NOT DEEMING THIS TIME.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2370, 16 June 1892, Page 3

NOT DEEMING THIS TIME.

"An Australian Journalist," writing I in one of the London papers, seeks to identify the criminal with a man who some time ago, according to his account, came to this colony and victimised three or four ladies by first marrying, then robbing, and finally deserting them. He came to New Zealand from Sydney, the writer tells us. His modus operandi was both simple and rapid. Having advertised for a wife with some means, setting out that he had himself £ SOO a year, he would choose as his victim the applicant whom ho considered to be possessed of the most money and property. In every case, at his instance, the knot was tied quietly and unostentatiously, generally at a registry office in a town remote from the scene of his courtship and of his bride's parental home. Hi 3 first victim was a lady living with her sister in Christchurch, whom he left a week or so after the hymenal ceremony had been performed. During her short honeymoon he succeeded in inducing her to lend him the bit of money she had put by, ostensibly for the purpose of buying a business in Auckland. He returned some weeks afterwards to inquire if she had yet " come into the money she had described in her letter before marriage as "great expectations from Home," for he said he had found that he wanted more capital than he had anticipated would be required. Finding that there was nothing more to be made out of her justthen, atall events, ho deserted her, and she has never seen him since. His next conquest was made in Wellington, where he married a young girl of 18 under another name. This marriage took place during the short period that elapsed between his first and last visit to Christchurch, and when the Canterbury lady believed him to be purchasing a business in Auckland. He disappeared from this city as suddenly and mysteriously as he had come, after selling all the girl's available jewellery and other property. Two other cruel desertions are recorded against this audacious bigamist. He was last seen in Auckland. But whether he left for San Francisco or Sydney is not known. A good many hotel thefts were perpetrated about the time of his visit, and it is suggested he may have had a hand in these also. —We (Press) remember to have heard of a marriage and desertion under circumstances resembling thoso described by "An Australian Journalist." The scoundrel in that case was not Deeming. His father, a man of good position in England, was written to, but declined to do anything for the unfortunate victim on the ground that it was by no means the first case of the kind in which his precious son had been concerned, and he had washed his hands of him. Deeming undoubtedly was about as thorough-going and debased a criminal as has ever disgraced our judicial annals, but there must obviously be some limits to his guilt. Even Deeming we imagine, was bound by restrictions of time and space