MODERN RIP VAN WINKLE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 176, 11 July 1927, Page 8

MODERN RIP VAN WINKLE.

FOUND CITY CHANGED AFTER 20 YEARS. Sydney, June 23. Unable to pick up the threads of free existence where he had dropped them 20 years ago, a regular Rip Van Winkle of modern times, a longterm prisoner recently released from New South Wales prisons, this week begged the police to send him back to gaol again. And now he finds himself in that indeterminate position where neither the gaols nor the citizens want him. It is. in fact, a story unequalled in the realms of fiction. The man concerned, sentenced to life imprisonment in 1906, when he was about 20 years of age, was released on bond late in 1926. Terms of his bond provided that he must stay in the metropolitan area, where his bondsman would have some reasonable opportunity of assuring himself that the man for whom he had gone surely would not return to criminal pursuits. And on the part of the gaol bird, he found himself in a city which he knew, but yet did not know.

Electric trams were new; aeroplanes, practically unknown when he went to gaol, were common; the rush and bustle of modernised Sydney were new to him. his friends of 20 years ago had gone from where he knew them, and he was worse than a stranger in his own country. The worst feature of all was his realisation that he was 20 years behind the times. His methods wore those of 20 years ago, and by some means, when he did get a position, some hint of his previous history, or the methods he employed at work, resulted in his dismissal. For five months he tried to get a settled iob; but failing, turned to the only place he knew—gaol. Unfortunately, he could not even get in there. Tie had committed no crime.

Twenty years ago he treriifnecl at the thought of gaol, and was sent there. This week he longed to go there, and the gates were closed against him.