Who Poisoned Mary Dean?: The Trial that Changed Australian Justice

In Colonial Sydney 1895, forensic evidence clearly showed that twenty-one year old Mary Dean had suffered non-fatal arsenical poisoning. Husband George was arrested on the very day of their first wedding anniversary. Yet no one who knew ferry captain George, sober and diligent, could believe he was guilty.

George's trial, the public meetings and the Royal Commission that followed, would rivet the attention of all Australia as crucial questions about the roles of judges, lawyers and witnesses in trials were examined, trying to determine what constitutes a fair trial.

And when the question of who poisoned Mary was finally answered, trials for perjury and conspiracy ensued, a witness committed suicide, and a lawyer was disbarred.

With painstaking research, Maurie Garland, the author of The Trials of Isabella Mary Kelly, Jimmy Governor: Blood on the Tracks and Horace Dean: A Pocket Full of Lies, reveals, for the first time, the full story behind the trial that changed Australian justice.

Maurie Garland provides a model of historical sleuthing in this gripping account of [Jimmy] Governor's murderous rampage. - Sydney Morning Herald