WHEN DADDY WENT AWAY

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 165, 15 July 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

WHEN DADDY WENT AWAY

AS she lay asleep in her little bed in a Teddington (London) house, a golden-haired five-year-old girl clutched tightly in her hand a crumpled scrap of paper. It was the last letter written to her by her beloved father, whom she would never see again. The little girl was Pat Butler, youngei daughter of William Thomas Butler, n 27-year-old motor driver executed ir Wande worth prison five tlays before foi I the murder of Ernest Key, jeweller, oi Surbiton. Butler wrote this letter, and a note tc - his other daughter, June, aged ten, as I one of his final acts. Shortly before h< [ was due to pay the extreme penalty, h< . learnt that a petition for his reprieve \ had failed. Hi 3 last faint hope gone, he knew thai r he must eay good-bye to the children t< whom he was devoted and who ha< , visited him in prison. Taking up hii i p«n, he began the ,most difficult taek o: r hie life. f "Deer Little Pat," he wrote. "B< r a good girl to Mummy. Daddy will b< i going away for a long time, as he i going abroad. "Learn all your lessons at school s< f that you will get on well. Never forge t Jbi|-*T who will always lore you. i" " ~" "Your dear, loving Deddy."

* Then he drafted his farewell letter lo ■" June. It was in these words:— '» "I don't know when I shell be i. writing again, for I shall bo a lonjr way r away, and it will be difficult for me, but a remember Daddy loves you. I *hall be n thinking of you always, and I hope you .r will not forjret me. Be i good girl to ►f Mummy and Pat. Don't forget when you start school again to study hard, o Then you will get on well and make is Mummy proud of you. And now, dear ie June, Daddy is saying good-bye and God Lβ bless and look after you." e Butler had still to write his farewell to his wife. At their final interview, he it had tried to maintain his composure, but io towards the end he had broken down and td cried. is Only a few hours before he met his ->i end, he wrote her a brief note telling her to be brave. She received it on the Jβ morning he died. Underneath the note ae he had copied out the hymn> (> "God be is with vou till we meet again." "I am sending you a few lovely verses, and if so you read them now and again, it will et help you to be brave," he wrote. Two days before, Butler had written a. poignant letter to hie wife when he had

: Executed Murderer's Poignant Letters ' To His Two Little Children

heard he must die. Addressing her as "My dear ever-loving wife," he told her she' "must be very brave with the bad news it brings to you. Saturday evening I heard the bad news, my love, and now this is the end," the letter went on. "Bad luck lias been with me since the start. God knows why—l don't. Eve, dear, you will always love me, won't you? It is hard for me to write this letter, as my heart is broken, and my eyes keep filling with water. I have kept my chin up as well as I could, but I'm afraid, my love, that now I am completely done. I will try and be brave when I see you to-morrow, and you will, too, won't you, dear? I am not afraid to meet my end, but it is what is being taken from me and all the suffering and sorrow I am leaving behind for you to shoulder. Be as brave as you can, dear. I know it will be hard for you to do so, but you must, dear, for the children's eeke. You won't let June or Pat know yet that they won't see their daddy again. Wait until they are older, when they can understand—but you won't ever let them know the trne srtory, will yon! I will close now, my love, and pray God to look after you and the two children and

that one day He will make up for all the suffering I have caused to fall upon you. "Your loving, but broken-hearted husband, Billy." Mrs. Butler produced a letter written by her husband only a few days before his execution, referring to what she had done. "You have been a real brick to me, even when I have gone off the line a bit," he wrote. "You have stuck by me and always have been a real wife, and I want you to remember this, dear—l have always loved you, and I pray to God that he will look after you and love you, and give you the happiness you deserve so much." "I don't care much what other people say, because Billy knew I still loved him and believed in him in spite of everything, and he went out knowing, too, that his children idolised him," added Mrs. Butler. "Now I shall have to go out to work again to keep my two children. I will never be parted from them, whatever happens. Sooner or later they will have to be told their Daddy is dead, but not yet. I have given them the impression he is in the army—but they will never know the real truth—not, at any rate, from me. Soon I hope to leave Teddington and go where I am unknown, and where the secret ow safely be kept from the kiddies."