A SOCIAL OUTLAW

Evening Star, Issue 14495, 21 February 1911, Page 7

A SOCIAL OUTLAW

AMAZING SPEECH FROM THE DOCK. An amazing speech ironi tho dock was made at the Cardiff quarter sessions on January 6 hv Robert Bair (28), who had been found guilty of shop breaking. The pi isoner, before being sentenced, addressed the Recorder, expounding his views of life with remarkable cynicism and marvellous fluency. He is reported to have said : - "You have heard a recoid of a few of the deeds 1 have- been guilty of. I feel pnnul of them, proud of my career, and proud also to think that- tho country must go to the expense of finding such a. one as 1 with legal aid. I um one of those degenerates that you hear so much about—useless to the country, useless to my friends, and useless to myself. 1 am a living lie, and I know that I shall never bo anything else. Life is a gigantic fraud. SeltUhnees and oppression abound on all sides. The chief object in life seems to be that men should ‘do’ their neighbors. If they don’t succeed, their neighbors will ' diU them. I am one of those who ’do’ their neighbors. I believe in ‘doing’ my neighbors, for it is bet self-defence. There is no mode of punishment that can prevent mo from doing tin so deeds. If I thought that by living a clean, honest, straight forward life I should bo rewarded in the future, then T would do so. Rut there is no future, and one can, if ho so chooses, live as he will. It matters not. one atom, for when one is dead one is finished with. Death will never frighten me. T shall face it and will welcome it. My career might have been so different. What T am to-day you helped to make me. Ten years ago last Monday you sent mo to prison tor six months. “ During those six months 1 learnt moro roguory than I have learnt before or since. During that time I determined to got my own back. I have done mv best to get my own back and to do injury to others, and I think I have succeeded very well.”

The prisoner went on to give his parents and family an excellent name, and said they were not responsible for his career of crime. He made some blasphemous observations, and. said his parents used to worship “a mysterious being called God by a sort of wireless telegraphy,” the only difference being that they got no replies. In conclusion ho said : “Punishment lias never had any effect for good on me, only for evil. I am a moral and social wreck. It is nothing to me. I am used to it. From January, 1901, to this date I have not had six months’ liberty I have been an inmate of two asylums, and this is the end. Twice I have attempted to take my life, and the next time I shall succeed. 1 have determined never to serve any sentence passed on mo. You have contributed towards the ruin of my life. I declare before all people in this court that you cannot possibly acquit yourself of that. Now do what yon like. If I like I could murder the police officers and burn down the Co-operative Wholesale Society. I will track them down and lure them into false security, and cry ‘None can injure me with ini punity. The Recorder passed a sentence of three years’ penal servitude.