The poisoner Lamson, though twice respited, was executed at nine
a.m. on Friday, the Home Secretary finding no reason in the evidence sent from America to justify interference with the law. That evidence only proved that the convict came of a family in which dementia had been frequent, that he took mor- phia, and that he had been suspected at different periods of his career of being mad. This is not enough to rebut the evid- ence adduced on the trial of a coldly deliberate design to commit murder for money, carried out with great audacity and skill. In a letter written the day before his death, Lamson confessed his guilt, and attributed it to his long-con- tinued addiction to morphia, which " made a physical, mental, and moral victim of me." In a subsequent letter, not published, he made a fuller confession, acknowledging the intent to murder, as well as the fact of killing, but emphatically denied that he had caused the death of Hubert John, his victim's brother. It is probable that, as the motive of confession is almost always a desire to make partial expiation, which would be destroyed by concealment, this denial is true.
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