Gaol Plan For Revenge On His Young Wife

NZ Truth, Issue 1168, 19 April 1928, Page 1

Gaol Plan For Revenge On His Young Wife

FOR three years Donald Hatfield was condemned to languish m prison. He was a bad man, even before he came into conflict with the police — a burglar, receiver and scamp, whose villainy had brought him to the place of outcasts and erased his name from the roll of citizens. The Crown placed Donald m the dock on February 26 two years ago and he was "sent along." The sacrifice of his liberty meant nothing to him but for one tremendous tie— the noblest thing that had come into a misspent life. Donald loved his wife with all the love of a primitive man. The fierce, all-absorbing passion of one who has every hand turned against him and, of the teeming millions m the world, knows but one loyal soul, who, despite his failings, clings to him, treading the thorny path of a criminal's wife, uncomplaining, helpful and loyal. Such was the place of young Mary Hatfleld m the mind of her convict husband. He had wooed and won her with the best that was m him. He would have starved that she ijnlgJit^l^v^^eateri'iandiwould^av^fei*^ down hl<3 life if such sacrifice could have benefited her. She represented all that was good m Donald Hatfield — and there is a lot of good m the most submerged human creature. A baby boy brightened their home, and, though his father warred with society, his home knew him as a loving, considerate man, ever jealous for the comfort of his wife and child. It was into this atmosphere that the arm of the law extended to remove Donald Hatfield to the criminal court and thence to the cheerless cells of Pentridge for three years. Mary Hatfield wrote long letters to her husband as often as the

Husband's Threat

regulations of the prison would permit, and on visiting days was always among the first m the pilgrimage of sorrow that each month enters the portals of the grim penitentiary. Weeks grew into months; the months into two long-drawn-out years, and the passage of each day meant to Donald Hatfield a day nearer the reunion he had so often pictured to himself when released from prison. But he was uneasy m his mind. A vague, indefinite something had obtruded itself into the relations between himself and his wife — something that he could sense only, but not describe. In this agony of mind he waited, fearing he knew not what. The shock came to him gradually, gradually, but ever so surely. Mary Hatfield's letters to her convict husband began to shorten; her visits were rushed, and the unseen barrier between them grew stronger, more menacing. Soon the letters from her whittled down to irregular, hurried notes; the I visits ceased altogether. Then commenced for Donald Hatfield months of worry and sleepless nights. His long letters to Mary remained unanswered, and, after a delay, were returned from the dead-letter office unopened at the address named on the envelope. Mary Hatfield. had disappeared silently and without trace, and the husband, helpless m prison, pictured tragedy upon tragedy, which might have overtaken the two people m the world who meant anything to him. Friends m prison who pitied the man and knew the ropes, advised him, and, m their rough way, tried to comfort him with promises that instructions would go forth to the underworld to trace Mary Hatfield and her child, and to report back to Pentridge if aught were amiss with them. So, one evening, a long and precise letter left Pentridge and came into the possession of a one-legged man. It was never read or censored by the governor or any other official of the gaol and it passed out by devious channels.