VERDICT STOICALLY RECEIVED
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT. LEWES, FRIDAY.
At seven minutes past three this afternoon, at the assize court, Mr Justice Avory assumed the black cap and sentenced Jack Alfred Field and William Thomas Gray to be hanged for the murder of Irene Munro at the Crumbles, near Eastbourne, on Aug 19. Picture the scene in court a few minutes before the jury returned to deliver their verdict. The rows of seats behind the dock and the galleries were occupied by people who debated in undertones the possible verdict the jury would bring in. Sir Edward Marshall Hall had applied all the power of his great eloquence for 90 minutes this morning in one final effort to induce the jury to regard the circumstantial evidence as inconclusive. “I leave Gray in your hands,” he had concluded, “if there is one of you who cannot accept this as conclusive convincing evidence, unless you are prepared to say that you are satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt he is entitled, you should say ‘Not guilty’.” In appealing tones he had asked the jury whether they could believe that the men were so immune from feeling and sensation that, after foully doing to death an innocent girl at four o’clock in the afternoon, they could be trying to pick up another girl at nine o’clock in the evening. The distant chimes of a clock striking the midday hour were faintly audible when Mr Justice Avory began his summing up. He impressed upon the jury that their judgment in this case must be founded upon the evidence given in that court.
Once he spoke of an incident, perhaps the most dramatic in the whole course of the trial. On Tuesday the labourer had described the cap Field was wearing when he saw him with Gray and Irene Munro on the Crumbles, and at the request of Mr Gill he had demonstrated how Field had worn it. He pulled the cap down in a peculiar manner to the back of his head and the peak he pulled to the right and well over his eyes. Now imagine Field in the box two days later, when the incident is forgotten. The cap is handed to him. Mr Gill asks if it is his. “Yes,” answers Field, and then counsel quietly, persuasively, invites him to put it on. To the amazement of everybody, Field deliberately passed his hand to the back of his cap and pressed it down, and then with the other hand pulled the peak down over his eyes. He stood there with the cap on in exactly the peculiar position the witness had described when he saw him with the murdered girl. After a moment’s pause for the jury to realise the significance of what had taken place, Mr Gill said quietly: “Take the cap off, Field.”
At five minutes past two the judge concluded, and the jury retired to consider their verdict. An hour later, a solemn hush fell upon those in court as counsel, with the exception of Sir Edward Marshall Hall and Mr Cassels, returned to their seats, and the jury filed back to their box. The judge re-entered the court accompanied by the High Sheriff and the chaplain.
The closing scene of this drama was enacted in the space of the next few minutes. At a word from the clerk of assize, Field and Gray were brought back into the dock. As they stood there facing the judge and jury, they showed not the slightest trace of feeling. Between the dock and the judge there lay on a table one of the most pathetic exhibits of the trial – the smashed and crumpled hat the murdered girl was wearing when the great stone block was sent crushing on to her head. In answer to the question of the clerk of assize, the foreman of the jury, in a firm voice, said they found both prisoners guilty, but with a recommendation to mercy on the ground that they believed the murder was not premeditated.
The clerk then announced to the prisoners that they had been convicted of murder, and asked if they had anything to say. Neither prisoner uttered a word.
By a movement that was hardly perceptible an official placed the square of black silk, the black cap, upon the head of the judge over his judicial wig, and Mr Justice Avory proceeded to pass sentence. There was a slight pause, and then the chaplain said “Amen.” The prisoners received the sentence without flinching. At a touch on the shoulder from a warder they turned, and with a warder between them passed out of view down the steps which lead from the dock.