Morning journal and courier., 1882-05-27
Price Four Cents.

| was told in these columns 8 few days ago ! but his long address when he was sentenced | to death is worth noticing as psychological
 curiosity and for the grave charges made | against the English police. T stand before l you," he said, ''the resultant of the forces of persuasion, example and compulsion, and Maria Fitzsimmons, whom I murdered, was another of those terrific results. The injus- tice of the land laws in Ireland caused my re- lations to join Ribbonmen and leave their country, and then induced my mother to
 come to England to meet my father. Per haps crime is hereditary in my case-another
 fact to strengthen DarEin's and Huxley's
 theories. l do not know, nor have l heard
 of but one member on either side of our
 family that was not strongly addicted to
 drinking My father was a drunkard |; my
 mother was forced to become one-held down
 by her nearest relatives while they poured
 rum down her throat until she promised to
 be sociable. As regards myself, know that
 was ravlng drunk before was eight years
 old. I was early initiated into this accursed
 habit, and it was more fully developed during
 four years spent among seamen, who seem to
 think that drink Is the sUDlnauns 60Taun7 of hu-
 man life. After this it was my fate to have
 to spend more than four years in prison.
 Upon my discharge, and obtaining another
 ship, l determined not to drink Upon the
 mate offering me my share of beer civ1lly
 declined It, receiving storm of abuse in re-
 turn, accompanied with an order to leave the
 ship and go ashore if did not like to drink.
 Thirty miles from home. without penny in
 my pocket, what was I to do? I saw the
 good the evil had to follow. I drank the
 beer, was praised for being a man, and the
 result therefrom, as if human blood had been
 given to a tame tiger, was that drink was all
 that 1 lived for; for this only did I work;
 for it I neglected my duty to myself, my mother. and my employers; for it became again thief by using money intrusted to me
 by my shipmates; for by and through it I HOW stand before you as the murderer of a
 woman. UpoI my return from China in 1863 I was reduced to stage of the most extreme poverty; fell in with some habitual crimi- nals, who, perceiving my necessities and in experience, easily persuaded me to join them
 When the officer apprehended me, by threats of imprisonment and promises of obtaining employment for me that might live honest ly, he induced me to entice my companions with their tools upon them into his district,
 where they were apprehended. He did not fulfill his promises to me, but gave me every inducement to draw other criminals into his district in order to profit by their crimes. avoided them and tried to obtsin work but unsuccessfully, and at last took to burglary on my own account. Being at last detected and sentenced to penal servitude, when my time was expired to avoid the police l again went to sea, and thus I was led to Sunder- land to meet and murder Maria Fitzsimmons
 When I reflect upon the brutal iuhumsn treatment experienced by prisoners every dly can well understand the truth of Sir Will Hamilton's dictum, that medicine is 8 scier.ee founded upon conjecture and improved by murder; and he might have added, if he ha d any knowledge of prison ife cold bloodeG and systematic murder Being from my childhood inured to hardship and suffering, also an habitual criminal. expect no synpa- thy to be shown me but should others con- tinue to be brutaliZed, inhumanizsd, demor- alized and devilized? It was the unnecessary punishment and indignities inflicted upon me in my first sentence of penal servItude that caused me to resolve that if ever 1 saw my self in danger of penal servitude again I would go in for hanging rather than do it. If I lived out this sentence, I should be use less both in body and mind, having ties in the world to make me desireto live for them If there WAS design in creation, must have been designed for an example; to submit to that design seemed the only virtue I had any capacity for. By submitting could be of service to those as bad of or worse than my self, by drawing the attention of those call ing themselves Christians to the miseries, de- gradation and unnecessary sufferings endured by them from causes beyond their own con- trol; and if took the opportunity of giving the demon Intemperance fllip as passed out of the world l might perhaps be the means of causing few at the least to avoid coming to what is worse than a living death Such are few only of the reasons which in- duced me to come here. Though already condemned, declare solemnly that they are true. No less weighty reasons, except ten der conscience, which I can't complain of, their system having cured me of that also, would cause any man in his senses to do thus, as 8 cure for his msladies, physical and men tai. Sad cure, to be no more; for who would lose, tho full of pain, his intellectual being, if desperate disease did not require a desperate remedy? What must be will be- occurs by eternal necessity"