SWIFT JUSTICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19660, 11 June 1927, Page 2 (Supplement)

SWIFT JUSTICE.

MURDER AND EXECUTION. ALL .WITHIN 37 DAYS. Justice worked exceedingly swiftly in the case of James Frederick Stratton, aged 26, a packer, of Homerton. Within 37 days of having murdered his sweetheart. Miss Daisy Dorothy Mays, a pretty Deptford typist, he was hanged at Pentonville Prison. When iie was visited for the last time by his father, grandmother, and a friend, he showed remarkable composure, and to his father declared, " Don't worry for me. 1 am ready. I shall at least die liko a man."' The crime was committed in a North London train on February 21. Jealous because Miss Mays had jilted him for another man, he made an appointment with her, and when they were alone, in a compartment he felled her with a piece of iron, and then stabbed her over 20 times with a knife. Then he alighted ffom the train and confessed what he had done to the engine-driver. Stratton's trial was one of the shortest on record. The police proceedings, the final trial, and the sentence of death were all completed within 17 days of the night of the murder. The trial was also •« remarkable for the fact that a plea of guilty was entered and accepted, and the death sentence passed within six minutes.