EX-CONVICT'S OUTBURST

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 92, 20 April 1933, Page 9

EX-CONVICT'S OUTBURST

An ex-convict, who was in Dartmoor at the .time of. the mutiny, made an outburst at Durham Assizes recently against the "cruel destiny that had maltreated him," states the "Daily. Telegraph." He was described1, as Walter Baldwin, 42, a waiter, ' arid ho pleaded guilty to stealing a wireless set from the doctor's room at a West Hartlepool hospital. He was sentenced to three years' penal servitude. Bald;, win said that he was released fronl Dartmoor on October 20, 1932, and had been driven almost insane by the soli? tude and horror of 25 years' penal; servitude and three years on.a training ship. In mad moments everything reeled from him, even God. He describedjhimself as a piece of human' wreckage, unjustly maltreated by a' cruel destiny and by many years of mental anguish in which he "displayed martyrdom and heroism." "I never complained of the fato. that cut the thread of my life," he said. Baldwin said that his father was a drunkard, and he asked what it was that induced publicans to allow a man to poison himself so that he did not know whether he was man or beast. "I am not a student of criminology," M added, "but have been simply buffeted through the poisoning ■in the ■blood caused by a bad father. I have never had a chance," ho said. "When I ■was a boy there was no such thing as probation. I -uas flogged on several occasions by the police for what were only childish pranks." Mr. Justice MacKinnon referred to Baldwin's bad record, and said that the public must;' be protected against his depredations and thieving. His was a case- that made Judges despair of what was best" in the public interest. \