Nantwich, Sandbach & Crewe Star — 1890-04-12 ()

OPINION.  Speaking at Crewe on Tuesday night, Mr W. S. B. McLaren, M.P., condemned the Home Secretary's decision. He could not conceive any reason that could induce the Home Secretary to take up the position that he had done. He could have understood his action, although he could not have agreed with it, if he had refused to reprieve either of the prisoners, but had allowed the law to take its course. Of all the acts which the Home Secretary had considered it his duty to perform in the revision of criixlival sentences since he took office, he did not think he had over performed one so unwise, so wrong and cruel, as to respite one of those unhappy boys and not the other. (Cheeis.) He felt strongly that both should have been reprieved. Their youth, the eircnnistances of their home life, the great provocation to which they had undoubtedly been-subjected, should have been taken into account, and having been taught by the awful experiences through which they had passed they might have become useful members of society, and might have lived to atone by useful lives for the awful crime which they had committed. The Home Secretary's decision compelled the consideration of the whole question of our criminal prrocedure, and the whole question of right and wrong of capital punishment, to which he. Was strongly opposed, for he believed it had no deterrent effect upon the commission of murders. He regarded it indeed as being only one degree less wicked than the crime itself. Capital punishment was contrary to civilisation and the principles of Christianity. it was a last remnant of a barbaric age, and should at once be swept away for more just and Christian methods of punishment. (Loud cheering.)  ---:0:-- THE umm:E. A brief reference to the crime itself will suffice in a dietricr, where the public mind is full of its horrors.  • The terrines murtier was COLuilitcoc.... night, January 25th, on a lonely part of the road between Crewe and The Hough, and that both lads were implicated in the deed is borne out both by evidence adduced at the trial, and the confessions of the murderers themselves. The murdered man, who kept a small general shop at Crewe, and who was also a bookmaker, lived a great deal from home, and when be happaned to be at home he treated his wife and family in a very brutal manner. He frequently struck his wife, lived himself on superior food, and took his meals alone, scarcely allowing his family money enough for bare necessaries. This continued illtreatment seems to have created in the murderers a feeling of intense hatred towards their father, with whom they were engaged in business in Crewe, and on the fatal Saturday a plot was arranged to kill him. During the day both lads bought gunpowder and caps of a Mrs. Beech, and the same night the murdered man wav found dead by the roadway, not shot, however, but with his head battered in with an axe. The story told by George Davies, who was with his father in the trap, was that they had been attacked by tramps, and at first this was believed, but the fact that Richard Davies canie home wearing a blood-stained overcoat, and other suspicious circumstances, led to the arrest on January 28 of the real murderers, who voluntarily confessed that they were the guilty parties, although each gave a different version of the affair. They were subsequently committed for trial, and afterwards arraigned at Chester Assizes, before Mr. Justice Wills. The jury found the prisoners guilty,with a recommendation to. mercy, and they were sentenced to death. A large number of petitions were signed asking that the condemned lads might be reprieved, and last week the Home Secretary intimated that George alone would be spared.. A - • We now arrive at the point from which qur narrative started—the e.fforts for a reprieve of R.l.:hard Davies— made useless be the fatally ebstinate pride of a blu utitring Home Secret ary.  Owing to the successive demand for our paper of March 2nd, containing the account of the murder and trial, and not being able to meet those demands, Nye have been requested to. Put in some of the most interesting illur,trations of the tragedy, as many of our subscribers wish to send copies to their friends.