“WICKED PRACTICE.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20359, 17 July 1934, Page 7

“WICKED PRACTICE.”

Death Sentence on Bayly Opposed. LETTER TO PRISOXER. The following is a copy of a letter that has been sent to the condemned prisoner, William Alfred Bayly, by Mr' N. M. Bell, of Christchurch, on behalf 1 of the Free Religious Movement. Itj has been forwarded to the chaplain at i Mt Eden prison, the Rev G. E. More-* ton, who will hand it on to Bayly “ if he thinks it will comfort him in his last moments”:— 221, Manchester Street, Christchurch, July 15, 1934. Dear Mr Bayly, We, members of the Free Religious Movement, Christchurch, should like you to go forth into the unknown with the knowledge that a few at any rate of your fellowcitizens dissociate themselves entirely from this wicked and inhuman practice of avenging one murder with a second. We protested to the Prime ! Minister at being compulsorily made co-murderers of you by the retention I in the Dominion of the death penalty, a custom which the more enlightened countries of the world have already abolished. We recognise that whatever wrongs you may have done to your fellow-citizens, the duty of the community was not to inflict the same wrongs on you by way of punishment, but to exert Ml its resources of knowledge and humanity to try to heal what is amiss in you We categorically deny that the community has any moral right to take away your life. That we emphatically assert is not the spirit in which men should trust each other. If you need forgiveness from us for your offences, we feel that we now need even greater forgiveness j from you. For the collective wisdom ■ and humanity ought to be greater than that of any single citizen. We beg you then not to be too bitter against us. Vou have a heavy cross to bear, but the seeing eye and the understanding heart knows that our cross is far the heavier. The majority do not know what they are doing. So it has always been. Good-bye and God have mercy on us all.

Bayly Hears News of Death Penalty. (Special to the ** Star/’) AUCKLAND, July 16. When told by the prison chaplain that he was to be executed at Mount Eden prison at eight o’clock on Friday morning for the murder of his neighbours, Samuel Pender Lakey and Cliristobel Lakey, William Alfred Bayly seemed surprised, but had little to say. By an arrangement the Rev G. E. Moreton, prison chaplain, who has regularly visited Bayly since his arrest last December, told the prisoner of his fate at nine o'clock this morning. Shortly afterwards Bayly was visited by his wife. About ten o’clock he was visited by the sheriff, who gave the prisoner the first official intimation of his fate. The death warrant arrived from Wellington this morning. Prayers for Bayly were offered in some of the Auckland churches yesterday. “ The prayers of the Church were offered that William Bayly might be led to repentance,” said the Rev A. JGreenwood, of St Alban’s Anglican Church, Mount Eden. “ Prayers were offered for Bayly’s parents and his wife and children. After all, William Bayly is a child of God, and we are not able to judge w T hy men do these things, or the cause. We can only hope that he will turn his heart into better ways, and leave the world having repented.”