No confession was handed to any of the prison officials, and they had nothing to communicate except what had already been mentioned in the public press relating to the Whalley Range murder, the documents relative to which had been forwarded to the Home Office.
ANOTHER ACCOUNT.
The Press Association correspondent gave the following account:—One of the most extraordinary criminals reaped his well-merited reward at the hands of the common hangman at Armley gaol.
It is unnecessary to name the culprit, for the name of Peace has been before the public every morning for two or three months.
When on his trial, and as the curtain lifted from his life, he has gloated over his exploits, and notwithstanding his profession of penitence, few would doubt that if he had been left free he would have pursued the same murderous course.
There was a mingling with wonder and horror that a man who robbed houses two or three times a night, and for months successively in the districts where he prowled around as burglar, should have escaped the police; should have carried off his booty and sold it; should have passed as a respectable man in the neighbourhoods where he lived, and even palmed himself off as one interested in science.
Touching appeals to the reporters from the scaffold and the whining imploring way in which he begged Marwood to wait a bit when the noose was being adjusted, showed that he was wanting in courage.
One can hardly conceive that any man could really pity that monster of iniquity, who had lived in robbery through his life, and who had not scrupled, when interfered with in his nefarious deeds, to use his revolver in shooting down whomsoever he might chance to encounter.
He shot the policeman at Blackheath, he shot Constable Cock, at Manchester, and actually attended the trial and conviction of another man for the murder, whose sentence, however, was providentially commuted, and shortly after this he shot Mr. Dyson in as cold-blooded a murder as has ever been revealed, and, further, he was guilty of attempting to slur with dishonour the wife of the man he murdered. After his conviction he was removed from Wakefield to Armley gaol for greater security. The prison was considered by Lieutenant-Colonel Jebb, inspector of prisons, as the best and most substantial of its kind in the kingdom. It lies to the west of Leeds, about a mile and a half from the chief seat of the cloth trade. It is an imposing castellated stone structure, and its walls and towers are blackened with smoke from the neighbouring chimneys.
Standing on the crest of a ridge overlooking the valley of the Aire, it has at its base the Midland and Great Northern lines, and the Aire flowing sluggishly along, and viewed from its front or eastern side Leeds assumes a horseshoe shape, with its smoky chimneys, and to the north-west lies to the famous Kirkstall Abbey.