WOMAN SENT TO GALLOWS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 19987, 20 December 1934, Page 9

WOMAN SENT TO GALLOWS

CLEMENCY APPEAL TO KING FATE OF POISONER OF HUSBAND United Press Association—By Electric Tel egraph —Copy rlgh t (Received December 19, 7.15 p.m.) LONDON, December 18. Dramatic eleventh hour efforts are being made to save Mrs Ethel Major, who is being executed at Hull to-mor-row for the poisoning of her husband with strychnine. Mrs Major will be the first woman to be executed in Britain since 1926. Appeal lo the King Alderman Stark, Lord Mayor, and many prominent local people, after the rejection by Sir John Gilmour (Home Secretary), of the application for a reprieve following the Criminal Appeal Court’s dismissal of the appeal, telegraphed Their Majesties the King and Queen declaring that the impending execution had greatly distressed thousands of women.

Mrs Major, who is 42, is a grandmother. She was convicted after the writer of an anonymous letter suggested to the police that her husband had been poisoned. Mrs Major, in evidence at her trial, said her husband repeatedly threatened her. She admitted jealousy of his attentions to a neighbour’s wife, but protested her innocence. The private secretary to the King transmitted the Lord Mayor’s telegram to the Home Secretary. The execution is fixed for 9 a.m.

NO REPRIEVE EXECUTION OF MRS MAJOR United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright (Received December 20, 1.15 a.m.) LONDON, December 19 Mrs Major was hanged to-day.