VPRS 265 Petitions in Capital Cases

This series consists of sets of petitions signed by members of the community to the Governor seeking reprieves for three persons sentenced to death in criminal trials. Individuals were Edward Kelly (1880), Angus Murray (1889) and William Myles Phillips (1897). All of these petitions originally formed part of the capital case file maintained by the Law Department but, owing to their size, were not physically attached to them. A portion of the petition for Edward Kelly was kept with the capital case file and this portion was was placed before one of the meetings of the Executive Council that considered Kelly's sentence. As such the Kelly petition is today split with a portion on the Kelly capital case file (refer to VPRS 4966/P0, units 2 and 3) with the remainder of the petition found in this series (i.e VPRS 265).