THE PENALTY PAID.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 152, 9 April 1930, Page 5

THE PENALTY PAID.

EXECUTION OF HENRY FOX.: (United Press Association—Copyright.) LONDON, April 8. Henry Fox has been executed for the murder of his mother at Margate. HOME OFFICE INTERVENES. QUESTION OF FOX’S SANITY. LONDON, March 27. The Homo Oflice has made one of the rarest interventions on record in regard to murder cases by its action in connection with Henry Fox, who was sentenced to death for the murder or of his mother in room G 6 of the Hotel Metropole, Margate, last October, and who will not appeal against his sentence. Doubts as to Fox’s mentality have arisen, and if these prove ivoll founded lie will certainly be reprieved. The Home Office has demanded reports from the prison doctors concerning the condemned n an’s mental condition, and if their report suggests that Fox is mentally unsound, it is likely, that the Home Office will formally appoint a Royal Commission. On its report will depend rvliether Fox lives or goes to the scaffold'. This rare initiative lias been takerf because the facts at the trial disclose that Fox Avas discharged from the Army during the Avar because he Avas subject to epileptic lits, probably as the result of his war-time experiences and was granted a small pension on that account. There is a famous parallel in 1922, Avhen Ronald True Avas reprieved, after his conviction for a brutal murder, because a commission found him insane. It Avas. pointed out that this has notliing to* do Avith the question of Avhether a murderer Avas insane when lie committed the nun dor, but British IaAV does not alloAV tbe execution of a man who is bereft of his faculties because thereby lie is disabled from adducing possibly valid reasons against bis execution.

There is the further reason, which Mr E. Shortt, then Home Secretary, mentioned in 1922, namely, that an insane man is unable to make his peace with his Maker before death.

Commenting on the conviction of Fox for the murder of his mother, the •‘Daily Mail” states that there have only been five cases of convictions for matricide in Britain in ,the last three centuries.