PREPARATIONS FOR THE EXECUTION.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 192, 19 February 1887, Page 4

PREPARATIONS FOR THE EXECUTION.

The workmen have completed the erection of the scaffold fa the gaol. Ite strength has been .tested, and everything is now in readiness for the final scene in this sad tragedy. Within the gaol Caffrey and Perm have, it is said, earned the respect of the warders on account of the little trouble that they cauße. The Anglican chaplain of the gaol, the Rev, J. S. Bill, supplies the condemned men with healthy literature in order that they may be kept from brooding more thaw ie absolutely necessary. This kindness is appreciated not only by the men themselves, but also by those warders whose duty it is to remain in constant attendance upon Caffrey and Perm. Some person has with more kindness than good taste forwarded to Mr Hill a couple of pamphlets entitled " Condemned to Death." Theße are no doubt intended to remind the recipients of their sad condition, and it ie for this purpose probably that the pamphlets are embellished with the fckull and cross-bones. Unfortunately for the donors' good intentions, it is extremely likely that their significant gift will not be presented to the doomed men, as it is not necessary to make them more miserable than men in such a position must naturally be. The reason why the gallows was brought from Wellington was because the apparatus is superior to that already in the gaol. The rev. gentlemen who is attending the convicts has found his work too arduous, and hns applied to the Minister of Justice for some relief. Another clergyman has consequently been given the entree of the gaol. Mr Bill has not yet decided whom he will select to aseist him next Sunday and on the morning of the execution. As the prisoners are in separate cells, it is obvious that the attendance of two clergymen is requisite. Mr T. B.Hannaford sends us a long letter as a final plea to the public on behalf of the prisoner Perm. He cays :— "I know that I, a humble unit of the community, am powerless to stay the hangman's hand— but there are many— very many— amongst us who have the power, and if it is not exerted at once on behalf of that young man and there by at least obtaining for him a reprieve, then I say that the blood of Albert Henry Perm •will rest on their heads, not mine. In writing this letter I have done all I can do to arrest an undeserved death on the gallows. The Minister of Justice refuses to publish the confessions of Caffrey and Perm until after the execution. That is to say, th- public are not to be put in possession of the true facts of the case in its entirety (theieby depriving that public of the means of judging whether the doomed men, and especially Perm, are worthy of death) until after death has been dealt them ! Wps there ever anything more monstrous thin this act of Mr Toles ever perpetrated the wide Morld over? Of what avail will it then be to young Perm when it is found that his (Perm's) guilt was far less than thtt of his doomed partner in the crime, and that a lifetime's (or less) incarceration would have met the ends of justice iv hia case? Sir, I am old and well stricken in years, rapidly approaching the allotted span of roan's life, and what I write to you X fear lessly say to my God, that from the moment Caffrey fired the first &hot Penn'a reason was dethroned, nor had it recovered its equilibrium when he 'went dancing around old Mrs Taylor, and presented a revolver at her. His remark to his mother ia the condemned cell sufficiently convinces me on that point : 4 Oh, mother, lam iunocent.' Just "so ; he was not in posseetion of his reasoning faculties when he pulled the fatal trigger. The young man did not tell his mother a lie -I swear it. Perm fully believed up to the last that Caffrey's sole aim was to abduct old Taylors daughter— youth and old age, sir, are garrulous ; it id middle age that is reticent. Who herncl Perm thrn>r out the slightest hint of a tragedy being about to eventuate ? None — absolutely none ! Simply becante he was nttoiiy oblivious of the fact "

Those who havo seen Caffiey and Perm during the past few days state that » «reut change for the better id noticeable in their°derneanour. They speak re-igntdly about their approaching late, and seem quite prepared to meet the terrible ordeal of death on the scaffold courageously. A recent vieitor lenaarked te Penu that he wne glad that he had been reconciled to Cattrey, whereupon tho convict replied that he had never entertained any ill will againbt " Jack," The scaffold arrived by the Tarawera to-day under the charge of Warder Prichton.whom the crowd on the wharf mistook for the hangman. As a mattei of fact, the hangman Lewis is already here, having travelled to Auckland under the name of Smith.— Auckland Star, Feb. 13.