THE MURDER OF MR. WHITELEY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13485, 11 May 1907, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE MURDER OF MR. WHITELEY.

SENTENCE OF DEATH. ■ [FROM OUR OWX COBRESPOSTDEXT.] London*, March 23. Horace Georgk ~ Rayneb—if that be , Ids name, which I understand it isn't— slay-! er of Mr. William Whiteley, :" the universal provider," has : been -; found guilty of murder .and "sentenced' to death. That he did shoot Whiteley is not- denied. All that could be suggested in his defence was that he acted under the: influence of temporary insanity, induced by want and by resentment of real or imaginary wrongs. Obviously such a defence could not for one moment hold water. But a great wave of public sentiment has spread over the case. The jury accompanied their verdict with a recommendation to mercy, and the daily papers have been crowded with letters "urging that the death sentence should be commuted.; The ground taken up is almost invariably the same,l namely, that it seems a horrible thing to have carefully nursed back to life the self-injured criminal merely for the sake of putting him to a violent death when sufficiently recovered. ' Such a proceeding is, no doubt, shocking to the public sense of what'appeal's humane. But manifestly it cannot be supported by any logical argument. The prisoner confessedly committed the crime; the fact that he was almost certainly an illegitimate son of the man-he murdertd, who refused to assist him to earn Van. honest livelihood and who responded to his petitions with, insult, even any resentment he may have' felt at the treatment of his mother" supposing all these professions to have been genuine, clearly constituted no defence of the crime of murder : ■>;.; ■.■■■■■-: ; :. : ;.:,: : :,',"- '"; ;

'But the public cannot get over the horror of the idea that the unfortunate young man was carefully nursed back to life simply in order that "he might be- hanged—for the outcome of his trial has all along been * a necessarily foregone conclusion." This suggests too forcibly a reminiscence of the case of Damiens, who attempted to assassinate one of the French kings, and who, after first; being nearly tortured ',death in the vain ! attempt to elicit the names of accomplices who neve>\ existed, was then most carefully; tended and nursed back into sufficient health and strength to enable him to undergo the whole day of elaborate public torture to which he "had been doomed through the influence of Madame de £ Pompadour, who thought it highly expedient that the removal of her kingly .protector should be discouraged to the utmost and so; the wretched man, after his protracted experience of redhot pincers and piece-meal burning, was slowly : quartered alive, after having been carefully prepared and nursed until he was able to endure his fate without prematurely collapsing/ That has always seemed to me one of the most horrible instances in his-tory-of civilised barbarism. Yet in a minor' degree the case of Rayner does seem to run on similar lines. The affair recalls those terrible lines of Byron referring to the' capture of the corsair and his consignment to a dungeon: — - • The leech was sent, but not in mercy, there To note how much' the life yet left could .. V; bear. ■ ; • , : " ■...-■ '■ :.'■ '■■ .;" . He found enough to load' with heaviest chain, .■ . ,■ ; And promised feeling for the wrench of pain, i [When the mail lelt London ' petitions were being extensively signed for, the reprieve of Rayner, and a cable, published in our columns later on, stated that the pri-' soner had been granted a respite with a view to commuting the sentence to one of imprisonment for life.] .■ ■ .