STORY OF A SKULL.

Matamata Record, Volume XIII, Issue 1109, 27 March 1930, Page 3

STORY OF A SKULL.

MELBOURNE CRIMINAL, j j < Prehistoric Type of Man. j j Recent removals of the remains <o£ j \ criminals executed in the Melbourne. Gaol afforded an orp°rt'>n ty .or a care- , _ ful examine ti >n of the shall of T , r crick Bay ley Deeming, the murderer,; ( which was made by the director of the ; Vustralian Institute of Anatomy, Pio-, lessor Sir Colin Mackenzie. He urns. aston shed to find that in Deeming, by an extraordinary lapse of nature, a pre- ; historic man of the earliest primitive , tvpc known to science had been born in the nineteenth century. The evid- . once of the remains proves that Deem- t ]n g was little less than a dangerous , was found under a hearthstone, embedded in cement, in a house at Windsor Melbourne. The crime was traced - to Deeming, who (under the name Barron Swanson, had fled to Southern , Cross, Western Australia), where he < was arrested and whence he was , brought back to Melbourne In the i moan time inqu ries instituted by ®

A reus, through its Loudon representative, brought to light the fact that Deeming had also murdered his wife; and four children at Rainhill, near Liverpool, in England. . The bodies had been disposed ox m a manner similar to that of his victim at Windsor. These disclosures,..Deeming 's callous, and indifferent behaviouraftor his arrest, and the brutality of the crimes aroused popular feeling deeply. The murdered woman proved to be Emily Mather, with whom Deeming had gone'through the ceremony of marriage in England.' He had become engaged •after the murder to a Miss Rounsevell, ■and at Southern Cross he had already iprovided the cement for the dispos&l of her body. Deeming’s Trial and Sentence Deeming’s trial, which lasted for five days, was begun before the late Mr Justice Hodges at the end of April, 1892 'The evidence left no possible doubt of his guilt. The only possible hope of procuring a verdict in his favour lay in a plea of insanity, which was not upheld, despite evidence by Dr. J. W. Springthorpe and the late Dr. J. Y Fishbourne. Deeming has an extra* ordinary glib liar, and Dr. Springthorpe had the greatest difficulty in arriving at the truth. The vanity of the prisoner was immeasurable, and lie displayed an utter lack of remorse for his crimes. He pretended that when he changed his name he changed his identity. Deeming admitted that Frederick Williams —the name he had used at Rainhill—had killed the women and children there, also that Frederick Deeming had killed Emily Mather at Windsor, but neither of these crimes, he insisted, could be alleged against Barron Swanson, the name he had assumed in Western Australia, and he vigorously disassociated himself from the acts of Williams and Deeming. Dr. Springthorpe’s summing up of the life of Deeming was that it had been ‘‘an extravaganza broken by lack of funds : \ at intervals. ” *’* " TV - ' The Crown kept the medical witnesses j for the defence strictly to the terms of what is known as the McNaughton test, namely, whether at the time the crime J was committed Deeming was aware of the nature and quality of his . actions. Thisitest was laid, down by- a committee of the House of Lords in 1843, as determining guilt, and in 1891 it had been reaffirmed by the Victorian Full Court. The Scientific Viewpoint Dr. Springthorpe could not conscientiously swear to the state of Deeming’s mind at the time ho committed the crime, in order to overcome the McNaughton test. His persistence in maintaining his own conviction of insanity j brought him into conflict with the Court and Mr Justice Hodges somewhat abruptly terminated his evidence. The verdict of guilty was a foregone conclusion, and Deeming sentenced to death. The examination of the remains by Sir Colin Mackenzie revealed some very interesting features. When man first assumed the upright posture his head was placed on the spinal column toward the back of the skull, where also was the opening known as the foramen magnum, through which the spinal cord reached the brain. In order to keep the head from sagging forward a broad band of muscle was attached to the back of the skull, where it was anchored to a bony ridg 6 - . , When the upright posture of man became firmly established the spinal column and the foramen magnum moved forward to the centre of the base of the skull, where the head became balanced, and, their usefulness being passed, the heavy muscles and the bony ridge disappeared. These changes took place slowly over thousands of years. Even in the now extinct palaeolithic Tasmanian best quality fat cattle are difficult to native the foramen magnum was in the centre of the base as in modern man, and there was no trace of the bony ridge at the back of the skull.

Remarkable Disclosure 8 . It was, therefore, with no little astonishment that Sir Colin Mackenzie discovered that in Decming’s skull the opening for the spinal cord was at the back of the base as in the anthopoid. The bony ridge at the back was also clearly in evidence. This, however, was not all. Behind each car there is a small bony projection on the skull known as the mastoid process. In modern man these point directly downward and slightly forward. In the most primitive type of man they sloped backward. - In Deeming *s skull the mastoid processes curve backward. The arch of the skull is also distinctly simian., A cast of the oldest human relic known to science, the Java skull, when placed upon Deeming’s fits it like a. cap. Deeming had also a characteristic anthropoid heavy bony structure of the brows. The cubic content of the skull is also very low, and there is no frontal development, showing that the brain was of a very low and primitive type.

Tho skeleton of Deeming also revealed two very distinct and typical anthrojpoid (characteristics. The angle at .which the thigh bones were set in the h p sockets gave him the shambling apelike gait that, was so noticeable in him, and ho also had immensely long arms which-reached to'his knees. The deductions to be drawn from these extraordinary pcculi:irit>cs that Deeming was a dreadful tinatfnronism. He was born thousands of years too late for the biological era to which he belonged and with modern man he was but .one stop in development from the anthropoid, with a moral and intellectual icgpac.ty to match. Not Capable of Remorse Like Sir Colin Mackenzie, Dr. Springtharp.e. who has also examined the east anado from the skull, is astonished. Dooming must have been totally incapable of appreciating any moral precept. His,in nd was governed only by his, material needs. Whatever he required he acquired : by the most direct means. If killing .were the easiest method of attainment, he killed. Deeming’s knowledge of right or wroqg .was smilar to that of a cat or a dig, which has no’moral sense, but which realises wrong-doing because of former jpuuishmei.t Just as an animal detected in theft will use cunning to evade punishment, so Deeming used his higher (order of animal cunning. He was not capable of remorse for his .crimes and that factor accounts for his callousness.