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John Jackson,

whose daring murder of warder Webb and escape from Strangeways Gaol, as well as his success in hiding from the police, caused immense interest to be taken in his case, was executed by me in the same gaol in which his crime occurred. Although he was commonly supposed to be incapable of feeling, his emotion at the prospect of his own fate was so touching that the official who had to tell him that reprieve was refused was very loth to break the news. On hearing it, he bowed his head and burst into tears, for, strange as it may seem, he had hoped that the death sentence would not be carried out. His grief continued to the last, and to the last he maintained that he had only intended to stun, and not to kill the warder. On the night before his death he did not sleep two hours, and when I entered his cell in the morning he was engaged in fervent prayer. He shook hands with me in a manner that was most affecting, and submitted quietly to the pinioning. He walked resignedly to the scaffold, and died without uttering a sound.

Charles Joseph Dobell and William Gower

One naturally expects a hard indifference from an old criminal, but it saddens me to see it in the young, and yet two of the youngest men – or rather, boys – that I have executed were callous to the last degree. They were Charles Joseph Dobell (aged 17) and William Gower (18), executed in Maidstone Gaol for the murder of a time-keeper at a saw-mill in Tunbridge Wells some six months before. So carefully was the crime committed that the police could obtain no clue, and it was only found out by the confession of the lads to a Salvation Army officer. There is reason to believe that the lads’ natural taste for adventure had been morbidly stimulated by the reading of highly sensational literature – “penny dreadfuls” and the like. They seem to have conducted themselves with a sort of bravado or courage which, if genuine, would have done credit to a patriot or martyr sacrificing himself for country or for faith, or to one of their backwoods heroes fighting against “a horde of painted savages,” but which was distressing in two lads, almost children, sentenced to death for their crime. After they were sentenced they paid careful attention to the chaplain’s words, but they showed no sign of emotion, and it was said that “it is doubtful whether at any time they fully realised the serious nature of their position.” They walked to the scaffold in defiant manner, more upright than was their wont, and neither of them looked at or spoke to the other. There was no farewell, no word of repentance or regret, merely a brief supplication to God to receive them.

Samuel and Joseph Boswell

It is a terrible trial to have to execute men who firmly believe, and apparently on reasonable, even if not correct grounds, that they are suffering an injustice. The worst instance that I remember of this kind was in the case of Samuel and Joseph Boswell, executed in Worcester Gaol for the murder of a game-keeper on the estate of the Duc d’Aumale, at Evesham. Three men, the Boswells and Alfred Hill, were found guilty of the murder, and the only difference which the jury could find in their guilt was that Hill was, if anything, the worst of the three. An application for a reprieve was made, apparently on the ground that though the men were guilty of poaching, they had not intended to commit murder. The Home Secretary responded to this application by reducing the penalty in Hill’s case to penal servitude for life. This action fairly astounded the people of Evesham, who thought that there was no possible reason for making any difference in the fate of the three culprits. The Vicar telegraphed to the Home Secretary that his decision was “absolutely incomprehensible;” the Mayor, on behalf of the borough, telegraphed to the effect that “universal indignation” was “expressed by the whole community in Evesham and by county gentlemen.” Several other similar messages were sent from other bodies, and the Vicar of Evesham was dispatched to London to interview the Home Secretary. The news was communicated to Hill but not to the Boswells, and as the feeling amongst outsiders was so strong, it can be imagined that the two men who had to suffer the punishment were shocked with a sense of injustice when they met on the morning of the execution and found that Hill had been reprieved. When they met on that fatal morning the brothers kissed each other, and, looking round, they enquired simultaneously, “where’s Hill?” On being answered, they seemed utterly broken down with the feeling of the injustice of the arrangement. They asserted that Hill was the real murderer, whilst they were only accomplices. The men had been much troubled during their imprisonment by the thought of what would happen to their wives and children, and were in a terribly harassed and nervous condition. I put the white caps on their heads before leaving the cells, and a few steps from the door of the house in which the scaffold stood I pulled the caps over their eyes. This I always do when men are not quite firm and determined, before they see the scaffold. In the case of Samuel Boswell this simple act caused him to fall back into the arms of one of the warders in a state of collapse, and he had to be almost carried on to the scaffold. He moaned several times, until he heard his brother’s voice give the response, “Lord, have mercy upon us,” when he again drew himself together and answered, “Christ, have mercy upon us.” Then Joseph piteously cried, “Oh, my poor, dear wife,” “Yes,” answered Samuel, “and my dear wife and my poor children.” Joseph turned his head a little and said, “Good-bye, Sam,” to which his brother answered, “Good-bye, God bless you, Joe boy. Oh! dear, dear,” Joseph continued: “I hope everybody will do well,” and as he finished speaking the drop fell, and together the brothers expiated their crime.

Richard Davies

Another case in which “the one was taken and the other left” was the Crewe murder case, in which Richard and George Davies were found guilty of the murder of their father, with a strong recommendation to mercy on account of their youth. So far as could be made out, there was absolutely no difference in the degrees of their guilt; but the sentence of George was commuted to penal servitude simply because he was the younger. At this there was great excitement throughout the country, and thousands of telegrams and petitions were poured into the Home Office, begging that the leniency might be equally extended to both since the guilt of both was equal. But all to no purpose. The condemned lad protested, to his last moments, that although he took part in the murder, he never struck his father nor handled the hatchet with which the deed was done. He wrote most affectionate letters to his mother, brothers and sisters; who seemed to fully believe the truth of his statements with regard to his share in the crime. Ten minutes before his death he wrote out the same declaration and handed it to the chaplain. He stated that he had no wish to live, but that he hoped and expected to meet his relations in heaven. When I entered his cell he was pale, but calm. After pinioning him his face seemed still paler and his mouth worked convulsively as he strove to keep back his emotion. Along the corridor he walked firmly, with bent head, but when we reached the yard where a fresh breeze was blowing and the blue sky was visible, he raised his head and eyes for a last look at the world and the sky. He died firmly, with a brief prayer on his lips.

In both the cases last described the action of the Home Secretary was very severely commented upon by press and public, and it seems to me that such occurrences are the strongest possible arguments in favour of the re-arrangement of the law which I suggest in the chapter on “Capital Punishment.” It is decidedly injurious for the public to have the idea that the life or death of a man depends upon the urgency of the petitions in his favour and the amount of sympathy expressed for him, rather than upon the justice of the case. Moreover, it seems to me that by singling out special cases, and attacking the decision of the Home Office, the press and the public place themselves in a thoroughly illogical position. If they object to the system of leaving the matter in the hands of the Home Secretary, surely it is the system, and not the man, that should be attacked. On the other hand, if they are satisfied that the Home Secretary is the proper tribunal, they ought surely to rest content with his ruling, remembering that he has far better opportunities of judging the merits of the case and the whole of the evidence than any outsider can possibly have, and that his responsibility in the matter makes him more careful in his enquiry than any outsider possibly can be.

The melancholy interest of the subject allures me to continue, yet the details of murderers’ deaths at the best are ghastly and grim, and I fear that my readers will shudderingly wish me to stop. Two more experiences, and I will close the sad record.

Mary Eleanor Wheeler,

better known as Mrs. Pearcey, was a woman of decidedly strong character. Her crime is so recent and aroused so much interest that I need not go over the circumstances. The night before her execution was spent in the condemned cell, watched by three female warders, who stated that her fortitude was remarkable. When introduced to her I said, “Good morning, Madam,” and she shook my proffered hand without any trace of emotion. She was certainly the most composed person in the whole party. Sir James Whitehead, the Sheriff of the County of London, asked her if she wished to make any statement, as her last opportunity for doing so was fast approaching, and after a moment’s pause she said: – “My sentence is a just one, but a good deal of the evidence against me was false.” As the procession was formed and one of the female warders stepped to each side of the prisoner, she turned to them with a considerate desire to save them the pain of the death scene, and said, “You have no need to assist me, I can walk by myself.” One of the women said that she did not mind, but was ready and willing to accompany Mrs. Pearcey, who answered, “Oh, well, if you don’t mind going with me, I am pleased.” She then kissed them all and quietly proceeded to her painless death.

John Conway,

who murdered a boy of ten years old, at Liverpool, was a case that was most difficult to understand. His previous record did not indicate any quarrelsome or murderous tendency, though he was known to get drunk occasionally; and there seemed to be absolutely no motive that could be assigned for the crime. His confession was made privately, to the priest, the day before his execution, with instructions that it should be read as soon as he was dead, but it left the matter of motive as mysterious as ever. It was as follows: – “In confessing my guilt I protest that my motive was not outrage. Such a thought I never in all my life entertained. Drink has been my ruin, not lust. I was impelled to the crime while under the influence of drink, by a fit of murderous mania, and a morbid curiosity to observe the process of dying. A moment after the commission of the crime I experienced the deepest sorrow of it, and would have done anything in the world to undo it.” Conway was a very superstitious man, a believer in omens, witchcraft and all sorts of supernatural powers, and he had a firm idea that if one good man could be induced to pray for him he would be saved from execution. He was sure that his own prayers would avail nothing, and he thought that he was not fit to receive the sacrament of his church; but he attended the service at which the sacrament was administered, and begged that one of his fellow-prisoners, who partook of the rite, should pray for him. As he reached the scaffold Conway stared wildly around and cried out that he wanted to say something. The priest interfered to induce me to stop the execution for a few seconds, and I did so, but the convict merely thanked the gaol officials and his Father Confessor for their kindness. And so he died.

Does the reader think that I have spun out this chapter too much? Does he think that I have unnecessarily harrowed his feelings? If so, let me assure him that I would not have given this chapter, I would not have written this book if I had not had what I believe to be good purposes in view. I have tried to avoid sensationalism, but I want to make every reader think. I want to make him think that murderers are, after all, men and women, with human sympathies and passions. I want to make him think that there are degrees of murder, that justice, and not spasmodic leniency should be the aim of our laws, and a few other thoughts that will occur to the reader without any suggestion of mine.

CHAPTER IX
From the Murderer’s point of view

Burns sang, and we are fond of repeating his singing: —

 
Oh! wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as ithers see us;
 

but I never heard anybody utter the opposite aspiration, for the gift to see others as they see themselves. And yet I am not quite sure that this gift is not as desirable as the other. At any rate, if we are to legislate wisely and well for any class of people it is absolutely necessary that we should be able to see things from their own point of view. It is with much hesitation that I start this chapter, for I know that my power to analyze thought and character is not great enough to enable me to deal with the subject on broad lines. But if I can induce a few people to consider the question of murder and its punishment from the murderer’s point of view, the chapter will do good.

On the whole, I think that our attitude towards murderers is based too much on sentiment and too little on reason. Many people pity all murderers, whether they deserve it or not; many others condemn them body, soul and spirit, without considering to what extent they are the result of circumstances. If I can induce my readers to consider that a murderer has as much right to judge the State as the State has to judge him, I think this book will have achieved one good purpose.

I do not wish to work out an argument, but will just give a few of the expressed ideas of the murderers, in the hope that they may give rise to fruitful trains of thought. I would point out, however, that many of the people who have died on the scaffold have lived in such deplorable circumstances – assailed by every sort of temptation, surrounded by an atmosphere of gay and hollow vice, cradled in misery and educated in wretchedness and sin, with little of the good and the beautiful entering into their lives to raise them, but with the accursed facility for obtaining drink to lure them down – in such deplorable circumstances, I say, that even an angel could hardly keep himself unspotted from such a world. When men commit a horrible crime it is our duty to exact the penalty; but it will do us no harm to consider whether we are in any way responsible for the conditions which may have driven them to crime; and whether we cannot do even more than we are doing for the prevention of crime by the improvement of the conditions.

Besides the conditions of life, the mental status of the wretched culprits should be worthy of attention, and I think we might ask ourselves whether it would not have been better for some of the murderers, as well as for society, if they had been placed under life-long restraint years before their careers reached the murder stage.

There are many other questions which will naturally occur to the thoughtful reader, and which I need not indicate.

Arthur Shaw

Amongst my earlier executions was that of Arthur Shaw at Liverpool. Shaw was a tailor, thirty-one years of age, who lived in Manchester. He was married, but his married life was not happy, for his wife seems to have drunk heavily, and he himself was not steady. On November 3rd, 1884, they quarrelled, and fought for some time, and shortly afterwards the woman was found dead – killed, according to the doctors, by strangulation. Shaw did not deny the murder, but pleaded that it was unintentional, and that he had been greatly provoked by his wife’s long-continued dissipation. The jury strongly recommended him to mercy. Immediately before meeting his fate, in a last conversation with the chaplain, the man admitted his guilt but earnestly insisted that he had never intended to cause his wife’s death. He stated that he was not drunk at the time of the murder, but that he had been driven to drink by his wife’s drunkenness and neglect of the home, which was always miserable; and that her drunkenness and neglect exasperated him until he was perfectly wild. He concluded by saying: “When we were having the scuffle I had no idea I was killing the poor woman.”

Thomas Parry,

hanged in Galway on January 20th, 1885, for the murder of Miss Burns, wrote a long statement, which he handed to the governor to be read after his death. The gist of it was given in the following paragraph: – “I wish to assure the public and my family and friends that I was of unsound mind for a week previous to the murder and for some time afterwards. I am happy to suffer for the crime which I committed, and confident that I shall enter upon an eternity of bliss. I die at peace with all men, and hope that anyone that I have ever injured will forgive me.”

George Horton,

of Swanwick, poisoned his little daughter; for the purpose, it is supposed, of obtaining the sum of £7 for which her life was insured; and was executed at Derby on February 1st, 1886. It is difficult, or impossible, for an ordinary person to understand such a man’s frame of mind. One would think him absolutely callous, yet he wept over the body of his child when he found that she was dead, and wrote most affectionate letters to his other children when he was in prison. A portion of his last letter to his eldest daughter was as follows: —

You must be sure to pray to God to gide you all you life through and you must pray for your Brothers and Sisters i do pray to God to gard you all you life through. So my dear Daughter you must think of what i have told you. you must always tell the truth & when you are tempted to do wrong you must pray to God for his help and he will hear you. Always remember that my Dear Children, and you must tell the others the same, you that is your brothers and sisters God has promised to be a father to you all ways, remember that he sees all you do and all you think, then if you do his will while here on earth he will receive you to his throne in glory where all is peace and rest. So my Dear Children you will be able to meat all your brothers and sisters and your poore dear Mother in heaven, and by the help of God i shall meat you there to… may God help you all and bless you and keep you all your lifes through. He will do it if you pray to him and ask him. You no you must take every think to God in prayer for you no you will have no one els to help you now. so no more from your loving father, George Horton. May God bless you all. Kisses for you all.

Edward Pritchard

was an instance of how “evil communications corrupt good manners,” and a striking example of the unfortunate uselessness of our reformatory system. At twelve years of age he was convicted for being an “associate of thieves,” and sentenced to two years in a reformatory. For three years after leaving the reformatory he managed to keep out of prison, but when seventeen he was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment for shop-breaking, and after this he was frequently in gaol. About a year before the murder he appeared to have reformed, attended Sunday-school and chapel, and took an active part in religious work right up to the time of committing the murder. He murdered a small boy of fourteen who was in the habit of regularly fetching money from the bank to pay the wages at a large factory, and stole from him the wages money, amounting to over £200. The evidence of the deed was absolutely conclusive and overwhelming, and Pritchard had no hope of reprieve. A day or two after his conviction he wrote a letter to one of his Sunday-school teachers, in which he professed to have seen the error of his ways, urged all his companions to shun bad company, drinking and smoking, spoke of the delight with which he remembered some of the Sunday-school hymns, and anticipated the pleasure of soon singing them “up there.” All through his life there seems to have been a struggle between good and evil, with an unfortunate balance of power on the side of evil. It is difficult to believe that he would have devoted his spare time for a year to religious work if he had not felt strong aspirations for the higher life. After conviction he said but little about himself, and made no formal statement or confession, but a letter which he wrote to the father of the murdered boy will throw some light upon his mental state. In this letter Pritchard distinctly affirms that he was led to commit the crime by the instigation of a companion, and though the statements of a convicted murderer must always be received with caution, it is possible that there was some ground for this assertion. If the crime was really suggested and the criminal encouraged by the influence of another, and probably a stronger mind, we may well ask ourselves how much of the moral blame attaches to the instigator, and how much to the weak tool. The letter was as follows: —

Her Majesty’s Prison,

Monday, Feb. 14th.

Sir,

I write these lines to you to express my deep sorrow for the dreadful crime I have done to you and to your master. I write to ask you if you and your wife will forgive me for killing your boy, and please ask the master if he will forgive me for taking his money from him. It would not have happened if I had not been incited to do it, and it was by no other person than – , who was a witness against me. He persuaded me to do it, and said he might do it himself if I did not; so I done the unhappy affair. I am very sorry I ever met with – at all, but it cannot be called back now. I have cried to God for mercy; I must still cry, and I hope I shall gain a better home. I have asked Him to forgive me and blot out all my sins, and wash me in my Saviour’s precious blood; and I think and feel He will do it. I’m going to receive the Holy Communion on Wednesday, and I should like to hear from you by Wednesday, before I go to be partaker of that holy feast. If you will forgive me, I shall be more at peace.

I am very, very sorry indeed, for what I have done. There is nothing that can save me from my doom, which will be on Thursday, but I can ask God to have mercy on my poor soul.

I have no more to say at present, only that I was a great friend of poor Harry, and I went nearly mad about it the first few nights, and could not sleep; but now I find comfort in Jesus. Good-bye, Sir. Please send me an answer by return of post, and I hope we shall meet in Heaven.

From Edward Pritchard

Gloucester County Gaol,

Gloucestershire

A few particulars of Pritchard’s last moments are given in “How Murderers Die,” p. 78.

Alfred Scandrett,

another young man – only just twenty-one years old – was another example of the result of bad influences. His father deserted the home when Alfred was about ten years old. His mother was a hard-working woman who contrived to support her family by mangling and by selling papers in the streets, in which latter work she was assisted by Alfred and several other children. The lad was fond of hanging round street corners and public-houses, and his mother found it impossible to keep him at home like the other children. He continually made resolutions, but again and again he was led away by his companions, and at twelve years of age he was convicted for stealing cigars from a shop, but discharged with a caution. A month later he was charged with another offence and sentenced to 21 days. Other imprisonments followed, then five years in a reformatory, but punishment was no cure. His love for his mother was his one redeeming feature, and if she had not been forced by grinding poverty to work almost day and night at her mangling and paper-hawking she might have succeeded in saving him from himself. He tried to break away from his evil associations, and at one time begged his mother to find money to take him to Canada, but she was utterly unable to scrape together enough to pay the passage. A youth called Jones, who was hanged with Scandrett, was his companion in his final crime – a burglary, ending in murder. Although attached to his mother, who said he had always been “a good lad” to her, Scandrett could not bear the idea of living at home when he was engaged in crime, so that almost the whole of the last eight years of his life was spent, when out of gaol, in common lodging-houses. After his conviction for murder and sentence to death, his great anxiety was for his mother. And well might he be anxious, for the poor woman suffered sadly for his sin. As soon as it was known that she was “the mother of a murderer,” her customers – to their eternal disgrace be it said – withdrew their patronage to such an extent that her mangling earnings dropped from 12s. or 14s. to 2s. a week, and her newspaper trade fell away to nothing. She was even “hunted” and insulted in the streets when she went to her accustomed corner to sell the papers. To get from her home in Birmingham to Hereford Gaol for a last interview with her son, she was obliged to pawn her dress, and even that only raised enough money to pay the fare one way, so that she had to trust to chance for the means of getting back again. Some of the prison officials, more humane than her “friends” at home, subscribed enough money to pay the return fare. The last meeting was a very affecting one. Scandrett comforted his mother by assuring her that they would meet in heaven, and said, “Pray daily and hourly, mother, as I have done, and then we shall meet in heaven.”

Arthur Delaney

The number of men who are driven to crime through drink is something terrible, and I should think that no temperance worker could read the real histories of the murderers who have come under my hands without redoubling his efforts to save men from the curse of drink. A case in point was Arthur Delaney, executed at Chesterfield on August 10th, 1888. It may be said that he was naturally a bad, violent man, but surely he would never have become a murderer if he had not consistently made himself worse and worse by hard drinking. His victim was his wife, to whom he had been married four years, and who was spoken of as a respectable, hard-working woman. Not very long after the marriage, in a drunken fit, he violently assaulted her, for which action the magistrates imposed a fine and granted a separation order. His wife, however, forgave him, and in spite of his bad behaviour continued to live with him. A few days before the murder he was unusually violent, and treated his wife so brutally that she was obliged to again appeal to the magistrates, who again imposed a fine. This raised Delaney’s anger to such an extent that the next time he got drunk he battered his wife so violently that she had to be removed to the hospital, where she died. Like many other culprits, Delaney saw the cause of the mischief when it was done; and a letter written after his sentence, has a ring of simple earnestness about it that makes it worth preserving. It was written to some Good Templars who had tried to reform him.

H.M. Prison, Derby,

August 8th, 1888.

My Dear Friends,

I write you farewell on this earth, but hope with gods great mercy to meet you all there, were there will be no more sorrow or temptation. I do sincerely thank you for your kindness to me, and hope that my fall will be the means of, with god’s help of lifting others up from a drunkard’s grave. Had I followed your advise my poor wife would been alive now, and we should have been happy, for she was a faithful and good wife to me. God knows that I should not have done such a dreadful crime if I had kept my pledge, but hope it will be a warning to those that play with the devil in solution. Will you tell – to give his heart to god, and he will be safe from his great curse, the drink. Bid him and his wife farewell for me, and tell him to put all his powers to work to help the Noble work of Temperance onward, for it is God’s work. Oh! do implore them that is playing with the drink to abstain from it, for it is a national curse. Now farewell to you all, and may God prosper your noble work.

From your unfortunate friend,

Arthur T. Delaney.

What proportion of murders is directly traceable to drink it would be very difficult to say, but time after time we find that murderers who write to their friends state that drink, and drink only, has caused their ruin.

Elizabeth Berry

Although I am endeavouring in this chapter to give a few ideas of the motives for murder as seen by the murderers themselves, I am not by any means condoning their crimes. My main object is to induce people to look more into the pre-disposing causes of crime. I want them to consider whether in many cases prevention is not better than cure, and whether more can not be done to remove the causes. Undoubtedly drink has to answer for the largest number of such crimes. After drink comes lust and jealousy, though these almost invariably reach the murder climax through drink. The other main motive is the love of money, which has led to many of the most heartless, inhuman deeds that it has been my lot to avenge. I have given one or two instances of parents who murdered their own children for the sake of a few pounds of insurance money, and such instances could be multiplied. In fact, so apparent did the motive become a year or two back, that the Government was obliged to pass a law regulating the insurance of the lives of infants. If such an act, or even a further-reaching one, had been in existence earlier, Elizabeth Berry might have been alive now instead of lying in a felon’s grave. Mrs. Berry poisoned her daughter, aged 11. At the time of the murder the child’s life was insured for £10, for which Mrs. Berry was paying a premium of 1d. per week. The murderess had also made a proposal for a mutual insurance on her own life and the child’s by which £100 should be paid, on the death of either, to the survivor. She was under the impression that the policy was completed, but as a matter of fact, it was not. It seems almost impossible that a woman should murder a child for the sake of gaining even the full sum of £110; and we might be justified in believing that there must be some other motive if it were not for the fact that infanticide has been committed again and again for much smaller sums. From the point of view of the murderers of children it would seem that a few pounds in money appears a sufficient inducement to soil their hands with the blood of a fellow-creature. It is well, therefore, for the sake of child-life that the temptation should be removed.