The Cotton Factory Times. — 1898-07-01 (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England)

ALLEGED CONFESSION OF ANOTHER M URDE R. The execution of Walter Horsford, the St. Neots murderer, took place at the prison at Cambridge on Tuesday morning. His last hours were undisturbed by any visits from his friends. Ile slept soundly and woke early. Billington, the executioner, slept in the prison, and pinioned the convict in his cell. The distance from the cell to the scaffold was only about ten yards. Punctually at eight o'clock the procession entered the execution shed from a door in the centre. The chaplain came best reading the funeral service in a quivering voice. Then followed the convict, seem. ingly in robust health, walking firmly and not showing the least trepidation. A warder was on each side of him, but no assistance was needed from them. Billington, who followed, placed his man with his back towards the reporters, and having placed a strap around his ankles, pulled a lever and the bolt fell. The convict disappeared entirely from sight in the pit, and nothing could be seen but a slight quivering of the rope, death appearing to be instantaneous. The whole scone was over in a couple of minutes or less. The sheriff sent out a raessage to the reporters that everything had passed off satisfactorily. The sheriff and under-sheriff, the governor of the gaol, the chaplain, four doctors, and two reporters were present at the execution. Outside the prison a great crowd assembled to watch the floating out of the black flag, but there was no demonstration whatever. The culprit left a written statement to be opened after his death. Hereford was a farmer, of Spaldwick, Hunts., in a good way of business. His victim was his cousin, Annie Holmes, a widow with whom he had formed a guilty intrigue. There was nothing to have prevented them marrying and leading a respectable and comfortable life, but Hereford chose to contract marriage with another woman, and it was on the eve of his marriage that he sent her a powder, describing it as perfectly harmless, and instructing her how to take it. He wrote these instructions to her, and they formed the most conclusive evidence of his guilt. The powder was strychnine, sufficient of it to have poisoned a regiment, and Annie Holmes, who unsuspicionsly took the fatal dose, died a most agonising death. After being first arrested (on his return from his honeymoon) on a charge of perjury at the inquest on Holmes, he was finally committed on the capital charge. The trial commenced on June 1 at Huntingdon before Mr. Justice Hawkins. He admitted sending a powder to Annie Holmes, but said it was a harmless one, and that she had taken it for the purpose of preventing the birth of a child, of which he was the father. An element of the irony of fate is added to the case by the fast that Mrs. Holmes was not enciente, as both she and her lover supposed, and there was therefore no necessity for her to have taken even a "harmless powder." The London correspondent of the Manchester Guardian says :—I hear to-night that the Home Secretary is in possession of a fell confession by Walter Horsford of the murder of Annie Holmes for which he was executed this morning. In the same document Horsford, it is said, confesses to the murder of another woman in similar circum stances. The Guardian adds :—The statement in our London correspondence that the sealed letter from Horsford, which was sent to the Home Secretary, contained a confession of another murder besides that of Mrs. Holmes probably has reference to the death of Fanny James, 21 years of age, on December 30th, 1890. Miss James, who had been engaged to be married to Horeford, was seized with spasms, and died in about a quarter of an hour. It is said to have been ascertained that on the very day of her death she received is letter from Horsford.