MIDNIGHT ESCAPE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 4 November 1925, Page 9

MIDNIGHT ESCAPE.

TWO DARING CONVICTS

PATIENCE REWARDED,

LONDON, Oct. 19. Scissors, bed clothes and garden tubs, combined with amazing daring, helped two convicts, Sidney Marks and Arthur Bacon, who were serving sentences for assault and housebreaking, respectively, to escape at midingh irom adjacent third floor cells at Pen'onvifle prison, Islington (London;. With the scissors they scraped the cement from the brickwork, each workins in adjacent corners, until they made an opening through the prison wall With the bed clothes they made a. rope, by which they slid down 30 feet into the prison yard; and there they collected the garden tubs, and made them into a sort .of staircase, by means of which they scaled the 20-foot prison boundary wall. ■' . No. prison escape of romantic faction or highly coloured melodrama, says the EvenTng News, was ever more cleverly hatched o,r daringly carried out. Both men must have been scraping away cement and loosening the bricks for some time past. Their rope comprised two blankets, two canvas sheets ami a coloured bed cover, and measured Soft., tied together endwise. Its diameter wa ? 2| inches, and it was bound with string at every two feet. Evidently the men discussed their plans for escape during their work, in the course of which they used the scissors.

DID THE, WARDERS HELP?

LONDON, Oct. 20

Following an inquiry into the escape of two convicts from Pentonville Prison, disciplinary action has been taken against two warders. In addition to loosening bricks with a pair of scissors, the escapees used a crowbar to force a ventilator. Eight flying squads of . police are combing London for the missing men. Marks, one of the escapees, is a .notorious .pickpocket, and a violent character, and is expected to strenuously resist irearreat. : L ’