“The Press” In 1866

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31135, 11 August 1966, Page 16

“The Press” In 1866

August 11 Moralists In England complain that a great deal too much interest is taken now-a-days in murderers. If a murder is committed of peculiar atrocity, or under circumstances which throw an air of mystery over the case, it becomes a topic of conversation throughout the length and breadth of the country: the antecedents of the person accused are curiously inquired into: when Mk imprisoned, his daily habits and scraps Elk of casual conversation with turnkeys or visitors are carefully reported, and read with avidity. . . . The people of Nelson seem to have worked themselves into something of the same state of mind over the Maungatapu murders. No one of

course can be surprised that those murders, with the facts respecting them subsequently discovered or confessed, should have created a profound impression. . . . But the excitement has been carried too far. We can understand the burst of execration that saluted the murderers (for as such the populace regarded them) when they were first brought into Court—that arose from a natural instinct of outraged humanity; but the public mind must surely be in a very unhealthy state when a respectable journal could piiblish as positive fact a thrilling account of thirty murders committed by the same gang, the whole having no more substantial origin than the heated imagination of an excitable reporter.