RARE OCCURRENCE

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 22, 27 January 1928, Page 7

RARE OCCURRENCE

TRIPLE DEATH SENTENCE Commenting on the case •• the "Manchester Guardian," from whose report the preceding story of the trial, which was never cabled, is taken, says that a triple sentence of death in Great Britain or Ireland is extremely rare. Within the past century there have not been more than half-a-dozen occasions when three men have been sentenced to' the . extreme penalty for one crinie. •There have been several instances in which three or four and even more persons have stood "in peril of death." At. Sheffield a few years ago a racecouTse gang were charged with causing the death of one of their number, but. only one was found guilty of the capital offence. It is more than thirty years since there were in London three men on trial on the charge in connection with the death of Dr. Kirwan in South London in 1892. There the jury were lenient, but the Judge gave sentences of twenty years' penal servitude. Before that, in 1886, three men were hanged for the Netherby Hall murder near Carlisle. Three London men, Martin, Baker and Budge, had robbed Netherby Hall, the home of the Graham family, and, returning, one of them shot a' police constable named Byrne. For the crinie they were hanged at Carlisle in the following February, a titled man assisting Berry, the hangman. There were questions asked about the assistant in the House of Commons, but no revelation was made. Eight years before, at the Old Bailey, in the Penge's starvation case, guilt was brought home to members of the Staunton family, but, although some were convicted of the capital bffendfe, the sentences were respited.. THE MANCHESTER MA&TTBB. Ten years had elapsed since there had been a triple sentence. Three Irishmen stood convicted at Manchester of the murder of a police officer in an. attack on a prison-van containing prisoners in custody on a charge of raidingl Chester Castle for arms. Allen, Larkin, and, O'Brien, on hearing the sentence of death, stood erect and ghonted, "God Save Ireland." In inspired Timothy Daniel Sullivan, later Lord Mayor of Dublin, and father-in-law of t^b present Governor-Geneiral of the Free State, to write his famous song "God Save Ireland," which has gone around the globe as the Irish "National" Anthem. Manchester Martyrs' Day, 2?rd .November, is still celebrated among Irishmen, but since the establishment of j the Irish Free State the observance of the day has considerably waned. In 1883, in Ireland, members of thej "Irish Invincibles" stood their trijsw for the Phoenix Park crime, and were sentenced for the murder, of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Chief Secretary, and Mr. Thomas Burke, the TJnder-Sec-retay. In years during the rebellion and the subsequent risings several men were tried and convicted of armed resistance to the law and murder of military and civilian officers.