Frederick Deeming and the Many Names
Category: Borrowed Identities 8th July 2026
There was this bloke from London born in 1853 who treated a name like a coat you could swap when it rained. He went about Europe, Africa and Australasia with a string of aliases. He used them to marry more than once. He used them to borrow rooms and sometimes to run from trouble. People called him clever. I called it daft.
What it is, right, is that the man signed himself as other people because it was easier than being himself. He lied about work. He lied about money. He lied about being married. He sold glib stories and a tidy face. At one point police found a trail that led from petty swindles to much worse. A body in a trunk. Bodies. That is when the gossip turned mingin'.
He was arrested back in England after local coppers twigged that his life was a catalogue of borrowed names. The papers loved it. They said he might be the sort that could be linked to other famous crimes. People said all sorts. Some were swear down sure he was connected to shadowy murders in London. Others thought it was owt for the headlines.
The main thing is this. He ended up in Melbourne in 1892. The courts there convicted him of murder. He was hanged. The case left everyone flummoxed because you could see the small stuff that grew bigger. Little lies. A rented room. A forged signature. Then suddenly, proper awful.
I went down a rabbit hole reading it. In the ginnel between human weirdness and official records there are little human details that stick. Neighbours who said he seemed sound. Women who thought he was chuffed to meet them. Men who thought his trousers were decent. It makes you want to shut yer cake 'ole. But you laugh as much as you grimace. It is daft how people believe a new name so easy as a barm cake.
He used names like badges. He used them until the badges wore thin. When the badges fell off the law came and said peg it. That was it. The story stays weird. It feels like a proper Victorian parable about how small lies turn monstrous when you keep feeding them.