NO WISH TO LIVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 29, 4 February 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

NO WISH TO LIVE.

DEATH SENTENCE ASKED.

HEART IN GRAVE WITH WIFE. CRUEL FATE OF WAR VICTIM. "I don't want to live ... let me die and go to my wife." This was the despairing cry of a young husband when he learned that the sentence of death passed on him at the Old Bailey for the murder of his wife, following a suicide pact, had been commuted. The man is Frederick Joseph Powell, a 33-year-old checker's assistant, of Bermondsey, London. He is suffering from advanced tuberculosis, and, according to his mother, has only a year to live. When he was sentenced, Mr. Justice Charles described the tragedy as that of "two very sick, utterly hopeless, and bitterly poor people." "Ho Wanted to Die." "My son does not want to live," said Powell's mother, Mrs. Habgood, of Glebe Road, Bermondsey, to a pressman. Mrs. Habgood was crying bitterly. She had just left her son in Wandsworth Gaol, where she had learned of the reprieve on her daily visit to him in hospital there. "I am happy," 6he whispered, "but he isn't. He wanted to die. He said the sentence of death was the kindest thing which could have happened to him. His heart is in the grave with his wife. He has no heart to live now. He is dying slowly, and the sooner death came to liini the better pleased he would hav& been. "The reprieve means to him just so much longer without her—though even that cannot be far away. Nothing can save him. The Home Secretary cannot reprieve hiin of the sentence "of death that is upon him. I left him praying that the Almighty would take him soon. It is true that he has shown some improvement since he has been in gaol. "He has actually asked to be allowed to stay in prison, but we arc trying to make arrangements, for providing for him when he comes out. I think lie. will only live another year. He was terribly devoted to his wife, and everything was so hopeless. She was so ill and he was so ill. There was nothing left in life for either of them. 11 would have been kinder if they had died together." "A Traitor If I Live." The reprieved man's only thankfulness is that his relatives have been spared the ordeal of his execution. Powell and his wife were found gassed on November 11. Mrs. Powell was dead, her husband recovered. When charged, Powell is said to have replied: "As she is dead and I am alive, if I live I shall be a traitor to her. I wish to be sentenced to death." Powell is a victim of the war. He was in the trenches two days after his 19th birthday in the Cameronians. He was in a platoon of which only half a dozen men came back after being reported missing for four days in a gas attack. He has never recovered from it. His lungs have gone. The commutation of the death sentence was announced by Sir John Gilmour, Home Secretary, in a letter he sent to Mrs. Runge, M.P. for Rotherhithc, who had made representations to the Home Office. "It is too early," the letter says, "for me to say how long Powell will l>e detained, for his detention will largely depend on liis health and on the arrangements that can be made for his aftercare on liis release from prison."