CAT O’ NINE TAILS

Grey River Argus, 5 February 1930, Page 4

CAT O’ NINE TAILS

Prisoner’s Fear LEADS TO TRAGEDY. (Aus. and N.Z. Cable Assn.) LONDON, February 3. Fear of the cat o’ nine tails led thirty-nine year old James Spiers, who was sentenced cn Friday to ten years’ penal servitude and fifteen strokes of the cat for a brutal attempt to rob a city cashier, to leap over the banisters and fall headlong twenty-five feet on to the stone floor of Wandsworth; Prison. He died a few minutes after being sent to the hospital. Spiers was being led to the triangle for the punishment when he broke away, in the presence of the officials and the visiting justices. The “Daily Express” uses this as an argument for abolition of this form of punishment.