DARING ATTEMPTED ESCAPE OF TWO PRISONERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7480, 9 November 1885, Page 5

DARING ATTEMPTED ESCAPE OF TWO PRISONERS.

A very daring attempt to escape from custody at the Mount Eden Gaol was made at six a.m. on Saturday by two lightsentence prisoners named Henry Harrison and Richard Hackett, who are undergoing sentences of six months and three month's respectively for larceny. It appeared that che men were engaged carrying porridge in large p-.nnikius from tno penitentiary to the dotachtd female division under charge of Warder I'. Madigan, when they dashed the tiu3 and their contents into the officer's face, and made off along the railway line and over an embankment. Warder Madigau gave chase to the m«n, who, on the officer gaining on them, resorted to stones to keep him off. Harrison, however, stood his ground, and Hackett continued to run. The warder would not be denied his man, and at once closed with Hackett, who called on Harrison to continue his fasiiade of stone?. After a severe " rough and tumble," Hackett was overpowered. Warder D. Maloney coming up, Harrison was also secured, and the prisoners rearohed off to their cells within ten minutes of the escape. They were brought up before the Visiting Justices and ordered to be brought before the Police Court upon charges of attempted escape and assaulting the warder. Mr. Keston, governor of the gaol, speaks in the highest terms of Warder Madigan's intrepid conduct in recapturing the men, and considers both officers fulfilled their duty in a manly and creditable way. He can only attribute the offence to pure bravado on the part of the prisoners.