Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1892-03-26 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

THE ANGLO-AUSTRALIAN HORROR. The tragic mystery which is creating such profound excitement throughout the United Kingdom and Australia is being rapidly elucidated by the police. As soon as it wae realised that the Mrs. williams murdered and buried in cement under her own hearthstone at Melbourne was a Lancashire lass, the police of the latter county called to mind the startling disappearance of a woman and her children in the quiet district of Rainhill. On proceeding to make a search of the villa where the man Williams was known to have resided, the ghastly discovery was made of the remains of the hapless mother and her children. All had clearly been murdered, and then, with a coolness and determination that baffles the mind to conceive, laboriously buried beneath the cement of the kitchen floor. So far the only motive appears to be • desire to get rid of encumbrances that had become troublesome. The marriages were deliberately carried out, and with a show of affection that makes the subsequent slaughter the more dreadful, especially to the friends of the victims. The cold-blooded nature of the brutal assassin is shown by the fact that when captured in Western Australia he was on the point of marrying another woman. At Perth (Western Australia), on Priday of last week, he coolly addressed the people who crowded rounded him on his way to trial there, saying, "Don't look at me; lam not guilty." The police in Sydney are searching the house in which the so-called Williams formerly lived. Whatever may be discovered, it seeme clear that the woman and two children mimed from there a year or two ago were his Birkenhead wife and her little girls. Bertha and Marie.  A question has boon raised as to whether Deeming will be finally tried in Australia or brought back to this country. All that can be said with certainty is that the public may be assured justice will be done. He has been remanded by the Australian police for the further evidence. On Saturday week a detective from Scotland-yard sailed for Auetralia, having with him a portrait of Miss Mather. Should her murder be clearly brought home to the man in custody, he will probably be condemned there. If there is the least doubt, it will only be necessary for an agreement to be come to between the home and colonial authorities to secure the prisoner being sent to take his trial in Lancashire.  The idea first mooted at Rainhill that Williams, or Deeming, might prove to be "Jack the Ripper," has been dismissed on the ground that the culprit was in Hull gaol at the time of some of the Whitechapel horrors. This is altogether erroneous. Seven of the " Ripper " atrocities were committed between April and November, 1888 ; and this is a year in which so far nothing has been made known as to the prisoner's movements. Deeming left England in 1881, was imprisoned at Sydney in the following year, and wound up his career there as a fraudulent bankrupt in 1886. Before his reappearance at Birkenhead at the end of 1889 it is believed he had been operating in South Africa, but the year 1888 is entirely unaccounted for. After the burial of the Rainhill victims, the clergyman spoke of the assassin as "one of the most inhuman monsters that ever drew the breath of heaven." Though it proven nothing, it would be easier to imagine the one monster guilty of the Esat-end crimes than to think there is a second equally atrociona villain at large, A moral is being drawn from the matrimonial experiences of the Birkenhead adventurer. The case should surely serve as a warning to women not to be so ready to ally themselves to the first plausible scoundrel who appears with a show of wealth ! The fact telegraphed to Capetown from London that Deeming, the supposed Rainhill murderer, visited the Cape a few years ago has deepened the sensation caused by the crimes laid to his charge. Inquiries which have been instituted show that his name is well known at Johannesberg in connection with some extensive jewellery swindling in 1889, the specific charge against him being one brought by a Capetown jeweller of having robbed him of £3OOO in the Transvaal. Additional interest attaches to the crimes from the fact that during Deeming's stay at Johanneeberg, which lasted one month, two mysterious murders occurred there.