was imprisoned for nine months, and it was proved at the trial that he had been already married at Birkenhead. Two years ago he swindled the Transvaal Bank out of £4000. He also swindled a gentleman in Bedford out of large sums. In 1889 with tbe aid of an accomplice he swindled jewellers in Johannesberg out of £8000 worth of goods. Deeming has eight brothers and two sisters. , It is asserted that Deeming admits having committed the Rainhill murders, and also that he was the perpetrator of the last "Jack the Ripper " murder in England. It is asserted also that Deeming states he is not the Windsor murderer although he believed his wife was murdered at Windsor, and says that in consequence of her conduct with another man he quarrelled with her at the Federal Coffee Palace, Melbourne, and has never seen her since.