Her Majesty's Prison, _Monday, Feb. 14th_.
I write these lines to you to express my deep sorrow for the dreadful crime I have done to you and to your master. I write to ask you if you and your wife will forgive me for killing your boy, and please ask the master if he will forgive me for taking his money from him. It would not have happened if I had not been incited to do it, and it was by no other person than ---- ----, who was a witness against me. He persuaded me to do it, and said he might do it himself if I did not; so I done the unhappy affair. I am very sorry I ever met with ---- at all, but it cannot be called back now. I have cried to God for mercy; I must still cry, and I hope I shall gain a better home. I have asked Him to forgive me and blot out all my sins, and wash me in my Saviour's precious blood; and I think and feel He will do it. I'm going to receive the Holy Communion on Wednesday, and I should like to hear from you by Wednesday, before I go to be partaker of that holy feast. If you will forgive me, I shall be more at peace.
I am very, very sorry indeed, for what I have done. There is nothing that can save me from my doom, which will be on Thursday, but I can ask God to have mercy on my poor soul.
I have no more to say at present, only that I was a great friend of poor Harry, and I went nearly mad about it the first few nights, and could not sleep; but now I find comfort in Jesus. Good-bye, Sir. Please send me an answer by return of post, and I hope we shall meet in Heaven.
A few particulars of Pritchard's last moments are given in "How Murderers Die," p. 78.
another young man--only just twenty-one years old--was another example of the result of bad influences. His father deserted the home when Alfred was about ten years old. His mother was a hard-working woman who contrived to support her family by mangling and by selling papers in the streets, in which latter work she was assisted by Alfred and several other children. The lad was fond of hanging round street corners and public-houses, and his mother found it impossible to keep him at home like the other children. He continually made resolutions, but again and again he was led away by his companions, and at twelve years of age he was convicted for stealing cigars from a shop, but discharged with a caution. A month later he was charged with another offence and sentenced to 21 days. Other imprisonments followed, then five years in a reformatory, but punishment was no cure. His love for his mother was his one redeeming feature, and if she had not been forced by grinding poverty to work almost day and night at her mangling and paper-hawking she might have succeeded in saving him from himself. He tried to break away from his evil associations, and at one time begged his mother to find money to take him to Canada, but she was utterly unable to scrape together enough to pay the passage. A youth called Jones, who was hanged with Scandrett, was his companion in his final crime--a burglary, ending in murder. Although attached to his mother, who said he had always been "a good lad" to her, Scandrett could not bear the idea of living at home when he was engaged in crime, so that almost the whole of the last eight years of his life was spent, when out of gaol, in common lodging-houses. After his conviction for murder and sentence to death, his great anxiety was for his mother. And well might he be anxious, for the poor woman suffered sadly for his sin. As soon as it was known that she was "the mother of a murderer," her customers--to their eternal disgrace be it said--withdrew their patronage to such an extent that her mangling earnings dropped from 12s. or 14s. to 2s. a week, and her newspaper trade fell away to nothing. She was even "hunted" and insulted in the streets when she went to her accustomed corner to sell the papers. To get from her home in Birmingham to Hereford Gaol for a last interview with her son, she was obliged to pawn her dress, and even that only raised enough money to pay the fare one way, so that she had to trust to chance for the means of getting back again. Some of the prison officials, more humane than her "friends" at home, subscribed enough money to pay the return fare. The last meeting was a very affecting one. Scandrett comforted his mother by assuring her that they would meet in heaven, and said, "Pray daily and hourly, mother, as I have done, and then we shall meet in heaven."