Widnes Examiner. — 1894-03-31 (Widnes, Cheshire, England)

LLENS COLLIERS.  General satisfaction was felt in S. Helens on Monday evening on receipt of telegrams from the Home Office stating that the SJcretary of State had advised Her Majesty to respite the capital sentence passed at the Liverpool Assiz,.s upon three colliers, Leahey, Carney, and Riley, for the murder of Police Constable Gordon a 7, St. Helens, with a view to commutation of the sentence. Petitions for reprieve have been signed by over six thousand persons. Announcement of the respite in local places of amusement on Mond ty night elicited enthusiastic cheers.  The formal letter of the Home Secretary, intimating that her Majesty had been advised to exert the Royal prerogative, was received at Walton gaol on Tuesday afternoon, and was promptly conveyed to the prisoners by the governor. Needless to say, the men were overjoyed by the intimation that they would not he called upon to undergo the death penalty. When the feelire, of exultation at their liberation from the sentence of the gallows had somewhat suh4id-d, the men made anxiotel inquiries as to the fate which wa in store for them, het on tl‘is point the governor was enable to give them any definite information. The men will in due coorie he removed from Walton, aria taken at an early hour in the morning from P-e.ten .Enrictiee or Walton Stati •ti down to Liverpool et. Edge Hill, and be placed in a train lor the South. Their destination will be either Pentonville, Portland or Dlrtmoor, unless the Home Secretary in the meantime sees fir, to commute their sentence into such a short ter- ii that they w;11 no placed in one of the prisons where the worst class of long-senti-nce men are not to he found. It is feared that the fate of the unfortunate men will he a considerable period of penal servitude, because there is a somewhat had record against them. The var4ms petitions, containing, it is estimated, shout 10,000 signatures, including those of the Bishop ,ofLivernool and a nember of clergy, will be forwarded to the Home Secretary on Wednesday morning. As the tofficial notification of a respite has been made, the petiion will be accompanied by a request that the Royal clemency may be exercised in the direction of a moderate term of imprisonment. A juryman writes so Mr. H. L. Riley :—" I cannot get from my mind an extract from a letter which was in the " Liverpool Echo" on Thursday last, in which one of the jurymen states that he was r.f opinion that. the action, of the men was not the immediate cause of death, or words to that effect, and that if the judge had not summed up against the men in favour of a verdict of murder, the jury would not have returned the verdict they did, hut even then it was with the stringent recommendation to mercy. I have been juryman at the assizes on three or four occasions during the last fifteen years, and unfortunately it has heen my lot to be on both murder and manslaughter cases, and I think this, that if theie poor fellows are executed it Is leg,ali,ed murder, and if they are only commuted to penal servitude for life it is a disgrace to a civilised country, for my opinion is that the chances were that he was liable to die from the same thing even after the excitement of an ordinary street row."