THE EXECUTION OF TWO MURDERERS.

Westport Times, Volume II, Issue 225, 21 April 1868, Page 3

THE EXECUTION OF TWO MURDERERS.

Joseph Whelan and Bernard Cunningham suffered death at the hands of the common hangman on Tuesday, in the Melbourne Central Gaol, for murder. The crimes for which both the condemned men forfeited their lives were acts of wanton atrocity, unaccompanied by any redeeming feature. The victim of Whelan was a respectable hawker named Thomas Bramley, who had for years peacefully prosued his avocation in the Rokewood district. On the 31st August last, Whelan attacked him in a lonely paddock with a revolver. He fired several shots at his, overpowered him in a desperate struggle, then beat him unmercifully about the head with the butt-end of his pistol, and after robbing him of all his valuables, left him for dead. Bramley, however, lived to identify his murderer, whose guilt was proved to the satisfaction of two juries by a strong chain of circumstantial evidence. A peculiarity of the case was, that no mark of blood was found upon Whelan's clothes, and that no pistol was traced to his possession. [The first conviction was set aside on the ground of improper reception of evidence ; and after the prisoner had been found guilty a second time, he was twice respited, pending the result of legal objections to the conviction raised by his counsel. Cunningham was engaged as a farm labourer at Keilor, and on the 23 rd of December last he set upon a fellowworkman, an old man of sixty, named John Eairweather, when alone with him, beat him to death with a hoe, robbed him of ,£l—all the money the unfortunate man possessed—and threw the body into a neighbouring water-course. Two days afterwards he confessed the murder. Both the condemned men, as soon as the time

for theii execution was finally appointed, received with the deepest attention the ministrations of the Roman Catholic clergyman who visited them, but there is reason to fear that Whelan was buoyed up to the last with hopes of a reprieve, At ten o'clock the hour appointed for the execution, Mr. Ellis, the deputy sheriff, directed the convicts to be brought from the condemned cell into the corridors and the pinioning process was rapidly completed. Cuningham, who has never questioned the j ustice of his sentence, appeared perfectly tranquil and resigned, but his compation was visibly distressed. Before ascending the scaffold he turned to those preseut—a company numbering about twenty persons, exclusive of the gaol official's —and said it Was very hard that he should have to suffer for a crime which he did not commit, asserting twice that he was innocent. It is probable that he made some kind of confession to the priest, but this will if course, not be divulged. Cunningham made no remark. When the bolt was drawn by the hangman the body of Whelan fell an mert mass, but Cunningham, who was a much more powerful man, waa strongly convulsed for some seconds. The wretched men were attended in their last moments by the Rev. Dr. Bleasdale and the Rev. Father Lordan. Cunningham was twenty-seven years of age, and came to this colony about eight months age. He was a native of Newry, Ireland, had served in the Confederate army, was present at the siego of Richmond, and had also been a seafaring man. Whelan was an Irish labourer, aged about thirty, who emigrated to this colony with other members of his family a few years ago, and was known as a man of somewhat eccentric habits, which occasionally assumed the form of decided hypochondriacism.—Australasian, April 4.