Pasha Liffey

Pasha Liffey was convicted of the murder of Mary Jane Welsh 63 and sentenced to death.

He ravished her and cut her throat on Dykehead Road, Larkhall, Lanarkshire on 11 August 1905.

Late on the night of 11 August 1905 a miner was walking along the road when he saw a negro near a woman who was lying motionless on the ground. The miner approached and said that the negro brandished a knife at him and threatened him if he came closer. However, the miner went nearer and the negro threw the knife away and fled. When the miner looked closer he saw that the woman had been stabbed in the neck.

He said that she was dead and from the appearance of her body there was no doubt that she had been outraged.

Pasha Liffey was well known in the area and travelled the country with a boxing booth. He was a Basuto.

Mary Welsh was found with her throat cut and slashed, particularly on the left side where her windpipe was almost severed and she had died within a few minutes from blood loss.

When Pasha Liffey was arrested the miner who had seen him said that he had no difficulty in recognising him as the man that he had seen by the body of Mary Welsh holding the knife.

Mary Welsh had lived with her husband at 33 Dykehead Rows in Larkhall. Her husband said that she had previously been out to Larkhall to do some messages and when she got back she had forgotten to get his rum and so she went out again. Shortly after a lad came to her house and told her husband that his wife was in the street and he went out to see her lying on the side of the road in her blood with a wound in her neck.

When Pasha Liffey was arrested his hands and forehead were covered in blood and his knees were skinned and ruffled.

Pasha Liffey had come to England in a show called 'Savage South Africa' but had later left the show and taken to a wandering life. He was a native of Mafeking, Basutoland.