EXECUTION OF THE JOYCE FAMILY MURDERERS.

Kumara Times, Issue 2021, 20 February 1883, Page 2

EXECUTION OF THE JOYCE FAMILY MURDERERS.

Full accounts of the execution of the three men who were sentenced to death for the murder of the Joyce family in August last and who were executed on the 15th December, appear in the English papers to hand by the San Francisco mail. The convicts rose at six o’clock, none of them having slept continuously during the night. At seven they were visited by Father Greavan, who remained with them till the end. None of them would eat breakfast. About eight o’clock Mar wood entered the cells for the purpose of pinioning the arms of the convicts. To this operation Patrick Joyce and Patrick Casey submitted quietl}’-, but Myles Joyce protested with great vehemence his innocence of the crime for which he was to suffer, and resisted Marwood slightly. At a quarter-past eight o’clock Myles Joyce emerged from the prison, supported by two warders, and uttering a number of exclamations in protestation of his innocence. He was followed by Patrick Casey, and he again by Patrick Joyce, both of whom were also supported. As each of the convicts emerged from the prison, he seemed, from a hurried glance around, to expect to recognise somebody amongst those present. As the procession proceeded the services of the Roman Catholic Church for the dying was repeated by Father Greavan, but only one of the prisoners, Patrick Joyce, made a response. With the exception of Casey the condemned men ascended the scaffold without assistance, and when they had been placed under the ropes which were dangling from the cross-beam, Myles Joyce, turning to the spectators, made a number of exclamations in Irish to the effect that he was innocent. When Marwood approached to adjust the rope on his neck he resisted slightly. Father Greavan approached, and spoke ■to him, but he nevertheles continued to speak loudly while the noose was adjusted on his neck and the necks of the other two men, who submitted quietly, and after the white cap had been drawn over his face, he moved his head, so that Marwood had again to arrange the noose. Even then he did not stop speaking, exclaiming, “ I am going before my God, and I am as innocent as the child unborn. I neither raised hand nor foot against the people. I had neither hand, act, nor part, in the murders.” When the bolt was drawn, and the men disappeared from view, there was scarcely a quiver of the ropes by which Patrick Joyce and Patrick Casey were suspended, but there was apparently severe struggling on the of Myles Joyce, for the rope oscillated violently, and Marwood could be seen for several minutes afterwards pushing down the body with his foot, and stooping down and endeavouring to do something—it could not be seen what—with the noose. Marwood afterwards explained that Myles Joyce had, by some means or other got his arm or his hand entangled by the rope, and that he had been trying to push it down. Daath, he was positive, was instantaneous, and nothing could have been wrong with the rope, as he had used it at executions before. Besides he gave all the men a drop of equal length—nine feet. The scaffold, it may be mentioned, was erected by'workmen from Dublin, all the local tradesmen having refused to do the work. The prison was surrounded by sentries all night, and a body of policemen were on duty outside to quell any disturbance which might arise, but scarcely a dozen persons assembled at the gate, even after the black flag had been run up to show that the sentence of the law had been carried out.