CONVICT'S DARING ESCAPE.

Mataura Ensign, 11 July 1906, Page 3

CONVICT'S DARING ESCAPE.

200 MILK JOURNEY ON A RAFT.

Nut often is liow Street tlie theatre of roimincr. but one of (lie most remarkable adventures of modern times tlio escape of several prisoners from ll\e French penal settlement known as Devil's Ts'Jaiict —is recalled by a charge preferred at liow street against- a man wlm is said to have been the ringleader of that revolt. Prisoner, who was remanded for iiic|uiries, was a tall, well-dressed man, wearing a long overcoat and carrying a silk hat in his hand. His mime was given as Edward, or Eddie Gucrin, and his age as | -17. Jlo was brought up on a provis-1 ioiiivl extradition warrant charging him with being convicted of the crime | of larceny in Franco. Detcctive-ln- | spector Sexton read the warrant to prisoner at. Tottenham Koad Police Station, in the presence of ChiefDetective Inspector Kane, and further said to (iuerin, "Larceny was the original charge on which you were sentenced to penal servitude for life, but you managed to escape from the French penal settlement.'-' At liow Street, (luerin said he was an Irishman, lioin in London. He. refused his address, and in Court, looking very mock and calm, he asked the officers no (piestions. The remarkable adventures said 1o be associated with the present charge go back to .'lnly, li-SS, when a man was arrested in London for offences in Erance l and after prolonged exlradiction proceeding's prisoner asserting that he was a British subject born in Ireland, and,, therefore, not liable to extradition to Franco— the High Court decided, in •January, ISSD, that he must go back to France. There he was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude for robbing ,u bank in Lyons. One night during the. sitnuner of ]9t)o—after the man had served his term—the ncgrp. caretaker of the American Express Dank, opposite the Paris Opera House, was aroused from a casual slumber by a hand grip on the throat and a threat of instant death if he broke the silence. Two men held, revolvers at him, and a third carried a dark lantern. The negro was gagged and bound, and the burglars, having muffled the? bank sate with rags, blew it up with dynamite, decamped with £SOOO, three-lifths of which the police afterwards recovered-. The "'wanted" man and hjs associates were arrested, and sentenced to penal servitude for life on Devil's | Tslaud, the Caribbean settlement, where Dreyfus was imprisoned. The convict was a well-behaved man, and after a time wus allowed privileges not accorded to ordinary convicts. From first setting foot on the settlement he seems to have, made up his mind to escape, and ultimately he got away from the prison with two companions. Out of a fallen tree they fashioned a raft and paddles, and one dark night they made for Dutch Guiana, knowing that they dared not land for 200 miles. They paddled and slept by turns, and it was said that one of them was do*

vowed by sharks ; but according to an account said lo have been given by tlic ringleader himself, his two companions turned traitors, and ho kept '' ' ig three days and nights by _. „ loaded revolver, and when land was reached he left them in the ''dug' out," thoroughly exhausted, while he trudged northward. Again, according lo his own account, he was afterwards captured by a band of natives, and he suffered horribly before he escaped, and finally staggered into Paramibo, Dutch Guiana, "a bag of bones, suffering from fever." There, are other thrilling accounts of what happened. According to one of these, eleven men escaped with the prisoner, and there are blood-curdling reports of some of them being devored by sharks, others being shot by prison guards, and of some of the* escaped prisoners dying of starvation in trees in preference to entrusting themselves to the tender mercies of woTves lying in wait below. It is ditlicult to reconcile all the stories, but it seems tolerably certain that some of them arc true, and that some did survive the escape from Devil's Island. The present arrest in London is said to be due to the remarkable memory mid vigilance of 11.I 1 . C Helps, who had the man in custody in ISSS for the I'rench affair referred to. The officer had been informed) by Chief-Inspector Kane that the man was supposed to be in London, and in Charlotte street Helps saw the prisoner, and, it.is said, identified him as the man he had in custody in ISSS. The prisoner denies thai he is the man wanted, and the task remaining for the police is to prove (hat their identification is cor-