The convict they could not hang
Spoken word, electric folk music story of the convict John Lee
Fairport Convention - Babbacombe Lee
Island - Festival Records
Cat# SIL 93447
Australian release
Gatefold cover is in excellent condition - like new
Complete with the Lloyd's Weekly News booklet
Original printed inner sleeve is in excellent condition
New inner plastic sleeve
Vinyl is in excellent condition, examined carefully using a halogen light source I can see no marks or scratches
Being primarily spoken word with music, there is no track listing as such.
Basic details are:
Side One
John's reflections on his boyhood, his introduction to Miss Keyes and The Glen, his restlessness, and his struggles with his family, finally successful, to join the navy. This
was the happiest period of his life. All looked set fair for a career until he was stricken with sickness and invalided out of his chosen niche in life. Reluctantly and unhappily he turned to a number of menial occupations and finally returned to the service of Miss Keyes.
Tragedy now strikes hard.
The world's imagination is caught by the brutal senselessness of the apparent criminal who slays his kind old mistress.
Side Two
John was hardly more than a bewildered observer of his own trial, not being allowed to say more than a few words. The tides of fate wash him to the condemned cell where he waits three sad weeks for his last night on earth.
When it comes, he cannot sleep, but when he does, a strange prophetic dream comes to him, and helps him to bear the strain of the next day's ordeal as scaffold and its crew try in vain three times to take his life.
