PRISON CAMP ESCAPE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22056, 12 March 1935, Page 12

PRISON CAMP ESCAPE

PREFERENCE EOR GAOL

AN OLD OFFENDER

DECLARED HABITUAL CRIMINAL

The plea that ho was a sufferer from epilepsy and waYited to secure a transfer to Mount Eden prison was made by Alfred Derbyshire, who appeared before Mr. Justice Herdman in tho Supreme Court yesterday for sentence on charges of escaping from tho Waikuno prison camp and also of breaking into a house and theft. Derbyshire asked His Honor to take into consideration that his idea was not to escape, but to get back to Mount Eden, where he could got treatment. "I am suffering from epilepsy," he said. "It is said you suffer from epilepsy whon inside the gaol," said His Honor, "but you seem to undergo a wonderful cure the moment you come out." Derbyshire said "that while ho was in Waikoria they brought a specialist from a mental hospital to him, and ho was ordered special treatment. His Honor: Did you not escape from prison in January of this yearP—Yes, sir. His Honor: Then you escaped a second timo. Derbyshire said they would not send him back to Mount Eden, and he took tho only chance ho had. His Honor said Derbyshire had escaped from Waikune on January 25 last, and he had been sent back to Waikune —why His Honor did not know. He had beon convicted on many occasions in New Zealand and before that in Australia. He camo to Now Zealand as a stowaway in 1929, and since then had been convicted of theft nine times. He was at present serving a sentence of three years' reformative detention. He would now be sentenced to three years' hard labour for breaking and entering and theft and to six months for escaping, these sentences to run concurrently with his present sentence. In addition, ,he would be declared an habitual criminal.