TWICE IN ONE DAY

Evening Star, Issue 19786, 9 February 1928, Page 10

TWICE IN ONE DAY

JUDGE DONS BLACK CAP. Rarely has the black cap been assumed twice on the same day in _ a British Court of Justice. This grim distinction was taken by Manchester Assir.es, whore the death sentence was passed by Air Justice Finlay on two men who had murdered women. ( The first case was that of George William Sutherland, a Liverpool fruit porter, who cut his wile s throat with a razor. Sutherland’s defence was that his wife cut him in tho arm with the razor, which he then snatched from her, and while intending to give her a backhand blow accidently cut her. Dr. McFall, professor of forensic medicine at Liverpool University, gave as his thoorv that the woman was slashed with such force that the razor jumped and cut her throat. A man who wont into the ironmonger’s shop and said “ I am drunk, I have a murder to do, and have come to buy a knife,” was the other man to be sentenced. He was an ironmoulder and ex-policeman named Fielding, of Clayton-lc-Moors, who cut his sweetheart's throat with a knife when she was returning from a dance. A few nights before the crime Fielding had visited the girl’s house, and when her mother threatened to send for the police he replied, “I will fetch one myself. Yon will be without a daughter if f gel hold of her within a week.” Those cases resemble one another in one important respect They _ were crimes of jealousy, crimes in which it was a twisted love itself which had grasped tho deadly weapon. Sutherland suspected his wife of unfaithfulness; Fielding had quarrelled with his swccthcnit _ , B’o passion goes on taking its toll of innocent lives and turning law-abid-ing citizens into homicidal madmen.