THE DEATH SENTENCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 43, 26 January 1916, Page 8

THE DEATH SENTENCE.

i MURDERER OF CONSTABLE HANGED. RAID ON THE MELBOURNE TRADES HALL. United Press Associat.om. Melbourne. January 24. tfolni Jackson, convicted of murdering Constable David McGrath at the Trades Hall, in Victoria street, on the morning of October Ist last, was executed at the Melbourne Gaol to-day. Death was instantaneous. (Constable McGrath was a married man, forty-two years of ago, with a family, and had a most exciting encounter with three burglars at the Trades Hal!, in company with Senior Constable Dent and Sub-Inspector McKeuna. "When the burglars were discovered on the premises, the three jiolice officers forced their way through a window, and were met with a fusilade of shots in a dark passage. The. three burglars were builders' labourers, and two were wounded by the police in the fray, Jackson being i shot in tin- thigh and ankle. In the encounter Constable McGrath was shot fatally by Jackson, hut other police arriving on the scene the three men were arrested. When being taken to the hospital Jackson was asked who tired first, the police or I hi' prisoners. "They Hied the first shot," said Jackson, ''and when a man is fired at he must fire back. I don't know whether I hit him, hut I must have shgt him.'