ESCAPE FROM GAOL

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 October 1929, Page 5

ESCAPE FROM GAOL

TRAGEDY OF 50 YEARS AGO. The recent peppering with buckshot of an escaping prisoner reminds a Wellington resident of early days in Dunedin, and the fatal shooting with a Snider bullet (about the year 1873) oi a convict named Haley, who was one of a gang working on the cliff under the present First Church, south of Moray Place*. “This part was then known as Bell Hill,” the ex-Dunedin resident informed a “Dominion” reporter. “Haley had previously enjoyed a short liberty by throwing pepper in a warder’s eyes. This time, however, he slipped behind a shed, stripped to underpants, singlet and Glengarry cap, climbed the old quarry face, and ran down to cross Stuart Street. Morrison, the warder in charge, spotted him ‘going over the top,’ and followed smartly. As a youngster, playing in my parents’ yard, I heard a shout, ‘Stop! Stop!’ but Haley ran on. “Morrison fired only one shot, probably at about 50 yards range. Next thing I saw was a prisoner lying still on the footpath. A few minutes later, alarmed by the shot three warders from the old gaol near by hurried to the scene. A plank was commandeered from our house, and the body was carried on it to the gaol, where Governor Caldwell, a kindly old bachelor, then reigned. “At the inquest Morrison was strongly commended for his excellent shooting at a fast-moving human target He explained that he had aimed low, intending merely to ‘wing’ or ‘leg’ his man, but in the excitement took rather af full foresight on his Snider rifle. He never forgave himself," and passed away a few months later, the popular belief being that he worried himself into his grave for having taken a life. “About this time several Maori prisoners were ‘boarders,’ and it was no uncommon sight to see one or two whites in the prison gang, walking with the cruel chains dangling from their legs and waists as they were paraded to and from their daily toil. “Armed warders all night patrolled the balconies overlooking the gaol, every half-hour calling, ‘Number one all s well, and so on up to number four—reassuring sounds to wakeful neighbours, as at that time, if even such remote potentials of warfare as pig-lead (convertible into bullets) were stored anywhere, the law insisted on a loyal British subject sleeping nightly on the premises. Such was Dunedin 56 years ago, then the commercial capital of our country. So inhospitable was the surrounding district regarded a few years earlier, that th e story is often told of the gaol governor warning his petft that if they were not ‘home’ before dark they would be locked out for the night.”