This morning Harry Walters, a miner, will’ in the precincts of Wakefield gaol, pay penalty of the law for the murder of Sarah J McConnell at Sheffield on the 23rd December. Mr. Arthur Neal, who has been acting as solicitor for the man, made an effort to secure but without success, and considering the nature of the crime this was not at all astonish able.
Sheffield has remarkable and somewhat able record in the matter of the capital sentence. Notwithstanding that the city has a popular close upon 450,000, nearly a score years have elapse since the last murderer from the cutlery capital as hanged. Several crimes resulting in death been committed during that long period; verdict of murder have been returned, and sentence at passed, but the presence of extenuating circumstances has saved the criminals from the scaffold. It was in August 1887, that Henry Hobson engine tender, paid the full penalty of the law doing to death the wife of his employer in Mortgue Street, a thoroughfare leading off Cemetery Road.
Three years before that Joseph Laycock hanged for killing his wife and four children at White Croft; in 1881 a Sheffield murderer James Hall was hanged, and in the notorious Charles Peace was executed at Armley. It is an interesting that. the Stipendiary Magistrate (Mr M. E. Welby) and the Coroner (Mr D. Wightman) who both committed for trial a murderer the name of William Smedley so long ago are holding the same positions to-day and were responsible for the committal of Walters Assizes.
BNA © Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Tuesday 10 April 1906
