GASPARINI'S ESCAPE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 39, 15 February 1904, Page 5

GASPARINI'S ESCAPE.

, IN A FRENCH PRISON. (By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, this day. Many years ago two Frenchmen named Cury and Gasparini were arrested in this colony on a charge of having esi caped from New Caledonia- ProceedI ings for their extradition were before the Courts here for a considerable time. ■ and occasioned widespread interest. Public sympathy was strongly with Cury, who was a well educated man. i and had undergone imprisonment at New Caledonia for a political offence. Cury stupngly protested against being handed over to the French Consul, as the representative for the Republican Government, and eventually the Court granted him his liberty, but Gasparini. who was what one might call a '"bad lot," was ordered to be returned to New Caledonia. He was accordingly placed aboard the steamer Wakatipu, at that time a regular trader between Sydney and Wellington. On the voyage across Gasparini lnysterioiisly disappeared, and efforts to trace his whereabouts were futile. The police set up the theory that he had leapt overboard and been drowned, but few were inclined to accept this theory, and it was generally surmised that lie had been secreted on board the vessel by some sympathisers among the crew and had managed to get ashore when the steamer reached Sydney. This view of the circumstances was evidently a correct one, as news has come to hand from France that Gasparini, who recently turned up in that quarter again, found himself in trouble for a serious offence, which means his seclusion in a prison for 20 years.