THE EASTBOURNE MURDER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15252, 15 March 1913, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE EASTBOURNE MURDER.

, WILLIAMS'S LIFE OF CRIME. . Williams, the "hooded man," was , hanged at Lewes Gaol recently for the l murder of Police-Inspector Walls at Eastbourne. Press representatives were allowed .to witness the " hooded man's'' execution— , an unusual proceeding in view of the strict prohibition imposed in recent years. > The story of " Williams's " life will remove . any doubt about his part in £he Eastbourne murder. It is the tale of a man .;■' who from the days of his childhood was continually : going wrong. He was born , in Edinburgh in 1883, and was thus thirty , years old. From his early boyhood he was a trial to, his family. His early edu- ' cation and surroundings were of the best, ;• but at the age of nine he was charged at the local police court with pigeon steal- , ing. _ The -charge was withdrawn, in view . of his H age, but from that time the boy ■ continued a career of juvenile criminal . adventure. He could from infancy climb ( like a cat. He was small, agile, and ath- , letic, and that explains why, later in life, ( just before the murder of Police-Inspector Walls outside the house of the Countess Sztaray in South Cliff Avenue, Eastbourne, ' he was engaged in a number of portico " burglaries at Bournemouth, Brighton, and i Seatord. •'■■•, A Dozen Names. He was in turn sailor, soldier, burglar, 1 blackmailer, and thief, and he crowded into the last ten or twelve years more excitement than most criminals find in a lifetime. He had a dozen different names . at least. It was while he was for a brief period a ship's boy that his agility at climbing earned him the nickname of " the monkey." Then the sea proved not sufficiently enticing, and he deserted just be- ■ fore committing his first burglary m Edinj. burgh, when he climbed into a house by the fanlight. Soon afterwards, in 1889, ,• he enlisted in tho Royal Scots Regiment, and was drafted to South Africa at the outbreak of the war. He soon after served a sentence of three months for robbing the regimental stores. After that he deserted, and for two years served' in a troop of Rhodesian Horse, but was sentenced by court-martial to two years' hard labour for stealing a comrade's money. He was deported from Johannesburg as an undesirable in 1906, and on his arrival in England called himself " Sydney Hamilton," in which name he was sentenced for housebreaking in Somersetshire the next year. In September, 1908, in the name of John Williams, he was wentenced to twenty-one mouths' hard labour for a burglary at Folkestone, and on November 8, 1910, ho was convicted at tho London Sessions and sentenced to a year's imprisonment for housebreaking.