ENGLAND.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Volume II, Issue 70, 30 December 1863, Page 1 (Supplement)

ENGLAND.

The next session of Parliament will be inundated with railway schemes for London. The main object contemplated in these projects is the substitution, to a great extent, of the railway for the omnibus and cab in the internal traffic of London. The Lords' Committee of last session have reported that additional railway communication is needed in the densely-populated parts of the metropolis. . The traffic is enormous, and is increasing every day; and it is to be hoped that whatever lines may be sanctioned by Parliament, will be dis- , tributed and controlled on the principle of - public convenience as opposed to the mere • spirit of speculation. It appears that the average cost of one mile of railway in London is £600,000. The construction of one mile from Nine Elms to Waterloo bridge cost £1,000,000.

Considerable discussion is taking place at the present time in the British Isles, and particularly in London, on Prison Discipline. It was agitated not long ago at the Social Science Congress in Edinburgh, where nearly all the speakers pronounced in favor of the Irish convict system. A committee of Hampshire justices, of which Lord Carnarvon was the principal member, has lately issued a report on the subject, full of wise suggestions respecting the the treatment of prisoners. Lord Carnarvon proposes to increase the punishment of hard labor for a longer time than is in use at present, and to make the prisoners work instead of being treated to out-door exercise. Their rations he would considerably reduce, particularly in animal food. The entire report aims, indeed, at making the punishment of imprisonment as sharp and severe as possible; and the wonder is how it ever came to be regarded as anything else. A prisoner made his escape on the 16th of October from Millbank prison. It seems that a person named Brown, employed on the South-Western Railway, was returning home with his wife between four and five o'clock on that morning from a friend's house, where they had been spending the evening. When near Commercial-road, Millbank, they were passed by a man running at a great speed with only his shirt and trousers on. Brown observed to his wife that the man looked like an escaped convict, and it subsequently transpired that one had escaped from the prison. The name of the convict is Martin Sheen; his age, 28, though he looks somewhat older. He is 5 feet 6 inches in height, of fair complexion, with iron grey hair and hazel eyes. He is somewhat inclined to be stout, and his nose and right hand are broken. He is a surgeon by profession, a Roman Catholic in religion ; his friends live, or did live, at No. 85, Wardour-street, Soho, and he was sentenced to 10 years' penal servitude for forgery about 11 months ago at the Central Criminal Court. It appears that after his conviction he was removed to Pentonville, where he made certainly one, if not more attempts to escape, and was removed to Millbank for more safe custody. During the time he has been at Millbank he has made nearly a dozen attempts to escape. One one occasion, indeed, he had reached the roof of the prison, when he was detected, and for some time after kept heavily ironed. On'that occasion he had in his possession a large knife, and it remains a mystery how he became possessed of it, as he had been in prison for some months, and, according to the regulations, had been regularly searched and stripped twice in each week, the cell examined twice every day, and a search also made when he went out for exercise in the care of a warder. The windows of the prisoner's cell are about 38 feet high, and it seems he managed to remove a number of bricks from one of the corners of the cell, making a hole large enough for him to get his body through. He had provided himself with a rope made of cocoanut fibre, probably from the matting in the chapel. At the end of this rope was a hook fashioned out of the wire by which the tin drinking mugs are fastened round the rim. From the aperture he had made in the corner of his cell he lowered himself down about 12 feet on to the roof of a building called the general ward. Here he possessed himself of a piece of board 6 feet long by 9 inches wide, one of the tables, and also all the sash lines from the windows. With these things he returned to his cell. He used the table for a platform, and from it threw the hook end of the coir rope up to the gutter. By the aid of a bag of sand, which he had probably gathered from the allowance made for cleaning out the cells, he gave weight to his hook and secured it to the gutter noiselessly. He must then have pulled himself up by the coir rope, taking the sash lines with him. This brought him to the roof of the main building, and, fastening the sash line from one of the chimneys he lowered himself down into the garden. Safely there, he made for the boundary wall, which is from 20 feet to 25 feet high, aud

again making use of the coir rope with the hook and sandbag, reached the top of the wall, let himself down on the other side, and left the coir rope hanging there behind him. He had then only to cross the vacant piece of ground outside the building, get over some iron railings, and, as he undoubtedly did, make his escape. This daring escape was from E ward in the sth sexagon, the one that faces towards Ponsonby-place, and for coolness of execution and determination has hardly been surpassed. It is almost needless to say that the utmost vigilance is being shown to effect the recapture of the convict, but as he is tiot known as a regular offender, of course the difficulty of recognition becomes increased.