RUNAWAY CONVICTS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3355, 3 January 1927, Page 7

RUNAWAY CONVICTS.

(By Dr Frederick Gravel^) It is not easy, oue would think, lor a prisoner to escape either from the custody of the police or from gaol. Due certain escapes from our strongest prisons and most formidable convict settlements make oue realise how extraordinary is the ingenuity of man when desperate and cornered. lUere is a type of ingenious person who seems able to shuffle off handcuffs and fetters at will, scale high walls, and excavate tunnels with superhuman skill. Nothing would seem to be impossible to him so long as there is a concealed nail or a weak spot in his cell. Apparently he has only to wait his chance and he will detect some little flaw which ninety-nine of his fellows would pass unnoticed. Two prisoners once escaped from Pcntonville by boring through masonry with scissors, feigning sleep, and scaling 'walls. Thomas, the famous burglar, with a strip of iron from his bench and a nail, cut out the Jock of his cell door, opened other locks, dug under the gaol railings, and moved about a ton of masonry, vanishing finally after writing a farewell message on the wall: “Good bye! Pleasant night!” All the inmates of an American gaol, some of them murderers, escaped in a stream after one of them succeeded in smuggling in a watchmaker’s saw in a loaf of bread. With this he cut through strong bars of steel, which he had first of all partly distempered by wrapping round them rags soaked in the prison disinfectant —formaline. An Italian murderer, much feared by tho police and the people, and finally captured with the greatest difficulty, was put into the condemned cell at Milan. He disliked his quarters and left them after strangling the warder. When he was again captured and immured at Genoa, he developed the same distaste ter captivity and departed once more unceremoniously, leaving behind broken chains, walls, and warders. Once more, after much stress and some bloodshed, he was caught at Turin and placed in a deep dungeon to reflect lor a few days before execution. Followed the usual aversion and the usual escape. But this was the last of his vanishing tricks, for he was caught in escaping and shot, Webasta, a Belgian criminal with a long and unpleasant record in offences against society, was confined in the underground cell for the condemned at Brussels. He made keys by melting down his pewter mug, took bread impressions of locks, escaped from the cell, scaled a high wall, climbed another bv means of a spout, dropped fifteen feet, and. after some lesser adventures left the prison behind him. He burgled a tailor’s shop for a suit of decent clothes, provided himself with money, cigars, and other thing* from various sources, and finallyvanished completely 7 . He may be dead or languishing in some foreign prison. He may be flourishing in a far land under another name. His present address, however, is still unknown to the police of Europe.