CONVICT ESCAPEES

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 137, 7 December 1926, Page 9

CONVICT ESCAPEES

HUNGER FORCES SURRENDER,

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

SYDNEY, 2Sth November

Up in the thick bush of rugged Tasmanian Hills, two escaped convicts, almost starving, tamely submitted to arrest by two constables, after terrorising a countryside since their escape three days previously.

' The men wore Alfred John Dobson, a murderer, and Henry Price, and they broke out of gaol with a third man, who, in jumping from a high wall, fell and broke a leg. Dobson and Price left their injured comrade and made for the bush, and people, especially women", who knew the desperate nature of the men, took every precaution to keep out of their way. ' The men several times tried to obtain food and firearms, but they found that a police cordon had been drawn round them, and they sought the thick scrub between Knocklofty and Mount Wellington. Once they planned .a raid on stores at West Hobart, but when they were approaching- their goal the presence of policemen frightened them, and again they took refuge in the scrub. It was there that the police discovered and arrested them. Both men admitted that if they had had firearms, they would have used them, liut on the point of: starvation 'as they were, their only choice ' lay between ra-capture ' and death.

The men disclosed their method of escape. For some time, it appears, they had been in possession of a key to unlock the gates of the exercise yard. Seizing a favourable opportunity, they did this, and forced a- door leading to the workshops. They climbed through a skylight on to a roof, scaled the outside wall, and dropped into the street. If they had been able to obtain food and hold out against arrest,' their ultimate idea was to stow away on a steamer loading zinc for tho Philippine Islands.