Newspaper archive report taken from the Warwick Argus (Queensland, Australia)
Sat 22 Sept 1900
MAFEKING TRAGEDY.
PARSLOW'S SLAYER IN PRISON.
EX-MAJOR KENNETH MURCHISON has been brought to England from Mafeking and lodged in Parkhurst Prison (reports the Daily Mail of August 13). He is condemned to penal servitude for life, and the crime for which he is suffering was the murder of Ernest Parslow, a Cape Town journalist, whom he shot in Mafeking on November 1 last.
Murchison was a major on the reserve of the Royal Artillery, and before the outbreak of the war he went to the Cape hoping to see service. In Colonel Hore's fine regiment of irregulars – the Protectorates - he found a berth as trooper, and afterwards, his identity having become known, he was given a commission as lieutenant of artillery.
Murchison was one of the best gunners in South Africa. In the hottest actions he stood by his piece as erect as a lance. Parslow, a young man of about 33, represented the South African News, a notorious Bond paper, and the Daily Chronicle.
On November 1, a few hours after the battle of Cannon Kopje, in which Murchison played a prominent part with his gun, Parslow invited the artilleryman to dine with him at Riesle's Hotel. The invitation was accepted, and the pair seemed to spend a pleasant hour. But they remained too long at table, and it was observed that Parslow became very quarrelsome. A man who had never been with soldiers before, he accused the officer of knowing nothing about guns or trenches, upon which subject the conversation had turned. Murchison did not lose his temper. He merely bade Parslow good night and walked out of the hotel. The journalist followed him out, across the market square, and into his own hotel, 'nagging' at him all the time. Murchison, who kept his temper all the while, advised him repeatedly to go away. The foolish young fellow refused, and challenged the officer to fight, and a few minutes afterwards those about the hall of Dixon's Hotel heard a shot. Parslow lay at the door, dead, with a .450 dum-dum bullet in his head. Murchison stood about eight paces off with his Webley revolver in his hand.
The evidence at the court-martial demonstrated that both men had been excited by wine, and that Murchison had fired after much provocation. The sentence of the court-martial was 'death,' but when the papers were sent down to the High Commissioner, a commutation was made to a life sentence. Murchison was kept prisoner, and occasionally he was allowed to walk about outside the gaol in the afternoons. To those who spoke to him he expressed extreme regret for having taken Parslow's life, and averred he remembered nothing about it.
When Eloff captured Colonel Hore's fort a few days before the relief, Murchison was one of the first in the gaol to take up a rifle, and he occupied a position which would almost inevitably have brought him death if the Boers had advanced further from the west. At nightfall, when the enemy surrendered, he returned to his cell.
It is possible that Her Majesty will issue a proclamation pardoning offenders who took up arms for her in South Africa, in which event Murchison should be made a free man.
In the absence of the proclamation, those who are conversant with all the details of the case feel that Murchison should receive further mitigation of his sentence, if not a pardon.
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