On the trail of a man who died a horrible death, I stayed at the Belgian Beer Café which is the old City Hotel (pictured above) at the end of the mall in the heart of Perth. I told a version of this story live on Darling Downs radio 4AK.

There’s been a hotel on the site since 1879, and the current hotel was built in 1898. Berkshire pig boars and sows used to be sold at the hotel, but it also has a particularly deadly past.

In 1892, a James Power arrived here from mining in the Kimberley goldfields, and was found dead in his bed upstairs. When the doctor arrived, Power’s body was twitching but he soon expired. The cause of death was an opium overdose.

In 1899 a Sikh man was garrotted here and robbed of £5.

In 1908, an official of the West Australian Bank, Mr. William Rossi, decided to end it all here at the City Hotel. He swallowed poison, then cut his throat, and finally threw himself from his bedroom on the second floor, up where I stayed. In 1909, Patrick Neylan fell the twenty feet from the same second floor balcony and broke bones all over his body. They said he was sleepwalking.

In 1924, James Moore was killed at the City Hotel the result of a broken pelvis caused by some unexplained violence. In 1926, Donald McLennan at the City Hotel drank a bottle that he thought was beer, but it was actually poison. In 1927, Michael Murphy, a barman at the City Hotel, was killed after he shot a woman and then had his throat slit.

In 1929, Mr. Evetts Ebbott, who was the accountant for the City Hotel, was knocked unconscious here. He didn’t die, unless he died of embarrassment. That’s because when he woke half a mile away, he found himself totally nude, wearing nothing except for his hat and socks.

But who I really want to tell you about Mr. Frederick Stidworthy. He was born 1858 in Devonshire, England. In 1882 he arrived in Australia, going first to the Darling Downs in Queensland working as a contractor. He got married there in 1883, then moved over the border to Armidale in the New England district until the break-up of his contracting partnership in 1894.

That’s what prompted his move in the late 1890s to Western Australia where Stidworthy became a successful builder there in his own right. He designed and built all the early stonework at the Perth Museum and the Perth Zoo including the cave-like bear pits.

In 1900, directly across the road from the zoo, he designed and built his own two-story family home ‘Stidworthy House’, which today is heritage-listed. In 1904, he built the heritage-listed old South Perth Council Offices and his name is even included on the foundation stone.

In relation to the City Hotel where I’m staying, Stidworthy fatefully found himself here on the evening of Monday the 15th of July 1918.

That’s when he got talking to an Italian immigrant Benjamino Paruscio. A quarrel broke out because Paruscio was under the false impression that Stidworthy was questioning the courage of Italian soldiers in the war. Parusçio drew a pocketknife and stabbed Stidworthy in the stomach. By the time Stidworthy arrived at hospital, there were two or three feet of his bowel hanging out. He of course died.

Paruscio was arrested trying to flee to the eastern states and charged with wilful murder. The jury returned a verdict “guilty” of manslaughter with a recommendation of mercy. So with the benefit of the first offenders act in place at the time, that meant that Paruscio served no time at all for the death of Stidworthy.

Apart from all the ghosts here at the City Hotel where I’m staying, what I find really spooky is Stidworthy House – today it’s an Italian restaurant called Soprano’s which spookily is an unknowing nod to the Italian who killed its builder and first resident, the former Darling Downs contractor Fred Stidworthy.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON RADIO 4AK.

Photo credits:
The former City Hotel, Murray Street, Perth, 2025 – Harold Peacock 20251012_161056.
The former City Hotel original 1898 second floor death staircase, 2025 – Harold Peacock 20251014_082131.
The old sun bear enclosure was like a small barred cave – supplied by Perth Zoo to ABC 2018.
Foundation stone at the old South Perth council offices, 2025 – Harold Peacock 20251013_105402.
Stidworthy House, South Perth, 2025 – Harold Peacock 20251013_110447.