1. Thomas John Ley was an Australian politician who was convicted of murder in England.
19 Facts About Thomas Ley
1. 2.
Thomas Ley is widely suspected to have been involved in the deaths of a number of people in Australia, including political rivals.
3.
In 1886, Thomas Ley's mother moved the family to Australia along with his maternal grandmother.
4.
Thomas Ley began working as a young boy, initially as a paper-boy and messenger, then later as an assistant in his mother's grocery store and as a farm labourer at Windsor.
5.
Thomas Ley learned shorthand while living in Windsor and at the age of fourteen secured a position as a junior clerk and stenographer with a solicitor on Pitt Street.
6.
Thomas Ley married Emily Louisa Vernon in 1898, the year she emigrated to Australia from England.
7.
Thomas Ley served in the lower house of the New South Wales parliament as member for Hurstville from 1917 to 1920, representing the Nationalist Party, and St George from 1920 to 1925, representing the Progressive Party until 1922.
8.
Thomas Ley was a prominent and vocal advocate of proportional representation, which the state adopted in 1919.
9.
Shortly after he became Minister for Justice, Thomas Ley made an official visit to Western Australia and was introduced to Maggie Evelyn Brook, a magistrate's wife.
10.
Shortly afterwards the magistrate died; Thomas Ley acted for her and her daughter in various financial and legal matters.
11.
In 1925, Thomas Ley stood for the seat of Barton in the federal House of Representatives.
12.
In 1946, Brook was living in Wimbledon, and Thomas Ley had his house at 5 Beaufort Gardens, London, converted into flats.
13.
Thomas Ley falsely believed that Brook and a barman called John McMain Mudie were having an affair.
14.
Thomas Ley persuaded two of his labourers that Mudie was a blackmailer, and together they tortured and killed him.
15.
However, both Smith and Thomas Ley escaped the noose: Smith's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, while Thomas Ley was declared insane and sent to Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
16.
Thomas Ley died there soon after of a cerebral haemorrhage.
17.
Thomas Ley is said to have been the wealthiest person ever to be imprisoned at Broadmoor.
18.
From Broadmoor, Thomas Ley wrote letters and poems, and protested his innocence to his wife and children.
19.
Thomas Ley died at Bowral, New South Wales in 1956.