LOVE DRAMA SEQUEL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 156, 4 July 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

LOVE DRAMA SEQUEL.

REPRIEVE FOR WIFE SLAYER.

TRAGIC WAR-TIME ALLIANCE.

DEATH OF UNFAITHFUL SPOUSE,

"Is it really true that my brother is to be released from prison?" joyfully asked a sad-eyed Newcastle-on-Tyne woman when seen at her home by a Press reporter and informed that next February she could expect to learn the good news she has been waiting on for nearly a dozen years.

The subject of the inquiry was Andrew Eraser. a Glasgow-born ex-soldier, who had his home in the Benwell district of Newcastle before he went to the war. On being demobilised, he found that his wife had formed another attachment while lie was away lighting. Following her to Wolverhampton, where she was living with her lover, he killed her. Strenuous efforts were afterwards made to secure a reprieve, but the sentence of death was upheld. Alderman Bramble, of Newcastle, however, persuaded the then Lord Mayor to take action officially. The result was that Eraser's sentence of death was commuted to penal servitude for life. Offer of Work. The Home Secretary, Mr. J. R. Clynes, has now intimated to the present Lord Mayor of Newcastle that further clemency will be shown and that Eraser will be released next February, when he will be held to have served 16 years in prison, but when he will actually have served only twelve years. "My brother can make a fresh start in life now," added his sister, who lives in a residential quarter of the city. "He is only 38, and two excellent appointments have already been offered him. Both are in Kent, and one is from a Maidstone man and the other from, a country squire. He has a whole new life in front of him. Everything will be above board and he need hide nothing. "1 am sure—we are all sure —that he did not know what he was doing when he killed liis wife. He had always been a straight lad. and very fond of her. They were married while he was a sailor. He was one of eight brothers, all <pf whom served in the war. Three were killed. His wife, who was 32 —a bit older than himself—went off with a man in Wolverhampton. At the trial, in August, 1919, the landlady of the rooms they were living in said that she sa,w Mrs. Fraser admit my brother to her rooms. Brooded Over the Wrong. "There was silence for some time, and then she saw my brother emerge and hurry away. The landlady subsequently found my sister-in-law dead. It had all been the result, I am sure, of my brother having brooded over the wrong done him through his wife's unfaithfulness. He must have descended far into a state of melancholia when he. followed the erring woman away down in Wolverhampton and killed her. "Soon, however, it will be all over. He will, of course, accept one of the appointments in Kent. We shall go and visit Ijim, and he may come some time to see

us, though I won't be too sure on that score,'as a visit to Newcastle would probably recall too much of his life's tragedy." When intimation of the forthcoming release was conveyed to the Lord Mayor of .Newcastle, he expressed delight with the news. "My own personal sympathies were with this man," he added. "Here was a man just returned from the war, with his nerves on edge, used to butchery and bloodshed, to find his wife with another man. In a moment of passion he killed her. "He was tried and committed for murder, and the Appeal Court upheld that decision. The late Mr. Edward Shortt, M.P. for West Newcastle, had representations made to His Majesty., The-result was the sentence of death was turned into a life imprisonment sentence."