MURDERERS’ GRAVES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 593, 20 February 1929, Page 13

MURDERERS’ GRAVES

UNHALLOWED CORNERS INSIDE PRISONS A GHOST AND THE ‘MARTYRS” The closing down of Knutsford prison has raised the problem in England of what is to be done with the murderers buried there. Local people resent the idea of their being removed to their cemetery. They suggest mationinside prison Avails, tucked away in odd corners, there are many little graveyards, neglected spots, in which rest the bodies of the men and women who hare been executed, and in accordance with law. buried within the precincts of the prison, says the “World's Pictorial News.” At one time a little tablet of stone, bearing the initials of the prisoner, and the date of the execution marked each grave, but under an order issued a feAv years back, all tablets have been removed, so that the graves are now unmarked. The one large piece of ground set aside for this purpose at Holloway contains three graves only. In one of these Mrs. Thompson is buried, and the others are -occupied by the two baby-farmers executed a quarter of a century ago. At Strange ways, on the other hand, there are half a dozen burial places scattered about the grounds. At this prison, in the plot in use at the present time, which is situated in i one of the exercise yards on the | women’s side of the prison, are buried the two Jewish prisoners, the subjects of a double execution some eight years Sago, and the first of their race to be j executed at Manchester for ov'er forty j years. I There is also the grave of a woman I who walked to the scaffold braver than i many of the men who had gone before her. Seen by Woman ! Soon after the establishment of this i plot of ground as a cemetery, a

woman prisoner caused a mild panic among her fellow prisoners, by declaring that she had seen a ghost, a tall gaunt figure heading for the graves in the corner, as she crossed the yard on her way to a rubbish tip before daybreak one av inter’s morning. “All very Avell/’ she said, the officers telling her it Avas her ov> n shadowelongated by the rays of a flickering lamp h bit away, *‘ooo doesn't go alt ‘goosey* aiul faint-like at the sight of one’s own shadow.” Everybody knew that a man hanged just previously stood six feet something in his socks. Ill.the same prison yard, according to some accounts, the bodies of the three Irishmen, known all over the Avorld as the “Manchester Martyrs,” are interred. On the Sunday following the _' 'rd of November, the anniversary of the execution, admirers of the martyrs’ political creed still make a pilgrimage to the side of the prison in the neighbourhood of New Bailey Street, believing doubtless that the bodies arc there in their unhallowed graves. A good many years ago a rumour concerning their removal leaked out through an old official of no mean position at Strangew avs, offering to smuggle a young wardress of very pronounced Fenian views to the men’s side of the prisou when the coast was clear, and show her the real graves of the “martyrs.” Thinking she was being hoaxed, the girl curtly refused the offer, which may or may not have been a genuine one. Anyhow, a few years later a woman prisoner doing time at tlie prison told the same officer how just before the demolition of Salford Prison, her father, a carter, was sent to the prison by his employer, Avith instructions to remove a quantity of planks from there to the then new prison at Strangeways. Unloaded by Warders Ou arrival at the prison the carter, to his surprise, was invited into the oincers* mess-room, offered refreshments, and detained in friendly chat by first one warder and then another for quite a considerable time. When at length he reached the yard in AA'hich he had left his horse standing the man was still more surprised

J his dray * ’ed and waring all ready for him. Scenting some mystery underlying htr attention on the part ' the prison staff, and surmising that tHe planks only formed a casing to conceal something else, the man. ail impatience to got to the other prison in order to find ofct of what his load really consisted. hurried along through the streets under the supervision of a ▼ -tier. but on reaching Struatgeway he was called away on somt pi t text or other and detained while warders unleaded his dray. Tie whole thing had almost faded from the carter’s memory when certain information imparted to him by nn old gaol bird, who prided himself on not missing much in prison or elsewhere, led him to believe that it was the bodies of the “martyrs” which the authorities wished to inter at the new prison with as little display possible that he had removed on that baffling journey.