Mr. Warren explained that there were difficulties that prevented her doing so, and withdrew, saying he would make a formal application, for leave for her to see Peace, to the Visiting Committee. After proceeding to the Town Hall, and being unable to find any of the members of the Visiting Committee, Mr. Warren went to the office of the chairman of the committee, John Ellershaw, Esq., who declined to accede to Mr. Warren’s petition, saying he should not do so unless Mr. Warren could show him a letter from the convict dated since Peace’s interview with his daughter, Mrs. Bolsover, stating the convict’s wish to see Mrs. Thompson.
MRS. BRION IN LEEDS.
As Mr. and Mrs. Bolsover were returning from Armley to Leeds, they were greatly astonished to see Mrs. Brion, the wife of Peace’s friend at Peckham, wending her way to the gaol. She told them that she had come down from London, and was going on to Armley, and hoped she would be allowed to have an interview with Peace.
She expressed great concern for his state of mind, and said she believed if she could see him she should be able “to say something to him that would do him a little good.” At that time she had not seen the magistrates’ clerk, and had obtained no authority to see Peace.
OFFERS TO HANG PEACE.
After Peace had been tried and condemned, the authorities had several applications to fill the grim office of executioner. These were from amateurs, one of whom, from the neighbourhood of Sheffield, wrote to say that he would undertake the duty gratuitously; whilst another asked the modest sum of only £3 10s. for his services, should they be accepted. It is scarcely necessary to say that no notice was taken of them, and Marwood was engaged to carry out the sentence.
SUGGESTED POSTPONEMENT OF THE EXECUTION.
A letter was forwarded to the Home Secretary on behalf of the convict, which said: “I hope you will kindly bear with me whilst I venture to address you upon a matter the immediate attention to which must prove of the utmost importance to one who stands condemned to suffer capital punishment, according to the organs of the newspaper press, in the course of the coming fortnight. There can be no disguising the fact that a large number of persons in the metropolis and throughout the country entertain the idea that the prisoner Peace’s late trial before the judge and jury was too hurried to be just. Such persons believe that the very circumstances which had been alluded to by the learned counsel for the defence—namely, that the cry for the prisoner’s blood and the sensational intelligence of the prisoner’s career which had appeared in the columns of the leading organs of the press—had combined to induce the jury to come to their most serious decision in the reported space of a quarter of an hour. A very unpleasant sensation has likewise been created, that the whole matter, namely, the condemnation of Peace, had been previously arranged—had, indeed, been cut and dried.… As I am confident that the spirit of justice of English law would rather permit ninety-nine guilty to escape than that one innocent should suffer, and as I feel it would lie upon my conscience did I abstain from laying the ‘evil’ alluded to before you, I have herewith endeavoured to discharge my duty—a duty which I feel I owe to the prisoner, his sympathisers, and to the best interests of English justice. Certainly, if the sentence cannot be reversed, the impression of unfairness would be removed by postponing the date for Peace’s execution.”
To this communication the following reply was received from the Home Secretary on Tuesday:—
“Whitehall, Feb. 8.