LIFE IN SING SING

Hokitika Guardian, 14 October 1932, Page 2

LIFE IN SING SING

GRIM TALES OF DEATH HOUSE

GUNMAN TAMED BY A BIRD.

“Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing,” by Warden Lewis Lawes, is one of the most astonishing things that have ever come out of that sinister American prison, says an exchange.

The author was twelve years a warden, and on one hundred and fifty-one occasions he has been directed lawfully to kill that number of men and women. There was, in fact, only one woman, the notorious' Mrs R’_ch Snyder She, with her paramour Judd Gray was electrocuted for the murder of her husband. The case aroused extraordinary hysteria among the public and at the execution, a photographer actually managedJ to be present to “snap” the woman as she succumbed to the shock of the death-dealing electricity.

‘Tnree thousand people milled round the gates o'n the night of the execution,” says Mr Lawes. “One hundred thousand words were flashed over especially-installed tjelegraph wires on the hills overlooking the prison. Blut in the death-house all was

quiet. “Ruth Snyder entertained hopes for a reprieve or commutation until almost the very end. The day before the execution she seemed to lose this slender hope, and gave way to hysteria. She wai? in a coma most of that day.

MATRON OVERCOME. “But toward evening she revived. The Bible, which had become her constant companion, and her religious devotion seemed to give her strength. “On the last day she asked the matron, to dress her hail’, and played cards when she was not reading until just a few minutes before she was to go to the chair.

“She trod the flast mile’ bravely, if not with dignity. Actually it was the woman guard, her matron, who succumbed. While the straps were being adjusted she was overcome, and had. to be led from the chamber....”’

Mr Lawes reveals that during her stay in the death-house many offers of marriage came for Mrs Snyder. Two-Gun Crowley was another famous criminal conducted to the chair by Mr Lawes.

“I was amazed to see him—small in stature and of low grade mentality,” he says. In a different setting his clear complexion and general appearance would have marked him as a choir boy. “Death-house inmates are denied matches, but Crowley managed to set fire to his bed at night with a cigarette lit for him, as is the custom, by the guard.

STORY OF A STARLING. “He was removed to another section of tli© death-house. He -managed to flood his cell. His olothing was then taken from him, his bed removed, and a mattress was furnished only at night. , “So theire was our death-house hero, tough, ‘Two-Guu Growley,’ naked in his cell. He spent his time catching flies to kill them.

‘He would take grains of sugar and wait patiently for the flies to assemble. Then he would pounce on them.” An extraordinary .thing happened. A starling flew into Two-Gun Crowley’s cell. The gunman became interested and tamed the bird. But what was more interesting was that the bird tamed the gunman. The condemned man became quiet and lyHis clothes were returned to him. Every day the bird came, and the gunman fed it with breadcrumbs from his own prison loaf. “Crowley went to his death calmly, without braggadocio, without swagger. ‘Give my love to my mother,’ he called just as the hood was placed over his head.