SMART WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 66, 19 March 1938, Page 10

SMART WORK.

WOMAN ESCAPES.

SEVEN WATCH HER GO.

WAS POLICE PRISONER.

Six patients watched May Strachan, thirty-year-old police prisoner, escape in a nightdress and dressing gown from the women's surgical ward of Kingston (Surrey) Hospital soon after midnight. They thought she had gone to the bathroom; so did the policewoman detailed to watch her. By the time they realised what had happened Strachan had padded down a fire escape in bedroom slippers, sped across the ground through the medical superintendent's garden and scrambled over a fence to Kingston Hill. In dense fog police searched the grounds and the surrounding roads without success. It is believed that the woman got away in a car waiting on Kingston Hill. Had Fracture. Straclian had been in hospital for about a week for a fractured bone in the leg. She was placed in a small ward with six other patients. A policewoman was on duty in the ward night and day. Strachan could apparently only just hobble about the ward. Nobody thought she was fit enough to walk down a flight of stairs. She must have discovered that a connecting door at the end of the ward which led to the bathroom was also the way oivt to an iron fire escape. The police believe the escape was planned with an accomplice who may have visited Strachan in hospital on visitors' day. Strachan was arrested at Wimbledon a week earlier. She gave an address in Wear Street, Glasgow. Wimbledon police decided she was too ill to be charged, and sent her straight to Kingston Hospital in an ambulance.