Brisbane Arcade, built by Patrick Mayne’s children in 1924 on the site of his original butcher’s shop, home and coach house.

Brisbane’s Hotel Urban, on the site of Mayne’s original home on what is now upmarket Wickham Terrace.

POSTED: 18 SEPTEMBER 2010

Brisbane's butcher did it ... or did he?

More than 25 million people a year wend their way along Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall — taking a break from the office, ogling, daydreaming, cuddling-up, taking lunch, or simply doing some serious shopping.

Yet few would realise that a store they pass in the mall’s Brisbane Arcade — or perhaps drop into for some of that shopping — is on the site of what was once home to Brisbane’s most gruesome colonial murderer.

And not far away, guests indulging in a palatial Brisbane hotel little realise that they are frolicking on the site of another property owned by that same killer.

And, unbeknown to most of its students, the spectacular campus on which the University of Queensland now stands is yet another of his legacies.

Irishman Patrick Mayne arrived in Brisbane in 1844 and soon landed himself a job as a slaughterman at Campbell’s Boiling Down Works at Kangaroo Point.

He bought cheap land on the outskirts of town, in what is now fashionable Wickham Terrace, learned butchering skills to supplement his meager slaughterman’s wages, and after marrying Mary McIntosh in 1849 invested in a prime block on Brisbane’s very smart Queen Street.

Here, on land that is now the Brisbane Arcade, he built a butcher’s shop, with a coach-house and an upstairs residence. He also worked his way on to the Municipal Council, and started buying up some 400 hectares of prime real estate.

But Mayne was also showing signs of madness, attacking a few of his perceived enemies with riding crops and stockwhips, and abusing others in fits of alcohol-fueled rage. Despite their wealth, the Maynes were soon being quietly shunned by Brisbane’s more polite society.

In 1865, on his deathbed above the Queen Street butcher’s shop, Patrick Mayne extraordinarily confessed to one of Brisbane’s most grisly murders — which had been committed 17 years previously, and for which another man had already been hanged.

Mayne said he had heard of Robert Cox, a drunken timber worker, boasting in the primitive Bush Inn at Kangaroo Point of receiving a princely sum for delivery of precious cedar — and that he and two others had gone to the inn and ambushed the befuddled Cox after closing time.

The next morning a man in a rowing boat came upon the legs and loin of a man floating in the Brisbane River. Soon after police found the upper part of the body on the shore, while the head had been propped in a shed to face entering searchers.

And in a nearby well that was used to keep milk, butter and cheese cool, police found more of Cox’s remains. A hapless cook at the Bush Inn was hanged for the murder, despite professing innocence until the trapdoors of the gallows dropped below him.

It was soon after the execution that Patrick Mayne had surprised his peers by buying the land in Queen Street — paying in cash the equivalent of nearly five years’ wages as a slaughterman.

After Mayne’s death in 1865 and that of his wife in 1889, their four children consolidated their parents’ properties and donated generously to churches and charities.

Amongst prime holding sold off was a house and land on which the Urban Hotel Brisbane on Wickham Terrace now overlooks the spectacular Roma Street Parklands, its 170 guest rooms and luxuries a far cry from the primitive Bush Inn at Kangaroo Point in which Patrick Mayne says he committed Queensland’s bloodiest murder 162-years ago.

In 1924 the surviving Mayne children, who had deliberately not married due to their father’s madness and the insanity of a brother, built the Edwardian-style Brisbane Arcade on the site of their parents’ butcher shop.

Three years later they bought land at St Lucia which they donated to the fledgling University of Queensland. They also established a trust to run the Brisbane Arcade, with all the profits going to the University to this day.

When next you’re visiting Queen Street, pause at the Colorado Clothing Store in the Brisbane Arcade. It’s on the site of the original Mayne butchery, home and coach house.

And ponder that today, crime historians are suggesting Mayne’s confession may have been another aspect of his madness — posing the question, did he, or did he not do it?

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Patrick Mayne ... did he, or did he not, commit the grisly Kangaroo Point Bush Inn murder?