Thomas Newman

A Little Girl. A Summer Day. An Evil That Shocked a Colony.
Mary Ann McGregor was twelve years old — the pretty, bright daughter of a respected settler at Hawthorn Hill, seven miles from Coonabarabran. On a day that should have been ordinary, she never came home. When her father Angus finally found her, it was Thomas Newman — the shepherd whose flock grazed nearby — who led him to her body, lying at the foot of a yellow box-tree on the ridge.
"I don't think she's dead," Newman stammered.
But she was. And what had been done to Mary Ann McGregor in her final moments was so horrifying it sent shockwaves through the entire colony of New South Wales.
The Life & Death of Thomas Newman tells the complete and devastating true story of one of colonial Australia's most disturbing crimes — the rape, mutilation and strangulation of a twelve-year-old child by the man entrusted to work the land beside her family's selection. Author Helen Cottee draws on court transcripts, police files, inquest records and newspaper reports to reconstruct every detail of the crime, the investigation, the trial and the execution at Dubbo Gaol — where Nosey Bob, New South Wales' infamous state executioner, carried out the colony's justice in 1877.
But this book goes beyond the crime and the courtroom. In the days before his execution, Thomas Newman wrote two extraordinary letters — one to the parents and brother of Mary Ann McGregor, and one to his own brother. Helen Cottee examines both, offering a rare and unsettling glimpse into the mind of a condemned man facing his final days.
The book concludes with the complete family trees of both Thomas Newman and the McGregor family — a tribute to Mary Ann and the family whose lives were shattered on a ridge near Coonabarabran on a day they would never forget.
Richly illustrated with historical photographs, maps and documents sourced directly from colonial records, this is true crime history told with the seriousness, sensitivity and meticulous research that both victim and history deserve.
Part of the Life & Death series — preserving the untold stories of colonial Australia, one execution at a time.
For readers of Australian history and colonial true crime who believe that every victim deserves to be remembered.