"LIFE OF MISERY."

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 15, 18 January 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

"LIFE OF MISERY."

A UNDER A FLOOR FOR TWO YEARS. HIDING IN DUG-OUT FROM POLICE. How a man had. been hiding from the police for two years in a secret dug-out uricler the floor of his home was described at Walsall,. when Sidney Warner, aged 37, a wood machinist, was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment for housebreaking. . / : . - ' . ; The police, after about 50 fruitless visits to the house where Warner lived with his widowed mother, surrounded his home, but could not find him. They sounded the floor, and beneath the linoleum discovered a trapdoor leading to a hole seven feet by two feet, in . which Warner was lying with stolen property around him. The defending solicitor said that Warner, while serving in the Navy, had an order for 10/ weekly made against him on a woman's complaint: To avoid arrest under the warrant, issued at Portsmouth, he had lived in this , dugout two years. ■ He had lived a life of misery, never able to go out with his wife and family except after nightfall. V His mother, charged with' harbouring him, said: "Wouldn't any mother shield her son?" She was bound over.