Misplaced Sympathy.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume IX, Issue 2965, 1 August 1888, Page 2

Misplaced Sympathy.

1; It is not at all unlikely,' Says a winter in »'Home paper, that the weeping aud whining sentimentalists, touched by the sufferings of murderers, will find cause for a fresh display of feel; ing in the case of John Jackson, who has murdered a prison warder 1 at Stmugcways, near Manchester. ,It will be. said, no doubt,.that Jackson was not in his right mind., A more atrocious crime/can hardly be conceived. Striking tho warder with a hammer on the back of the, head he rendered him- insensible; Jkoii ho rifled, his pockots and appropriated his' boots aud his socks, afterwards making, a hole in the roof r and wriggling himself out, eventually escaping. Onco at liberty he resumed bis old vocation of "burglary, and at the house of one Wood, a Salvation Army, Captain at Oldham, he smoked cigars'.and drank porter which he had stolen at a previous burglary, I wonder whether he saved some cigars to smoke in the condemned cell, .as Dr Burke is reported to have smoked. cigars while frionds and sympathisers got up monster petitions to the Homo Secretary, It is time people began to look more to the safety of persons doing their duy in the ordinary vocations of life than to moralising on the evils of capital punishment, writing letters to tho newspapers, and fortifying murderers with false hopes of evontual escape from tho consequences of their crimes. This Stangeways murder reveals an amount of brutality and barbarity shocking to relate, and the coolness with which it was followed up in robbery and burglary only shows that once a man is steeped in crimo thore is no bar to his audacity and criminality. This murder may suggest possibly tho danger of putting twoedged tools in tho hands of prisoners, however puny tho prisoners may be, and however big aud powerful the warders in charge of them.