WOMAN ON SCAFFOLD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18577, 8 December 1923, Page 2 (Supplement)

WOMAN ON SCAFFOLD.

STOICAL FORTITUDE SHOWN.

MURDER OF A BOY.

STORY OF GLASGOW CRIME.

"Don't put that tiling over me," pleaded Mrs. Susan Newell to Ellis, the executioner, as he clipped the white cap over her head on the scaffold. A moment later a lever was pulled, and the first woman to be hanged in Glasgow for more than sixty years was dead. Mrs. Newell had paid the penalty of one of the most shocking crimes of recent years4—the murder and mutilation of a boy of 13—and. the only motive suggested was the theft of tenpence which the boy had iq his pocket. No more remarkable subject for the criminologist has come-before the public 'than the ill-fated gipsy woman who now lies in an unhallowed .grave. A woman of amazing ignorance, her small brain just touched with low cunning, who took a life in the clumsiest fashion, -and had not the wit to conceal Her crime. Her defence.was. the weakest. Unable even to prevaricate skilfully, her effort to implant guilt of: the terrible act on her husband was easily , frustrated, and her illconstructed story disproved. This, then, was the woman sent to the scaffold on the damning evidence lisped in the

Glasgow court by her eight-year-old stepdaughter. There was, in her, a redeeming . feature—the passionate mother- , love for the'child. ...J.- ■ \ > / Agony Suffered In a Cell. ; Throughout her long incarceration in the condemned cell Mrs. Newell thought of the child outside. Buoyed up by the inspiriting message of the jury, who tempered their verdict with a strong recommendation to mercy, the doomed woman asked daily for the child and prayed for reunion. '"Any news to-day?" she would ask each morning of the wardress, while outside almost frantic efforts were being made to secure a reprieve. Sir Thomas Faxton, the Lord Provost of Glasgow, had sent an appealing message to the Scottish Secretary. The latter replied that every avenue that might conceal an argument :fcr commutation had been explored, He had found none. ' Then came an. amazing "change oyer the csndoftiijted wonmh. ' Her mind, hitherto crushed/and demented by the teriblo blow, became* active. With grim determination she : took control of her wandering sense, and keyed- soul and body -to meet that terrible fate Unflinchingly. ' 'In the words of an -Official, present, no moife stoical displav of fortitude could be witnessed. With firm, unfaltering steps. Mrs. Newell moved from the condemned cell to th»> scaffold. She required neither. support nor comfort. The pinioning was a mutter of seconds. f> How the Crime was Discovered. The crime for which Mrs. Newell paid the penalty deeply, stirred the country north of the - Tweed. Lord Alness, who presided over the Glasgow Court, said of the evidence that "if, a. novelist wrote such

a story a hasty public judgment would pronounce it incredible ; but, as we know, truth is stranger than fiction." John Johnstone was a thirteen-year-old hoy, who ran about Coatbridge selling newspapers. One day he • was seen to enter, the lodgings occupied, by Mrs. Newell at Coatbridge. He was never seen alive again. : Failing to dispose of the remains in the .house, " Mrs. Newell packed the corpse in bedding, placed her tragio bundle on a go-cart-, and set out to walk the nine miles to Glasgow, her little step-daughter seated on the corpse. On the way she • secured a lift for the cart and its grim contents from a pagsii.V motoi'-loVry. Arrived 'in ' Glasgow, Mrs. Newell -CdntihnW, to v wheel ' the cart through the . streets. But" the doom of the murderess had already been sealed. A woman, looking through a window, saw the bundle lifted from the lonry, and saw a small human foot protruding.