Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1888-12-01 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

UNDER THE PEAR TREE.  Sentence of death for murder has (remarks the Daily Ness) been pronounced at Worcestershire Assizes upon an old man, past his three score and ten, • cripple, and so deaf that a warder had to shout his doom into his ear as Mr. Justice Field declared it. The association of such decrepitude with a desperate deed of bloodshed gives to an otherwise commonplace tale an element of peculiar interest. There in in the story, too, the interest attaching to all crimes thatare brought home to the culprit by circumstantial evidence. No one saw the murder committed. But I there seems to be no reasonable doubt that the old man was the criminal. The victim was a gardener, named Willis, strong by comparison with Iris assailant, and sixteen years younger. There stood in his garden a smoky jennet " pear tree. In July last the fruit was ripe and falling, and Willis, bethinking himself that the garden walls were low and the fruit tempting to orchard thieves, who might any day rob him of his harvest, got up one morning at an early hour to gather it. He told his wife his purpose, and left her at a quarter to four. Five minutes had not passed before she was roused by his cry for her help. She found him at his back door in a dying ' state. The neighbours were roused. They carried hirn into his house, and he died almost immediately. His last words were the cry for his wife, and it was a matter of dispute at the assizes whether these could be used as evidence. The police, however, 'were put upon the track of the man who has now been convicted, old Samuel C-owther, a shoe-maker living near. Lie was found on his bed, but the policesergeant noticed that his boots and his trousers were wet and dirty. Footmarks in the garden near the pear tree, where there had been some aort of struggle, corresponded with the shoes. There were also imprints such as the prisoner's stick might have made. A basket belonging to him was found near a churchyard through which the murderer was likely to have passed after the crime. A red stain on one of Crowther's fingers was wiped off by himself I on his apprehension, and a doctor proved blood-stains on his clothes, and on a knife that might have caused , the victim's death wounds. There were found in the I prisoner's house, also, a sack with thirty-two of the smoky-jennert pears—a fruit hardly known in the district except in Willie's garden. In the old man's favour it was proved that he had bought pears from Willis, but a penny was all lie had spent in this way, and the sack contained much more than a pennyworth of the smoky-jennets. There was no I between the old man and Willis, the gardener. On the contrary, Willis had lent him money and in other ways befriended him. But then came overwhelming evidence that the old man hail left his house on the early morning of the day of the murder, that he was seen passing through the I churchyard with his stick at ten minutes past four. Last, and strongest link of all—when the judge permitted it tube added to the chain of esidence—was the dying cry of the murdered man. It was, "Do come down, for that old Sam Crowther has killed me." So the jury found that old Sam Crowther did kill him, and the old man pays the penalty unless the mercy of the Crown intervenes. For this exercise of mercy aotne reason is found in the defending counsel's case. Mr. Owen ably contended that a verdict of manslaughter might meet the case. The prisoner, he pleaded, must have been caught by Willis "thieving the pears." Willis, who had been his benefactor, would probably not spare him the punishment he deserved as an ingrate, arid at any rate the old man's head would be turned by the fear of that punishment. Being an old, weak man and a cripple,' enfeebled through want of food and privations, ho lost control of his senses and suddenly dealt the fatal blow. This defence was not sufficient in law. But at the Home Office it may be considered that the precise circumstances of the tragedy under the smoky jennet pear tree are sufficiently doubtful to warrant the remnant of the life of this miserable old man being spared.