The Curious Case of the Stolen Mace: Solving Australia's Strangest Political Crime - Paperback

by Sally Young (Author)

The book that finally solves Australia's most infamous political crime. In 1891, the sacred symbol of the Victorian Parliament, its ceremonial mace, was stolen. A long, heavy club topped with a crown, it was popularly thought to be made of solid gold. The colony's best detectives, a dour Scot named Tom Nixon and the famous Ned Kelly hunter Mick Ward, were assigned to the case, but the mace was never recovered. No one was ever charged, and a substantial reward remains unclaimed. Was the thief a corrupt politician who took the mace to a brothel on a drunken lark? A parliamentary worker who was seen with an odd-shaped package? A carpenter who snuck in through an open window? Or a political activist? Historian and award-winning author Sally Young pieces together old and new evidence 135 years later - including letters, witness statements and police reports - to reveal the thief and how he got away with the political crime of the century, just as Melbourne was sinking into economic chaos caused by theft on a much grander scale.

Author Biography

Sally Young is a historian at the University of Melbourne, an award-winning author and a former Age columnist. She is the author of seven non-fiction books, including a two-volume history of Australian newspapers; Media Monsters and Paper Emperors (winner of the Colin Roderick Literary Award and the APSA Henry Mayer Book Prize).