The Blackpool Herald. — 1890-03-28 (Blackpool, Lancashire, England)

THE CREWE MURDER AND GAMBLING.— During the course of his sermon on Sunday night, from the text let Epistle to Timothy, 4th to the Bth verses, the Rev. J. S. Balmer made special reference to the Crewe murder, and the lessons to be derived from it. Referring to the complaint of tradesmen that in these days of close competition they could scarcely afford to be honest, Mr. Balmer they that he had no faith in a business that could not be conducted on the principles of rectitude. If he were in business and found that he could not make it pay, he would give it up rather than compromise his honour. He admitted that tradesmen were often greatly harassed through customers not meeting their liabilities— people who were content to feed and clothe themselves without making an honest endeavour to pay that which they owed. Still, there was no excuse for turning their backs upon God, and no good could come from gain that was not honestly obtained. Mr. Balmer then referred to the different phases of the Crewe murder, and spoke strongly on the conduct of the victim. He believed that all the misery in that home was caused through the lack of religions influence. The murdered man had forfeited the right to claim the respect of his children, and clearly treated his family with great cruelty. He was no believer in children treating their parents with disrespect. There was a great tendency in these days for children to disregard their obligations to their parents. The father was called " guv'nor," and the mother 'the old woman," by the clever, shrewd, collared-and-cuffed young men of the period. It was a disgrace to call a father gav'nor," and to describe a mother as "the old woman." He did not say that the two youths who had been sentenced to death had any right to murder their father, even in the face of his cruelty. God had given no man the right to take away the life of another, and certainly no son had the right to take away the life of his father. Gambling seemed to be the great stumbling block of the victim of this awful murder. The gambling spirit was unfortunately too much abroad. There probably hever was an age when there- was more gambling than existed now. He had sometimes been told that Christian men engaged in this reckless game of chance, but they had better be careful less-they gambled away their souls. To him it was an awful thing to gamble. A man who did so was, he considered, a villain and an arrant rogue. They had better live on the commonest food, even fast for 40 days, than participate in the proceeds of gambling. He warned young men to keep their hands out of their master's tills, to keep away from the dice box, and to shun the gambling hell. Here was a lesson given to them through the roar of murder. The murdered man was, he was told, a book-maker. What a book-maker was he (the preacher) did not know, and did not want to know. He supposed they were , specially respectable gamblers, but he preferred to call them special scoundrels. If there were a hundred there that night he would not hesitate to denounce them to their faces. He supposed they would tell them that he was speaking in characteristic fashion—that he was extreme in his views. One of the most contemptible things to his mind was the tendency, especially in Black, , pool, of some men now-a-days to state the truth as though it were half a lie. He believed in calling lies lies, and truth truths. If that was being extreme, then he was extreme, and would be until he died. It was a sad thing to see two youths in prison under sentence of death; it was sad to dwell upon the terrible misery which the trial had revealed; it was sad to think of the father beating his wife for sending his children to the Sunday school, and it was sadder still to see the terrible trouble the irreligion of the father might be regarded as having brought upon himself and the members of his family. He hoped his hearers would take the lesson to heart, shun the besetting sins of the vistim, and seek to keep before them the duty of liviug true, honest, Godly lives.