MILLIONAIRE IN GAOL

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 February 1930, Page 3

MILLIONAIRE IN GAOL

INTERVIEWED ON RELEASE “It will be a very long time before I drive an automobile again.” These were the first words spoken by Richard Joshua Reynolds, the American millionaire upon his release from Wormwood Scrubbs prison, after Serving a sentence of five months’ imprisonment for manslaughter while in charge of an automobile. Reynolds stepped through/ the prison gates at 8 a.m. to find tfye interviewer tot the gates to greet him. “How did you. like it?” the writer asked Reynolds. “Fine,” was the reply. After all, prison was not such a bad experience, he said. < “At first I was in Wandsworth Gaol,” Reynolds said, “but sundry crooks heard that an American millionaire was languishing behind iron bars, and one of their number succeeded in getting away on a short sentence. This man tried to get my sympathy, with a view to exploiting my release. The prison authorities heard about it, and so I was transferred to Wormnwood Scrubbs. “Life at Wormwood Scrubbs was better than at Wandsworth, though it made me fee! awfully homesick. I could hear the subway trains rushing past fifty yards from my cell. I went to work in the library, which is the special privilege of prisoners serving in the second division. But whether a prisoner has second division or hard labour, the work is not hard. “Prisoners are well fed, well clothed, and better housed than many of them would be outside. All the cells were steam heated, which is more than many London houses of the better type are. Except for the loss of liberty, I did not really mind it. I was only allowed one letter and one visitor a month, ’faking them all round, : I. found the warders a friendly crowd. They had an unpleasant, job, and they did it as pleasantly as possible. “One thing I did not. loke so much' was having to go to chapel—twice on Sunday and every Thursday morning. I found (hat the monotony of prison life was the worst part of it all. Anyway, I know one thing, I am never going to gaol again.” Reynolds has had enough of England. Shortly after his release he loft for France. “Well, I guess this is farewell to the hospitable shores of old England.for ever,” he said, as he went on board the Channel boat.