On the morning of 10 July 1904, Mrs Veitch, wife of baker A. C. T. Veitch, was found dead in the passage of the family’s bakery on O’Grady Street, Clifton Hill, a suburb of Melbourne. She still clutched a buggy whip in her hand, and a deep gash on one hand suggested she had fought desperately for her life. Whoever attacked her had locked the back doors, the front gate and the shop door beforehand, and had even tried to silence the family’s terrier tied up in the yard, evidence of careful planning rather than a chance intrusion.
The body was discovered by James Coleman Augustus Williams, an employee of the bakery who had been out on his delivery round. He raised the alarm after a boy came to buy bread and got no answer. Williams was soon charged with the murder, and at trial evidence pointed to a robbery gone wrong at the nearby office, though nothing suggested any personal grievance against the victim.
Williams was hanged at Melbourne Gaol on 8 September 1904.
The night before his execution, Williams wrote out a formal confession, insisting the killing was not for gain or lust but committed “in a fit of passion”, and that Mrs Veitch “was always kind and good to me”. He asked that the public not judge his family for what he had done and thanked the gaol’s governor and chaplains for their kindness to him in his final days.
