OLD AUCKLAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 112, 14 May 1927, Page 21

OLD AUCKLAND.

ESCAPE OF FRED PLUMMER

"A TAME JACK SHEPPARD." POPULACE IN TERROR. (By NEVILLE FOEDEE.) At the period I write about paddocks stretched from most of Ponsonby Road down to Long Gully (place accursed in winter time, if always intcrestin", and, in summer, entrancing). On that part opposite Franklin Road (Grace's Paddock), right along to where Lloyd's ropeworks were (later) erected on a southern strip of what was then called "All Saints' Paddock-" A hawthorn hedge bounded most of the distance, and a narrow lane, miscalled a street furze-hedged for the most part, ran westward just north of the port of Grace's Paddock' where A. E. Devore (solicitor) and Jim Dacre (auctioneer) (both possessing exceptionally lovely and graceful wives, Mrs. Dacre a charming concert singer—l can see her delicate fairness as she stands on the concert platform singing, with infinite sweetness and good taste, that bonnie ballad "Children's Voices," even as I write) built their new honies. Lloyd, the ropemaker, had a cottage near this narrow street, opposite the south-west corner of what was Stannus Jones' splendid sloping paddock, wisely planted with Norfolk Island pines. This was the eastern side of Ponsonby Road, and was by and by sold and cut up for dwelling houses and a Wesleyan Church was erected on part of it. All this topographical detail to fix the locality of a startling happening of the half-way sixties, or thereabouts.

Some one hundred and fifty yards down that westward-running side street, the name of which I forget, although it was therein that All Saints' day school was conducted by a Mr. Dixon (who afterwards became a Customs official —a nice man, not long out from the North of Ireland), and where I and other of Jerry Flower's pupils put in some months between the closing of his "commercial school," in Hobson Street, and the opening of the Grammar School; began the dairy farm of Joe Scott- The house was only a few yards inside the post-and-rail fence that bounded the north side of the street, but the Scott property ran right down to the gully that was the head of Long Gully aforesaid. Joe Scott was a strongly-built yeoman, whose short brown beard and moustache could not disguise a square jaw and a grimly determined mouth. He rarely wore a coat, and was the sort of man, at a sale of cows say, at whom an observant person would be sure to look more than once; and he was well liked and respected; though a rather taciturn man and a stern father of quite a family. So much for a description of the hero of a story of unexpected pluck and resource. At the time I write of there was a man named Fred Plummer, in Auckland, who was a sort of tame Jack Sheppard, and who spent his time in and out of gaol, for offences such as false pretences, forgery, and a little unobtrusive housebreaking, "on the side" as the Yankees say. To vary the monotony of a drab existence, and give the Auckland newspapers something to write about, Fred, having been well and truly incarcerated at the then unwalled Mount Eden Gaol— the prisoners, subsequently, graduallv walled themselves in with the grim blue scoria wall that is, no doubt, familiar, from either outside or. inside, to most of the present generation—broke gaol, and became a wanderer on the face of the land. He proved ridiculously elusive, and the police of the day. amusingly inept and stupid. Sundry citizens would • identify Plummer" as a lodger here, a boarder there, or even as a homeless -haunter __of the tea-tree

wastes that were then three parts of all the land west of Ponsonby Road from the Great Western Road to the Waitcmata, and they would spend hours in finding a policeman, or visiting the station at High Street and Chancery Lane; and leading or sending one or more sleuths to the wanted man's abiding place. But he was never there when the cops arrived, while the next letter received at the station would be a gibe from Plummer telling them how he had slipped them, and maybe watched their clumsy efforts to surround and capture him. It was delightfully funny, even if we residents of the aforesaid tea-tree wastes were kept continually panicky, knowing that Plummer was at large in our district, and likely to make a late call any night. But it may be said that Fred's character for dry humour greatly lessened our fear of him, and he became more of a joke and less of a bogey to such of us as read the sarcastic checry lctters he sent to the papers. Other cynical humorists took it up, and letters, ostensibly from him, from various mythical addresses, considerably brightened the dull columns of the "Southern Cross." Then, just at dusk, one winter evening, came an end to Mister Plummer's unstable freedom and the joker's oppor--1 tunity. One of Scott's cows had not come up with her fragrant sisters at milking time, and Joe, like the thorough cowman he was, proceeded to inquire into her defection. As he approached the edge j of the swampy, tea-tree covered fringe I of his paddock he became aware of the figure of a man lurking in the thin scrub. Most men, full of the tales of an escaped convict at large, and surprising a furtive prowler in such a dreary spot, amid murky surroundings, would have agreed with Shakespeare that the better part of valour is discretion, and have discreetly withdrawn and sent for the police, or, at least, sought reinforcements. "Xot for Joe, oh, dear, no," as the old cockney song of our youth had it. Scott called upon the shape to come forth and declare itself and when he

found it endeavouring; to get further into the scrub, he rushed, grabbed the intruder on his domain, and asked what he thought he was doing on his property, or words to that effectThe man showed fight, and made strenuous efforts to escape. Sturdy, deep-chested Joe Scott got a good hold of his swinging right arm with his left hand, seized a young tea-tree, bunching the branches in the grip of his right hand, tore it out of the saturated soil, and walloped his capture over the bean with the mud-laden root. It was a shrewd blow, my masters, and the swiftly accorded encore was hardly needed. The fellow became limp in his brawny arms, and was too helpless to evade the admission that he was Fred Plummer, the '•flighty" gaolbird. He also admitted that he was hungry, and not very sorry that his mad escapade was ended. Scott took him home to tea, sending his young son meanwhile to apprise the police of his capture. Officers arrived (guided by the boy, or they'd never have "made if), and relieved Joe of his responsibility. Plummer went back to "quod," and I can assure my readers that we westernoutpost people slept sounder for the knowledge that good old Joe Scott had done what all the "Johns" had failed to do, and relieved us of a nightmare.