A01=Sally Young
Author_Sally Young
Bourke Street
brothels
Category=DNXC2
Collingwood
constitutional liberty
corruption
democracy
Detective Mick Ward
Detective Tom Nixon
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
forthcoming
greed
historical true crime
Lonsdale Street
lust
mace
Marvellous Melbourne
mystery
Parliament House
parliamentary inquiry
political crime
political whitewash
power
prank
scandal
theft
Thomas Jeffery
unsolved
whodunnit
Product details
- ISBN 9781761170850
- Dimensions: 135 x 210mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2026
- Publisher: NewSouth Publishing
- Publication City/Country: AU
- Product Form: Paperback
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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?
In The Curious Case of the Missing Mace, old and new evidence – including letters, witness statements and police reports – are pieced together after 135 years to reveal the thief and how he got away with the political crime of the century just as Melbourne was sinking into political and economic chaos caused by theft on a much grander scale.
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?
In The Curious Case of the Missing Mace, old and new evidence – including letters, witness statements and police reports – are pieced together after 135 years to reveal the thief and how he got away with the political crime of the century just as Melbourne was sinking into political and economic chaos caused by theft on a much grander scale.
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).
