Ipswich’s George Frost continued to be tormented by his wife even after he died 150 years ago. I told a version of this story live on Ipswich’s West Bremer Radio.
In 1855 George Frost married a previously married Irish lass at St Mary’s church in Ipswich, Queensland. The ceremony was performed by the church’s founder, the typical Irish priest The Reverend Father William McGinty.
The torment at home started pretty well straight away for George. He inherited a troublesome stepson by the name of Frank Murphy. In 1864, Frank was nineteen years old and back then was still considered a minor when he ran away from their home at Coal Falls in Ipswich. George took the extraordinary step of advertising in the newspaper to warn people not to employ him.
Then in 1866, George had a problem servant who it seems added security to her job description. Catherine Barnes was keeping house for George at Coal Falls when she was convicted in the Ipswich courthouse of assaulting a female visitor in what was said to be a beastly manner.
Mrs Mary Frost previously Murphy and nee Jones, from Leitrim in Ireland, was George’s wife, and the mother of George’s runaway stepson. George twice sent his Mary away to Sydney in a bid to be rid of her because of her constant drunkenness, but she kept coming back. In 1867, George was assaulted by Mary and three of her female friends. One of the friends was a human crime wave and possibly Ipswich’s first serial killer was known as Ellen the Cutter. Mary sued George for maintenance, and George charged all of the women with assault.
George in desperation moved himself to Queensland’s Central Highlights to get away. In 1879 he was working as a carrier in Cometville, or Comet it is today. Incidentally, Cometville got its name because that’s where the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt was when he saw a comet in 1844. Anyway, George was in Cometville when he took the extreme step of again advertising in the newspaper that he would not be responsible for his wife’s debts, which it seems she’d been running up quite well.
George died in Emerald in 1881, but even with him in the grave, his wife Mary continued to torment him from down in South Brisbane. You see, in a bid to control his estate, Mary advertised that she was George’s legal wife, insisting that people should contact her regards his estate. And that was despite George having specifically named a respectable couple in Emerald as his executors.
Karma caught up with Mary because not long afterwards that same year, she was run over by an omnibus while she was drunk and unconscious in the middle of Main Street at Woolloongabba, Brisbane. She broke a leg.
Mary continued to torment George in his grave by outliving him by twenty years, until in 1901 at age seventy-eight that she died destitute in the asylum at Dunwich on Stradbroke Island.
George’s runaway stepson Frank became a scalper at Mitchell, which is a stinky job of skinning animals that have died, and in 1907 he died intestate and is buried in Roma.
And the Irish priest Reverend McGinty who started the sorry story, at just fifty years of age he died a horrible death caused by an apoplectic fit which lasted an agonising two-and-a-half hours. He’s buried in Bowen.
So despite Ipswich’s George being tormented even beyond the grave, he seems to have got the last laugh over his wife, stepson, and priest, whose lives ended less than satisfactorily.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.
Photo credits:
Tormented Beyond the Grave – Harold Peacock with Copilot.
Ipswich Old Courthouse, 2024 – Harold Peacock 20241020_060709-2.
Kedron omnibus, built 1887 – Harold Peacock 2018.
Rev. Father William McGinty, Bowen General Cemetery – Richie Wright 2020 via Find a Grave website.
