The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1880-11-06 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

DEATH SENTENCES.  Daring the week a dreary catalogue of victims has been provided for Hr. Harwood. At Bristol, on Tuesday, William Distin was sentenced to death for the murder of a woman with whom he had cohabited. The case was a simple one. On August 27th the murdered woman brought the prisoner. out of a public-house and slapped his face on the way home, but they sat down to supper on good terms with a companion of the prisoner. Boon after the lastnamed had left the deceased entered the landlady's room, bleeding from a wound  in the left shoulder. She' was put on a chair, but fell off, and the prisoner came in and went up to her crying ad asking, "Eliza, dear, what have I done ? " Deceased was taken to the infirmary, where the wound was found to have penetrated the muscles of the left arm and entered the sheet, cutting the covering of the lungs. She died, and in her depositions declared that the prisoner deliberately ran a knife through her shoulders. Table knives with blood ,on them were found in the room. The jury, believing that the crime had not been premiditated, very properly recommended the prisoner to mercy. The judge, however, held out no hope of mercy, and sentenced the prisoner to death in the usual way. Here is a case which illustrates the superiority of the French law to ours. A French jury, feeling as the Bristol jury did, that the crime had been the work of a momentary impulse, would have been enabled to find the accused guilty 'with extenuating circumstances," and the death penalty would not have been exacted, while the justice of the case would have been amply met by the imposition of a long—perhaps a life long—term of penal servitude. On the same day that Distin was told to bid farewell to life, a woman, named Elizabeth Stacey, was sentenced to be hanged at Leicester. She seems a depraved and wret:hed creature, and her crime was of quite a commonplace character. Some time ago she was seen sitting by the side of a pit of water, where she undressed the child while it was asleep, wrapped it in a cloth, and threw it into the water. When apprehended she said that she throw the child into the pit because she did not want to take it to her mother, with whom she had two other illegitimate children living. Mr. Linsell, who defended the prisoner, set up the theory that the child was suffocated at the breast by accident, and that the prisoner threw the body into the pit because she did not know what to do with it. The jury found the prisoner guilty, and sentence of d 35th was passed. But, though the crime was common-place in character, the trial was of a most dramatic and thrilling kind. The guilty woman fainted in the dock several times and required the assistance of a doctor. It was almost a pity that she was not allowed to die, if she could have died, seeing the horrible doom for which she is being reserved. When sentence had been pronounced she was carried screaming in the most: heart-rending manner from the dock. The occurrence naturally created a tremendous sensation in court. We think that the law might well be so framed that the public would be spared the contemplation of such awful scenes. At Chelmsford, on Wednesday, the trial took place of Wm. Wright for the murder of John Prior, head gamekeeper to Lord Braybrooke, at Saffron Walden, on the 12th ultimo. The jury found the prisoner guilty, but recommended him to mercy, on the ground that there might have been a scuffle on the occasion when the allot was fired. Justice Hawkins, in pulsing sentence of death, said the recommendation of the jury should be forwarded. to the proper quarter.