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.
[Illustration: Edward Pritchard.]
_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.
[Illustration: Alfred Scandrett.]
_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.
[Illustration: Mrs. Berry.]