Set Gaol-break Record

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 201, 24 August 1940, Page 4 (Supplement)

Set Gaol-break Record

RUBY" SPARKS, sometimes called "Rubberface," the convict who created a record by staying out of Dartmoor longer than any other who ever escaped from the prison, was captured on June 28. He was caught after Scotland Yard had received an anonymous message. Detectives from the squad specially selected to catch him were sent to Wembley, and he was taken by surprise. The officers brought him to Cannon Row police station, and now he has gone back to Dartmoor. Sparks escaped on January 10 with two other men, Alexander Marsh and William Nolan. Marsh wae caught in London six days later. Nolan broke the record, up to that time, by staying free until May 20. Sparks, one of whose aliases was Alfred Watson, eluded the police for 170 days. They nearly caught him several times. Once a member of his gang tipped him off just in time to get out of a Soho cafe a few minutes before the police arrived. Sparks, who has been sentenced as an habitual criminal, was once described by the police as a leader of smash andTab gangs and a motor bandit. He lived with the sister of one of his associates, a woman known as the "bobbed-hair bandit," who, with other criminals, helped him in an attempted raol-break from Wandsworth.