San Antonio light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1911-1993, 1925-09-20
By John Ellis
Official Executioner of Great Britain
CHAPTER v.
(coufinued from Last Sundsyl

GLonnnued rom LsS Sundsy
Cc 1875 by Weekly Reserved
LONDON, September Is.
TN all my experience prison governor have
never known bigger villain nor prisoner
- who has caused more worry"
When a prison governor so far breaks the usual
rule of offcialism that displays any sort of
bias toward prisoner as to make the remark have
just quoted you may find it easier to believe that the
man thus described is really an unmitigated
scoundrel
And the man of whom the Hon. Major Ftzclar-
ence, governor of Strangeways Jail, Manchester,
spoke to me so frankly was Frederick Rothwell Holt,
the who murdered pretty Kathleen Elsie Breaks,
of Bradford and hid her body in the sand hills
Blackpool 1t is the nvarabe rule in British prisons
to Judge convicts merely as prisoners" without any
reference to the crime that sent them there Thus
the officials may class petty thief bad prisoner
and murderer good prisoner. 1t all depends
on their behavior in prison.
So it was not because Holt was condemned for
particularly mean murder that he was hated in
Jail. 1t was purely because he stirred up much
trouble and carried obnoXiously that everybody
breathed a sigh of relief when all was over.
Never from the first moment of his arrest did he
ever show the slightest consideration for the feelings
of others. don't know whether he imagined he
going to bluff his way through and convince the
lu0ge ana jury OF MS innocence, DuL ne certainly
behaved as if he thought he had only to get up in
court and arrogantly declare his innocence and
everybody would then fawn upon him. No doubt it
in this spirit that he treated the prison officials
with whom he came in contact-as if they would
shortly be very sorry for having kept him in custody
and would be releasing him with abject apology.
But perhaps could not expect anything bet
ter from this man, who made love to pretty woman
in most passionate fashion, ruined her married life
and then murdered her in love embrace for the
sake of the money he had persuaded her to will to
him. Some of the details of the story well worth
recalling, because at the time furious fight
waged to save the man from the consequences of his
crime and told after the execution that there
were lots of people outside Strangeways Jail who
thought it "a shame" to hang Holt.
certainly do not agree with them. have felt
sympathy with many upon whom | have had to
carry out the laws decree, but must confess never
felt the slightest pang over Eric" Holt.
Mrs. Elsie Breaks, the woman whom he eventu-
ally murdered, had called him "the whitest man
have ever known" which shows how cleverly he had
masked his true character. While he was making
love to her he was secretly plotting how to kill her
without chance of being brought to book her
murderer, and thus be able to enjoy the $4,000
which Mrs. Breaks possessed and which he had in
dUced her to will to him. This all came out in EVIL
dence at Hollis trial, and remember taking very
keen interest in the many strange facts of this most
unusual type of crime.
believe that Holt marked Elsie Breaks down as