NOVEL STRIKE
TEN POURS ON CHIMNEY STACK
For ten hours a Dartmoor convict named Dawson sat. on the top of a 75ft. chimney stack at the prison and defied efforts to get him down.
Dawson, who has served about 12 months of a sentence for housebreaking, ran from the parade ground, where he was exercising, at 8 a.m. f and climbed a steam pipe at the side of the chimney.
He sat on top of the stack throughout the day, watched by hundreds of people gathered in the road outside the gaol.
Prison officials failed in their efforts to end the "sit out strike," even when they stoked the furnaces with the hope of "smoking" him off his perch.
But after watching his fellow prisoners march back to their cells at the end of their day's work, Dawson shouted that he would come down if a ladder were erected.
Scaffolding was constructed, and, as he descended, convicts, watching from their cells booed him and cheered the warder who climbed up to assist him.
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EG19381101.2.26
Bibliographic details
Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIX, Issue 87, 1 November 1938, Page 5
Word Count
173NOVEL STRIKE Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LIX, Issue 87, 1 November 1938, Page 5
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