A Most Unique Ruffian: The Trial of F B Deeming, Melbourne 1892 by J S O’Sullivan

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Minor wear to book corners and edges. Previous owner has signed inside blank page. Dust jacket has some wear at edges and slight discolouration to spine top. Interior and binding are still very good.

This book is a fascinating reconstruction of the criminal career, trial and public reaction to Frederick Bayley Deeming, the murderer in England of his first wife and four children and the murderer in Australia of his second wife. A bigamist and fraud, a thief and liar in the Munchausen tradition, aptly called by a contemporary report the "most unique ruffian in modern times."

Though defended by Alfred Deakin (later three times Prime Minister of Australia), Deeming's trial in Melbourne in May 1892 was little more than a formality. Deeming had not only become the most written-about person in Australian history but the object of an unprecedented campaign of newspaper vilification.

Accused variously of being Jack the Ripper, a South African mass murderer and a vampire, the villainies of this "erratically erotic egotist", as he was called, were presented on the Melbourne stage before he came to trial. (book flap)