When Gough Whitlam said in 1975 “...but nothing will save the Governor General,” no-one ever presumed he was threatening to kill Sir John Kerr.
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This has not always been the case with politicians.
Thomas Ley, nicknamed "Lemonade Ley" for his involvement with the temperance movement, meant exactly that when he made threats.
Ley immigrated from England to Australia with his family as a child in 1886.
A lawyer, he was elected to the NSW seat of Hurstville as a member of Billy Hughes’ Nationalist Party.
Ley loudly promoted proportional representation and mandatory temperance.
Proportional representation was enacted in 1919. Mandatory temperance failed.
Ley betrayed the temperance movement by voting for easier alcohol sales.
The brewery lobby bribed him to change his position.
Despite the bribery, Ley was appointed the NSW Justice Minister.
In 1925, Ley stood for the Federal seat of Barton.
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To ensure success, he offered his sitting ALP opponent, Frederick McDonald, a $10 000 share in a Kings Cross property to withdraw.
McDonald refused. Instead, McDonald publicised Ley’s bribery attempt.
Ley still won the seat. Despite Ley’s ministerial experience, Prime Minister Stanley Bruce refused him a Cabinet position.
After the 1925 election, Ley sued McDonald for defamation, demanding $30 000 in damages.
McDonald brought action in the Court of Disputed Returns to have Ley’s election declared void. Neither case was heard.
McDonald mysteriously disappeared in Sydney on his way to a meeting. It is almost certain Ley had him murdered.
In 1927, Hyman Goldstein, state member for Coogee and a strident critic of Ley’s corrupt businesses, was found dead and mutilated at the foot of cliffs at Coogee.
A group of concerned businessmen asked Keith Greedor to investigate Goldstein’s death and Ley’s dubious business practices.
Greedor must have been getting close. He mysteriously fell overboard while on a voyage to Newcastle.
In the 1928 elections, Ley lost his seat.
However, investigations were now well under way into Ley’s fraudulent businesses.
Leaving his wife in Australia, Ley travelled to Britain with his mistress, Maggie Brook.
Brook was a magistrate’s wife whom he had met on an official visit to Western Australia.
Her husband mysteriously died from a bee sting.
In Britain, Ley continued his shady dealings, setting up million pound sweepstakes.
In World War II, he was imprisoned for black marketeering.
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By 1946, Ley and his mistress were living apart.
When Ley heard unfounded rumours of her infidelity with a barman called John Mudie, he arranged for two of his workers to torture and kill Mudie.
They dumped his body in a Surrey chalk-pit where it was soon found
This time, there were consequences for Ley.
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Smith, one of his workers, and Ley were convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
However, both escaped the hangman. Smith’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Before his execution, Ley was declared insane. He was sent to Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
There he died a year later, the richest man ever to be an inmate of Broadmoor.
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