SENSATION AT HOME.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 198, 22 August 1928, Page 7

SENSATION AT HOME.

Prisoner Prevented Seeing Dying Mother. TELEGRAM TO THE KINO. (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) LONDON, August 21. The Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, is again the subject of public discussion. This time he is the centre of an agitatiin that Wilfred F. McCartney, who was sentenced on January 18 to 10 years' imprisonment for espionage, should be allowed to leave Farkhurst Prison to visit his dying mother. Sir William refused the man permission to do this, saying the Home Office Hag no power to release a prisoner for such a purpose. Mr. George Lansbury, M.P. (Lab., Poplar), who is heading the agitation, refused to accept this answer and has appealed to the Home Secretary, not on the score of legality but of humanity, urging that whatever the man's crimes may have been he is a human being. A telegram has also been sent to King George begging His Majesty to order McCartney's temporary release. In the meanwhile McCartney's mother lies in a darkened room in Southampton Row, London, continually calling for her favourite son. A Harley Street specialist says a visit from her son is her only hope and that nothing else would make the dying woman rally.

On January 17 and 18 last, the espionage charge against William F. McCartney and George Hansen, who, it was alleged, had been supplying, to the Russian Government, documents dealing with British Military and Air Force matters, caused quite a sensation by the fact that the trial was conducted in camera. The reasons for these unusual proceedings were given by Major-General Charles Bon hamCarter. Director of Stas Duties at the War Office, who emphasised the necessity of not publishing the statements of four witnesses and documents which would be exhibited to the judge, jury and counsel. One of the documents waa a questionnaire dealing with the plans of the Air Force, which had been translated from the Russian. After a lengthy trial, both tnen were found guilty on all counts, and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude.