The Warwickshire Herald. — 1889-01-03 (Birmingham, West Midlands, England)

EXECUTION OF TWO MEN.  Charles Bultner, aged 51, a groom, of Ruddersfield, was executed in Artnley gaol,Leeds, on Tuesday morning, for the murder of his wife in September last, by nearly cutting off her head with a razor. The culprit, who retired to bed late at night after long devotional exercises with the gaol chaplsin, arose soon after 6 o'clock, and was shortly afterwards rejoined by the chaplain. The nervousness which Eulmer had previously shewn was gone, and he appeared contrite and resigned. Ile made • written statement to Captain Keen, the governor, acknowledging the justice of his fate, but denying that he had, as alleged by his wife, had immoral dealings with another woman. He stated that his wife would not let him have his razor, and in the quarrel he lost self-control. Billington, of Bolton, who was the executioner, allowed a drop of six feet, and death was instantaneaue. The story of the crime contains none of the niysterious circumstances which 80 often perplex the public and bathe justice. After the murder the prisoner went to a friend's house and told what he had done. He at the same time pulled out of ha pocket a couple of razors, which he wished his friend to hoe!) as a remembrance. Afterwards he went and gave himself up to the police. His domestic life had, owing to his drinking habits, been a very unhappy one. On the same morning Thomas Clews was executed in Stafford gaol for the murder of Mary Jane Bonell at the village of Washerwell, near Bailey., North Stafford, in September. The prison authorities were very reticent as to the convict's behaviour since his imprisonment, but he was visited on several occasions by his friends, and mntemplated his fate with resignation. The condemned man walked to the scaffold with the utmost firmness, and without any support from the warders who surrounded him. Berry was the executioner, and the drcp was six feet. The deceased woman and Clew.' had cohabited, but becoming jealous he lay in wait for her with a hatchet and killed her.  SOCIALIST CONGRESS IN A ITSTRIA A congress of Austrian Socialists has been opened at Hainfeld, in Lower Austria. The congress at its first sitting achieved the important result of establishing a union between all the Socialist sections with the single exception of thlt of the Anarchists, the leaders of the ‘arious groups expressing their complete concurrence with the union. Messrs. Popp, of Vienna, Hybee, of Prague, and Bayer, of Briton, %%ere elected presidents of the congress, and the following programme was discussed and accepted by the congress : The Socialist workmen's party in Austria is an international party. It condemns the prerigatives of nations as well as those of birth, property, and race, and declares that the struggle must be an international one, in the same sense as is the exploitation of labour. With a view. to the propagation of Socialist ideas, the party will avail itself of all ppsitible means of publicity, by the holding of meetings, the formation of associations, and by means of the Press, and the party will strive to attain the removal of all obstacles to the free expression of opinion by the employment of these means. The programme further goes on to demand that the growing poverty of the working classes must be met by ample and honest legislation, protecting them by limiting the hours of labour, and by abolishing the employment of children, while granting unrestricted liberty of association to working men. Finally, it lays down that the future of the working classes absolutely demands the introduction of compulsory, gratuitous, and unsectarian instruction in the lower and middle-class schools, besides opening the high schools to all classes, a necessTry condition of which would be the separation of Church and State. The programme was voted with only three dissentient votes, after the Anarchists had left the congress.  The Mayor of Sydney has banded his year's salary, 4,000, to the local University to provide a bursary.