UNDER SENTENCE OF DEATH.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 246, 14 March 1888, Page 6

UNDER SENTENCE OF DEATH.

London,, January 23. ■ Thi:r x « is something very strange in the fact that Mr Stead, of the "Fall Mall Gazette," who strained every nerve to let, tho Jubilee murderer, Lipski, looso on 'society, should entirely disregard the melancholy case of poor Henry Bowles, ' who at present lies under sentence of death. It looks as if tho " P.M.G." only , noticed such things when in want of a sen- ; nation, for unquestionably there is far more room for doubt in Bowles's case than there ever was iv the rascally Polish Jew's. The trial of Bowles occupied ihe Central , Criminal Court for two days at tho *end of last week. He is a gamekeeper by profession, and was accused of poisoning the woman who lived with him as his wife, and also his eon, with strychnine. The case bristled with doubt, and Mr Justice Charles repeatedly urged upon the jury that they must nob convict the prisoner upon mere suspicion. The jury retired at seven on Friday evening, and after two hours* deliberation wei\e .equally divided as to the verdict, without (they said) any chance of agreemont. Upon thia, the judge cautioned them that they must bo satisfied beyond reasonable doubt of the prisoner's guilt before oonvicting him, and I sent them back again. Naturally any odds were betted en an Acquittal ; but, as Mr Colletto sings, -".you, never can telL" To the astonishment of everyone, including the judge, the twelve good men and true returned three-quarters ©fan hour later with a verdict of guilty. The judge, could of coursodo nothing but pass sentence. Before he spoke, however, the prisonercoroposedly «aid; - " I have had a very unfair trial. I have not been able to cull witnesses. There should have been four or five witnesses come up here, and I have not seen one." The "Daily Telegraph," in a summary of the case says : So strong is the feeling of the Bar upon the matter, that Mr H. C. Richards, the counsel for the defence, has been urged to seek a personal'interview with the Home Secre-" tary. to place the facts before him. Mr Richards was retained by the sheriffs, who acted at the* -suggestion of Mr Justice Stephen, who had seen the depositions, and but for their kindness the condemned man would have been undefended. After tho coroner's inquiry and the arrest of .Bowles, there were several hearings of the charge against him by the Farnham magistrates, and the prisoner, who was then unrepresented by a'solieitbr, handed in at the various adjournments certain statements in his own handwriting. The existence of these documents was first made known to ,the counsel for the defence wh em they were read in> court* at: the close of the case for the prosecution at* half "'past three o'clock' on Friday, acopy prepared by the tfreasujy Solicitor' then naving'been.handecl to him: the prisoner's c6mplainb» that his'witnesacs 1 had 1 not been produced, jit.is understoQd^th'dfei three Of them were gummoned'to contradict the testimony of a medical marl who had been present at tho 4 mpgiste > riai>^xamination;' but who was not called, by the. (Drdwn* at the trial, and thWeforeifrVaVnotinecessary^ to 1 put the; three' , witnessed "in^question in 1 the box;- , r f he only other " proof " furnished 1 to oodh-* rae) ( waj^bat, t of'a;j farmer ; whose ,e.videnco >yduld t nctt^}^twa%,cpnBid.ered, have .th!B«)»gb^Wl}{«i|B.. > ,'»r".(jW »!j , • T h i ■ ... '

Amongat tlio statements which the accused made to tho JTarnham bench— and nonoof thorn wnainooneißtentwiththattakcn down by the eoi oner— -was one which i« pointed out m alone referring to strychnine. Misdated November 24, and in it Bowles states : "During tho time I and my wife lived at Longnor Wood my wifo fetched milk from a farm close by, held by a Mr Charloaworth, and frequently he would press her to Htop the day. My wife complained of the rats coming to our house, I whero they had mado large holes in the house, and he said, ' I will give you some strychnine; that is what I use.' He also gave her a small box of pills which my wifo showed to mo, but 1 begged her to throw them in tho lire, as I would not have her | using poison on our place, as I had been to a good deal ot expenso in buying eggs of choico fowls, called Dorbyshiie redcaps. 1 also had a valuable mastiff, the property of Sir J. Harper Crewe, that I took out of a night when 1 suspected poachers were about, and which I would not have had anything happen lo it for a largo .sum, us tho dog was not my own. . . My wife deelaiod that Mr Clmile.— I worth had a large bottle of strychnine, fiom which lie gave her homo." It is in thirf way that the prisoner accounts for Hannah J Bowie 5*5 * having had in her po^c-mon the > strychnine which the post mortem examination pioved to have been thocnu^o of death in her case, as well us that of Edward Bowles the son of the prisoner, whoiesidcd with them in the lodge at Cambcrloy. The history of the case may be briefly &nm- i marised. Henry Bowks, the man now lying under sentence ot death, wa-, employed as a gardener by JDrMullcr, a London physician, who has a country house at Cainboilcy, near Farnham, and ho hud bcun in tho situation tor lit teen months, tho deceased woman and lad living with him in a four-roomed lodge. The accused became a widower in 1880, and Hannah liowleh had resided with him since 1802, but they woe never mariied, although, it is bind, then banns were put up in Putney Chuvch. On September 22, according to the swot n statement of tho prisoner to the Coioncr, upon which the defence was based, Bow les had seen Pr. Miiller and leceived in<-.tiuctions ifrom him about the garden. On his return, his wife (the deceased woman) asked him about some money owing for washing, and when she learned ho had nob iecei\cd it she ilew into a temper, and complained that ' tho boj Edwaid did not pay enough tor I his board. In the evening Bowles was ] sitting reading a gardening magazine, and \ he heard his son try to amuse the woman with card?, but she was cross, and would not play with him. They had for supper bread and jam, the accused not having any thing to eat at all, as ho never took nipper. About half-past nine, or perhaps half an hour later, the woman took two pills — whence she obtained them he did not then know — and gave the boy one because lie had pimples on hi» face, and the prisoner remembered having remarked that salts would do him more good than pills. Tho boy presently went to bed, and the iirst alarm tint Bowles had was when his wife fell in a tit, as he thought. He felt her temples, and she said she would be better soon. Then he heard the lad crying upstairs for water, and he went up to him and found him in great pain and vomiting. He came down again to the woman, and saw that she was worse. Ho started for the doctor, who lived a mile away, and whose house he reached after eleven p.m. It was urged against the prisoner that he did not go to the houso opposite, but prisoner asseits that he did go there, to the back door, bnt was unable to wake anyone. Bowles, not only fetched a doctor, but sent a cabman for the deceased, and when she and the cabman arrived at the lodge the doctor was there. Hannah Bowles was dead, and the boy was dying. It is admitted that the father during his son's paroxysms laid himself be.-ide him and kissed him, until he could -endure the bight of his suffering no longer. The lad hY his last moments confirmed the statement about what he hail taken for supper, and that lie had had a pilL It is argued that the lad was the only independent witness on tho point, and he at no time asserted that his father had given him the pill. It was put torward by the prosecution as an element of suspicion, that Dr. Tworr, after being informed by the boy that he had taken a pill, noticed, on his return from the room, a pill-box on the mantel-shelf of. the other room. The box had the label " Antibilious pills," with the name of a chemist of Camberley and Farnham, and when he opened it the doctor observed that the box was quite clean, and there was an absence of the French chalk in which antibilious pills are usually rolled. Some little timo afterwards, another witness having been in the room all the while, the doctor asked prisoner what had become of the pill* box, and he said he did not know, but showed the medical man four or live similar pill-boxes; but, so the doctor said, of a different size. A policeman who came the nexb day asked for the pill- box from which the deceased had taken the pills, and the prisoner pointed out to him a box on the mantel- piece. Bowles, it appeared, kept seeds in one of the boxes ; tho others were empty. That death wus produced by the pills the results of the post-mortem examination indicated, the analysis having given a quarter of a grain of strychnine in tho woman's and a third of a grain of the poison in the boy's stomach, the symptoms also pointing to the conclusion that strychnine was the fatal agent. Dr. Stevenson's view was that freshly-made strychnine pills would take effect in ten to thirty minutes or loss ; but when a pill was hard and old its action might bo delayed three noun*. In the present case about an hour and a half appears to have elapsed. Counsel for the defence made no allegation that by any cl.ance Btrychnine pills came from the chemist whose name was on the label, in mistake for anti bilious pills, but it was suggested that, either by accident or design, the deceased had them given her in 1882. Yet it is just to observe that there was no reason Arhy the woman should have intentionally poisoned the lad, except that she had complained that he, did not pay enough for his keep. The judge did not uphold the line of argument taken by the prosecution on what is termed kt the process of exhaustion," when it was contended that it was not likely that the deceased woman had poisoned herself and the boy. t It has been already shown what explanation the prisoner gives to account for the presence of strychnine in the houso. J That it was taken in the form of pills, and not' in jam or other fobd, was proved by an analysis of all articles that might be suspected, whioh revealed no trace of tho 'drug. No other pills were discovered, and the prisonei? " was not alleged to liaVe 'purchased st'rychnitfe in any^hapo.' TJiere was •no evidence at the 'Central "Criminal, 1 Court 'that he had ever had 'this poison in hife possession 1 ; on the other -h&iid, two 6f> liiß former employers had stated'that, as fay' 1 as) they knew, thencoused never' had any ; and the sole supposition to explain how- 1 the '.poison got into the lodge is that furnished 1 'by the prisoner himself.' ' As^egarc^ s motive jit; was suggested ''by thY Crown' that the" ""condemned- th'afo'i desired 't&"geb r rid' of; the' deceased- in' 'wdefHo marry 1 a young 'W6maii' wi6hu whoirf' he 'had previously/ been in- service, but in cross-examtna-'

tion ib was elicited that the "young woman was forby-niue years of ,iage, and the prisoner bad nob seen her lor nearly eight. years. Mr Justice Charles drew attention to the xfact that as the deceased woman was nob married she could have been senb away by the accused at any moment. There was, in fact, no necessity to commit murder to rid himself of her. Thero appears, moreover, to have been no motive assigned for tho alleged murder of tho son, of whom his father wat> very fond. The death of the woman was also ascribed to tho supposed desire of Bowles to obtain assurance money to the amount of £28 6s, bub ib was testified ■ that the woman herself paid the premiums, and that she had urged upon the father the desirability of assuring his son's life, in> which arrangement Bowles had refused to join. The woman seems to have held tho purse strings. There was an attempt to* nogathe tho convict's statement that his wile was in a bad temper. Yet she was I described in conit us ct a melancholy disposition, and tho letter from her to her ibistoi, which (he Judge ruled was not evidence, and could not. be pub in, contained o\pies.sionri which led » no to believe that her temper was not of the best; and she accused her hu&band of drunkenness when out for a holiday, whereas all the I wibnct-ncs e\en these ior tho prosecution, 1 swore to his being a. sober man, who treated tho deceased in a kindly way. It may bo recollected 1 hat the accused was nob arrested until Oct. B—more8 — more than a fortnight after the deaths — and bhat during this interval he made no effort to escape, bub i took ii]) his quartcis at the hall, tho lodge having been shut up. Ib lVundoiMood that the case is engaging tho Home Secretary's consideration, mid that ~Mv 1-1. C. Kichards will be further communicated with on tho subject.