DEATH CELL DRAMA

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 92, 12 January 1935, Page 18

DEATH CELL DRAMA

Cinema Crime Expiated

A hundred people—most of them "Women with shopping bags—stood outside Pentonville Prison at 9 ami. on November 14. As the bell tolled the Nour, nine teen-year-old John Frederick Stockwell expiated his murder of the Bow cinema manager, Mr. Dudley Hoard. Stockwell was resigned to his fate. He told his brother a few hours before he was hanged that he was not afraid to die. At this farewell meeting the doomed man confessed his guilt. Stockwell did not expect to see his brother again. He had promised him, just as he had promised his aunt, to send a permit to see him for the last time. Stockwell deliberately broke both pledges. He wanted to spare the two who eared for him the ordeal of the last farewell. It was long past the ordinary visiting hours when Horace Stockwell, an out-of-work lead glazier, arrived at Pentonville. He had waited until the last minute for the promised permit to arrive. He had to wait half,an houp in the prison waiting room until the governor gave the necessary permission.

John Stockwell seemed surprised when he was brought into the reception room outside the condemned cell. Brother faced brother through the thick glass screen. One smiled. The other looked sad. But it was the boy who was to die a felon’s death who emlled.

“Hello, Horace. You got in, then. How did you manage it?” He paused. ‘‘l wanted to save you from thisl” That .was his greeting. The doomed man asked for the latest pews about the English Soccer team Jfibooen to meet the Italian footballers, Axgonal man picked/’ Mild

Horace. “Good!” cried Stockwell. “The Arsenal will make England win. You see if I’m not right. If it rains to-mor-row afternoon at Highbury, well, England will walk away with the match. My tip’s England!”

That was the strain of talk between the two brothers so soon to be parted. It was the lad standing in the shadow of the scaffold who chose the topics they discussed. Only once dunng that last meeting did the smile vanish from the murderer’s face—when he spoke of the crime that had brought him to the gallows.

“I 'am sorry for what I have done,” he said. ... “I did not intend to do it. . . . . I turn not afraid to die!”

John Frederick Stockwell, youngest murderer to be hanged since eighteen-year-old Alfred Jacoby forfeited his life for the murder of Eady White twelve years ago, was as good as his word. He walked to the scaffold without a tremor.

Late that night Horace Stockwell received a letter from his dead brother. It had been written in the condemned cell shortly before his execution.

“I am just sending you these few lines bidding yon good-bye. . . .” he wrote. ■ “Sorry I did not send an order for you, as I did not feel much like visits, but nevertheless I am rather pleased that you came in. . . I knew that my chance of a reprieve had failed on Monday morning, so I will again say farewell. . . . Do not think too badly of me as I had no intention of causing such a ghastly tragedy, and even now I can hardly realise it, and I am still at a loss for the reason. . . . Well, brother, this is all for now; goodbye, and all the best for your future. "Your ever affectionate brother, “Jacfe”.