Thomas John Ley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Member for Barton, 1925
Thomas John Ley, politician in Australia, murderer in England.
Born on 28 October 1880, in Bath, England, Thomas died in the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane, England, on 29 July 1947. He is described in the Australian Dictionary of Biography as a 'politician and murderer'.
Ley came to Australia from England, aged six, with his mother and three siblings in 1886. He married Emily Louisa (known as "Lewie") Vernon in 1898, the year she came to Australia from England. Both husband and wife were active in politics, she in the international suffrage movement, and he as a state (New South Wales) and federal politician from 1917 to 1928.
Contents |
[edit] State Politics
While serving in the lower house of the New South Wales parliament (1917-25), Ley - who represented an electorate in south-western Sydney - was a prominent and vocal advocate of proportional representation, which the state adopted in 1919. As a teetotaller, he acquired the nickname Lemonade Ley, but the Temperance Movement accused him of betrayal when he supported legislation which eased requirements for the sale of alcohol. It later became evident that he was being paid by the brewery lobby. Despite this, he was appointed New South Wales' Minister for Justice from 1922 to 1925 - in the cabinet of Premier George Fuller - and gained a reputation for his harsh decisions.
[edit] Federal Politician
In 1925, Ley was elected as the Nationalist Party of Australia member for Barton in the federal House of Representatives. Ley's fellow-conservatives began to have doubts about him after the election, and despite having held a senior State portfolio, he was never appointed to the federal ministry.
During the 1925 campaign Ley had tried to bribe his Labour Party opponent, Fred McDonald. McDonald revealed this in public, and alleged that Ley had offered him a £2000 share in a Kings Cross property in return for withdrawing from the ballot. Ley won the election, and McDonald appealed to the Courts, but disappeared in mysterious circumstances; the case against Ley collapsed for lack of evidence when McDonald failed to show up.
McDonald's disappearance may have been a coincidence. But in 1927 Hyman Goldstein (himself a member of the New South Wales parliament's lower house, and another of Ley's public critics) was found dead after apparently falling from ‘Suicide Point’ on the cliffs of Coogee, a Sydney beach-side suburb. Then a group of businessmen concerned at Ley's reputation for dubious business dealings (SOS Prickly Pear Poisons Ltd being one of the more infamous) appointed Keith Greedor, an opponent of Ley but formerly an associate of his, to investigate. Travelling to Newcastle by boat, Greedor fell overboard and drowned.
[edit] Return to England
After his defeat in the 1928 election, Ley returned to England with Maggie Brooke, his mistress of several years, leaving his wife in Australia.
Although little is recorded of Ley's life during the 1930s, he seems to have used his move to England to start afresh in dubious business ventures, and during World War II he was arrested and convicted for black marketeering.
[edit] The Chalk Pit Murder
In 1946 his mistress, Brooke, was living in Wimbledon, and Ley had his house at 5 Beaufort Gardens, London, converted into flats. Ley imagined that Brooke and a barman called John McBain Mudie were lovers. Ley persuaded two of his labourers that Mudie was a blackmailer, and together they tortured and killed him. The case became known as The Chalkpit Murder because Mudie's body was dumped in a Surrey chalkpit.
With Lawrence John Smith, Ley was tried at the Old Bailey, and both were sentenced to death in March 1947. However, both Smith and Ley escaped the noose; Smith's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and Ley was declared insane and sent to Broadmoor. He died soon after entering the asylum.
Ley's wife had followed him to England in 1942. From Broadmoor Ley wrote letters and poems and protested his innocence to his children and wife. Lewie returned to Australia after his death. She died at Bowral in 1956.
[edit] Further reading
Barry York, "Thomas John Ley, Politician and Murderer", NLA News, July 2001 (http://www.nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2001/jul01/johnley.html)
 Crime in Australia |
||
|---|---|---|
| Regional crime: | Timeline | Melbourne | Northern Territory | Western Australia | Sydney | |
| Australian law: | Courts | Criminal law | Law enforcement | |
| Australian people: | Bushrangers | Convicts | Criminals | Murderers | Prisoners | |
| Australian prisons: | ACT | NSW | NT | QLD | SA | TAS | VIC | WA | |
| International: | Crime by country | |
