PRISONER'S CONDUCT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19940, 8 May 1928, Page 9

PRISONER'S CONDUCT.

HUNGER-STRIKE IN GAOL. BROWNE TO BE FORCIBLY FED. Australian and N.Z. Press Association. (Received May 7, 11.55 p.m.) LONDON. May 6. Tlie prisoner, Frederick G. Browne, who is under sentence of death for the murder of Constable Gutteridgo, has become truculent. He is keeping up a hunger strike in Pentonville prison as a protest against the cutting up of his food so that he can eat it with a papier-mache spoon. The prison authorities to-day decided to forcibly feed the man.

Browne is at present the most-discussed individual in England. Entire pages in the newspapers are devoted to his amazing life. Several of his oil paintings of English rural life are given prominence. They reveal yet another sido of his complex nature. One newspaper is publishing his life story as written by Browne in his cell while he was awaiting trial. No novelist has ever drawn a more extraordinary character in the most sensational fiction than that of this criminal. Reynolds News publishes a long letter written by Browne to his wife from the condemned cell at Pentonville, exhorting her to -e----member thau the death sentence, is infinitely preferable to a living death in some prison He says the result is just as his heart had hoped and the sentence is a happy relief. It is merely the erd of a hard run of fate. Ee asks his wife not to blame him.

A former prisoner, now residing at Sheffield, has been awarded the £2OOO offered as a reward in connection with the conviction of Browne and William Kennedy. He intends to open a butcher s shop in Yorkshire. Browne perturbed him by his frequent visits and his attempts to induce him to become his accomplice. CAREERS OF ACCUSED. CRIMES SINCE THE MURDER. amazing list revealed. LONDON, May 2. Amazing careers of crime have been revealed as a result of the trial of William Kennedy and Frederick Browne, who were found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of Constable Gutteridge in Essex last September. No fewer than seven crimes, in one case that of robbery under arms, committed during the three months following the murder of the constable, have been directly traced to the two condemned men. Both havo had many previous convictions.

On September 27 Browne and Kennedy murdered Constable Gutteridge. On October 7 they stole jewellery worth £IOOO and Treasury notes worth £l6O in Tooting Road, chloroforming and tying np an Alsatian watch-dog. On October 30 they attempted to steal a safe in the Tooting station. On November 11 they stole a motor-car in Tooting. They duplicated tho performance, and sold the car in Sheffield on November 12. On December 4 they ransacked the Eynsliam stationmaster's office, held up a clerk at tho point of a revolver, stole a typewriter, and tried to steal a safe. On December 11 they raided tho Bordon railway station and made a small haul. On December 17 they stole a motor-car in the Seven Sisters Road.