He had many friends who worked on his behalf and he narrowly escaped execution as a result. of his solicitor learning certain facts just before what should have been the day of his death. When arrested Morrison undoubtedly had a good deal of money on him and he would never give a satisfactory explanation as to how he came by it, but when his solicitor went to Wandsworth Prison to persuade the condemned man to file a tion for reprieve, he was told Morrison that he had kept silent on the subject because a short time before the Clapham Common crime he had forged a cheque on the London and South Western Bank and got the money. This was proved to -be correct and Mr. Winston Churchill who was then Home Secretary, granted a reprieve. He would not, however, let Morrison out and the criminal was moved from gaol to gaol in the country, always petitioning against his sentence, always resenting official refusals to reconsider it.
Recently he became despondent aid gradually starved himself to leath in the gaol. The case will always form an attractive one for Students of criminology. In all tragedies of this nature, there are always people who come forward after the event and endeavour to throw light on it. Apparently some months after the conviction ut Morrison, a young Woman called on his solicitor, told him she was a governess and had married a nan she called "S" who had just sailed for New York, so that she no longer feared him. This man she said came home one night with his clothes smothered in blood and told her to burn the soiled garments, threatening to cut her throat if she said anything. She was questioned by the late Chief Jnspector Ward, who was subsequently killed in an air raid at Brixton, and said that "S" went out at o'clock on New Year's Eve with Morrison. Another petition for the release of Morrison followed this statement but without effect and probably the Home Secretary was right. No one would like to be very positive in a case of this nature, but looking back upon what we then knew and viewing it in the light of what we know now, it is probable that, although Mor-risen may not have done the actual deed, he knew all about it. As an accessory after the fact, he was, therefore, punished and justice was not very far wrong.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.