LAUGHED AT DEATH.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17367, 31 March 1928, Page 14 (Supplement)

LAUGHED AT DEATH.

AMAZING SCENES AT DOUBLE EXECU TION

DOOMED MEN’S GRIM JESTS DURING LAST HOURS.

Awed by the drama which they knew! was taking place behind the sombre walls of Cardiff Prison, a throng of 5000 people offered up prayers while Daniel Driscoll and Edward Rowlands 'were sent to meet their Maker for the murder of David Lewis, a local boxer and footballer (says a London paper). Despite the great volume of protest against the executions there was no unseemly demonstration. The crowd stond silently behind the police barriers, and when the hour came men bared their heads and many women, with tears streaming down their faces, knelt down on the wet roads. Both men met their fate with amazing unconcern. - The night before they ate a good supper, and Driscoll cheerily called for a bottle of port wine. “What’s the good of a small glass to me?” he replied to a kindly Carder's suggestion. “Bring me a bottle!’’ And his request was complied with. Raising his glass, he exclaimed: “Here’s to the hangman! I hope it rains for him.” His running Are of jests shocked the prison officials, despite their constant touch with hardened and callous characters. “I expect the-crowd has begun to form already,” was one of his laughing comments. “They are a curious lot in Cardiff.” One of the letters he wrote that night to a friend was indicative of his spirit of bravado. In this he declared: “Well, old son, as you know, it is all over bar the shouting. I have had a real good ‘go,’ and got licked, but we were always good losers, so we must keep smiling, although we don’t feel very well. Life reminds me of backing horses. You bet the odds-on onfS,.and he is leading ten lengths, and one comes from the clouds and licks him on the post, and you walk home ‘skint.’ Well, my old son, this is a terrible grand linalc.” Rowlands was more subdued, but absolutely unperturbed. They were awakened at 6 a.rn., when Canon Hannan arrived at- their cells to administer to them the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church. When the priest had gone Driscoll assumed again the mood of gaiety. “Hi, warder!” lie cried: “What about a game of cards for the last time?” And, laughing and joking, he played a game with the warder. Both men had a hearty breakfast, and outside in the little courtyard the executioner, Baxter, and his three assistants completed their grim preparations. A minute or so before 8 o’clock Driscoll and Rowlands were visited by the executioners and pinioned. Then steadily they marched forth into the sharp morning air, glancing quickly in those few seconds at the clear blue-sky. There was a dramatic moment as they confronted each other on the platform. Driscoll, who was the calmer of the two, and literally went laughing to his fate, asked if he could shake hands with Rowlands. He was given perraisison, and then, almost brazenly, turned to the chief warder and asked, “Which is mine?” He stepped into his place unassisted, side by side with his fellow-murderer, and In a flash both disappeared from view. A pathetic group among the crowd outside the gaol was composed of Driscoll’s four brothers, who, guarded by friendly constables, huddled against the prison wall, all crying and all in a state of collapse. It was disclosed after the executions that both of the dead men had police records. Driscoll was lined £lO at Cardiff on January 13, 1925, for pocket picking, and £3 at Cardiff on September 21, 1925, for an unprovoked assault on a civilian over 60 years of age. He had also been fined twice for using obscene language. Rowlands had just served a sentence of three years for a brutal assault at Newport. He was then described as one of the leaders of dangerous racecourse gangs. The police had great difficulty in getting witnesses to give evidence because of the terrorism of the racing gangs. “Fear was the factor that held them back,” declared Mr J. W. Wilson, the Chief Constable of Cardiff. “There

TORN-UP CONFESSION.

as undoubtedly been a great deal of terrorism exercised on the racecourses and in towns.

FORMER HOME SECRETARY’S TRUMP CARD IN EAST END CRIME.

It has been stated that the fight to save the lives of Driscoll and Rowlands was unprecedented in its intensily. There are several public men alive today, among them Mr T. P. O’Connor, M.P., who worked hard to get the case of the Cardiff murderers presented to the acting Home Secretary, to whom the recollection of an even more remarkable fight for the life of a man must be recalled by the events of the last few weeks. . The case which roused the country to a fever-heat of excitement then was the sordid murder of a woman named Miriam Angel in a Whitechapel lodging-house by a man named Israel Lipski, the object being to rob her of a few odd pounds that might be in her possession. Mr Justice Stephen, who tried the case,' was known to regard some of the evidence of identification as rather weak, and this was probably the reason why a campaign was started to secure the reprieve of the man. Mr Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary, who had just got his lingers badly burned defending the police in the Cass case—one of those West End street affairs which are always with us—took a line that certainly no Minister will ever'take now that the Court of Criminal Appeal is in existence ; lie pitied his judgment against that of the judge who' had heard the evidence given at ttic Old Bailey. Still, the judge’s opposition was strong enough to get a respite for a week, and this was taken to indicate that the Minister had become convinced that a doubt existed, and the campaign for reprieve simply swept the country.

Instead of the House of Commons receiving petitions it organised one itself for the reprieve of the condemned man, and among the hundreds of signatures 1 were such familiar names of John Dillon, Charles Bradlaugh, T. P. O’Connor, .Professor James Stuart, Parnell, R. 13. Haldane, (Lord Haldane), 11. L. W. Lawson (Lord Burnham), Mr R. 13. Cunninghamc Graham, Dr. Tanner, llenry Broadhurst, and Thomas Burt. But the extraordinary feature of the case, and it did not become known till afterwards, was that fragments of a confession by the condemned man were in the hands of the Home Secretary practically all the time that a crescendo of fury was raging around him.

Lipski was to have been executed on Monday, August 15. On the previous Saturday he received visits in the condemned celi, and somebody must have told him to “buck up." because there was a conference at the Horae Office, and his fate was still in the balance. Meanwhile, however, he had started writing a confession of his guilt, and one can imagine his perturbation when the news came that he had been; respited l’or a week to enable his solicitor to make fresh inquiries. Mr Nutman, Governor of the Old Bailey, read him the blunt statement of the Home Secretary, declaring that unless these inquiries elicited anything quite new he would have to die on the 22nd. What was to be done with tile halffinished confession? As a matter of fact, Lipski tore it up and tried to dispose of the fragments, but sufficient of tlie pieces were recovered to give its import to the Home Office. Therefore Mr Matthews could not have been much perturbed by the attacks made on him during the week, and when lie was told in the newspapers that Lipski was to be “sacrificed as a gallows offering to the offended amour propre of a weak and angry Home Secretary.” Simultaneously with the announcement of the execution was published the text of the reconstructed confession !