PENALTY PAID

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19759, 14 December 1935, Page 16 (Supplement)

PENALTY PAID

With the deaths of the guilty men on the scaffold recently—one in Wandsworth Gaol and the other at Pentonville—came the last dramatic scenes in two murder sensations of the year. Raymond Henry Bousquet, a 30-year-old Canadian-born boxer, professionally known as Del Fontaine, was hanged in the former prison for shooting in a Kennington street a girl of 19, named Hilda Meek, with whom, although a married man, he was in love; and Alan James Grierson, 27, son a Southampton solicitor, was executed at Pentonville for killing with a flat-iron a widow of 62, Mrs Louisa Bertha Gann, in order to rob the premises of which she had charge in Gloucester-road, Regent’s Park. Extraordinary scenes were witnessed in the vicinity of both prisons, as the l’esult of demonsti-ations or- j ganised by an opponent of capital punishment. Shortly before the time when Grierson was to pay with his life for the murder of Mrs Gann a lai’ge saloon car pulled up outside Pentonville Prison. Inside the car, the blinds of which i were drawn, sat a white-faced girl, j her eyes red with weeping. She was Miss Maxine Gann, daughter of the murdered widow, and onetime sweetheart of the man about to die. Unnoticed in the crowds who thronged the entrance to the prison she kept vigil until the execution had taken place. Then she drove quietly away. From the moment of the failure of his appeal Alan Grierson resolutely refused to see any members of his family, who never surrendered hope of reprieve until the last hour. Grierson's father, Mr Hugh K. Grierson, is a well-known and highlyrespected solicitor in Southampton, where he has practised for 52 years. He is prominent also in county cricket circles, and has held numerous offices in the Hampshire County Club. Mrs C. M. Hay, sister of the condemned man, got more closely into touch with her brother after his arrest. She visited him daily while he was in Brixton awaiting trial, and only his insistence that neither she nor any other member of the family should see him while he lay under sentence of death prevented her from entering Pentonville to cheer and encourage him. Petition for Reprieve. For the last week of her brother’s i life Mrs Dalrymple-Hay and a wo- : man friend spent several hours a day in visiting shops, factories, offices, and ; private residences in Southampton to secure signatures to a petition for ( her brother’s reprieve, to which she ‘ received a wonderful response. i

Execution of Pugilist and Solicitor’s Son . . . Scenes Outside Prison.

“I want to let the country know,” interposed the aged Mr Grierson, “that although my son had not been all he might have been, we of his family, and all who knew him well, refuse to believe that he could have been capable of such a brutal crime.” With tears filling his eyes, and struggling to control his emotion, Mr Grierson then read the last letter he had received from his son. It ran:—

“My dear Father, —Your faith and trust in me are a direct answer to my prayers, and help to lighten my burden as no other earthly thing could. It is with a glad heart that after all that has passed I can say simply that your trust is not misplaced this time. “Why my innocence is not as obvious to others as it is to you and my dear ones is a matter which I don’t think about.

j “Bince my arrest I have not kept up a howl of protest, as you know, but on three public occasions I have reiterated my innocence—at my trial, at my application for appeal, and today in my petition for a reprieve. “It may bo that, from the Crown point of view, this protestation of p mine is unnecessary. I have been j found guilty, and in their minds am guilty, but if an eleventh-hour squeal would in any way affect the mercy of a reprieve, then I shall most surely die.” “There is no Fear in Me.” There follow some personal and family references, and the letter then proceeds: “I have deseiwed punishment for my way of living, and.this knowledge strengthens me. I had a fair trial, even if the verdict was not just. “ I have oome into my own and know the strength in me. They have dealt fairly with me both here and at Brixton, and given me every consideration. I am grateful. “I pray that they will extend their mercy at the Home Office. “In conclusion to this paragraph I say that ever since my arrest my one thought has been of your belief in me. “Bince my trial the sentence has been a secondary considei-ation to your belief. “That which you have done for me —your fight, the sympathy and help of many friends, my two dear sisters, my dear, brave mother, and their love and your love—all that is beyond my power of expression. “I can only say: God bless you all. “If I have been able to give any little comfort to you it is only, as I have told mother, a measure of the comfort given me by my God and by my dear ones. “There is no fear in me, father, at all." As he finished reading the letter Mr Grierson said quietly, but firmly: “That is not the letter of a guilty man.”