EXECUTION.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4125, 10 June 1874, Page 3

EXECUTION.

Thomas Chamberlain, a shoemaker, was executed at Northampton on March 30, within the precincts of the county gaol, for the murder of John Cox Newitt on November 30, at Wood Burcote, near TWcester. Sir. Newitt was a large farmer, and occupied the Lodge Farm at Wood Burcote. Or Sunday evening, November 30, ho and a servant girl stayed at homo while the other members of the family went to church., about two miles distant from the farmhouse. Shortly before eight o’clock the murderer made his way into tho kitchen and attacked tho servant girl with a cutlass. The blow fell upon her chignon, and it is thought that appendage saved her life. The girl “closed with ' tho assassin, and a scuffle ensued. Her master heard the noise, and at once went from tho drawingroom, where, it is said, ho was engaged in reading the Scriptures, to tho kitchen. The murderer no sooner saw him, than ho released his hold of the girl and attacked her master, and clave him to the floor with a blow from the cutlass. Seeing this, tho girl made her escape, and ran for assistance. Tho police and several other men were quickly at tho scone of the murder, but the murderer had decamped. The body was cut and hacked in a most horrible manner. The girl knew tho murderer perfectly well, and ho was taken into custody the same night; he was condemned to death at the recent assizes. After his condemnation, his conduct was most extraordinary. To his gaolers he never once alluded to the subject of the murder, though ho conversed freely with them upon other matters. Ho paid hut little attention to the ministrations of the prison chaplain, and told a Baptist minister who had obtained an interview until him that ho need not trouble himself to call again. Subsequently, at the last interview with his wife and two children and a brother, ho said it would take a groat many parsons to change him. His conduct shortly before execution and on the scaifold was most extraordinary. While being pinioned ho smiled, and remarked that ho was being strapped tightly. On arriving at the scaffold ho ran up the steps and placed himself on tho drop, and then smiled and nodded familiarly to the warders. His death was almost instantaneous.