SAVED BY LOVE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22149, 1 July 1935, Page 12

SAVED BY LOVE

PRISONER'S DRAMA ESCAPE AND MARRIAGE FINGER-PRINTS AND A FIRE A salesman, George Cornish, aged 33, who had pleaded guilty to a charge of having escaped from custody on .July 9, 1926, while being conveyed from Narrandrra to Goulburn gaol, New South Wales, was brought up for sentence in Sydney last Monday. Judge Thompson said that, taking into consideration the lapse of years and the fact that accused had shown a strong tendency toward reformation, probably due to the influence of his wife, he would defer passing sentence, to enable the process of reformation to continue. Accused was bound over in his own recognisance and one surety of £4O to be of good behaviour for three years, and to come up for sentence if called upon within that period. Cornish subsequently told his story to a representative of the Sydney Telegraph. " In Love With a Girl " "I was in love with a girl," said Cornish, "and her family was in a good position. There was another chap who had enough money to give her anything she wished. I wanted money to be able to give her things like that, so, without her knowledge, I committed the crime for which I was sentenced nine years ago. "I escaped and, after a terrible five days and nights, got to Sydney. I found her, and told her what I had done. And then she told me that she would marry mo just the same! About two months afterwards, when I had got a job, we were married."

It was a dramatic story that Cornish had to tell—that of a jump from a speeding train, of a night's march with handcuffs on, and their final undoing with the metal tag of a bootlace, of an icy wade through a wintry swamp, of a man so ravenous for food that he ate a boiled cat that he caught at a deserted farmhouse. "Things weren't so bad once I got to Queensland and got a job," Cornish said. "For a while I was an advertising model, and a quarter-page photo of me used to appear in the papers. My little son recognised it ns mo when he was four and a-half years old, but no policeman who knew me ever saw it, apparently. Hands Plunged in Flames "I'm glad it's all over, and I'm happier now than I've been since I was sentenced nine years ago. I'm glad it came out before my kiddies —the oldest is a seven-year-old boy—were old enough to know about it. I was lucky to get off as I did. I quite expected to do the original sentence and. somo extra, and the thought of the breakingup of my home nearly drove me crazy. "It was the thought that which made me plunge my hands into the fire and try and burn off my finger-prints recently when I was arrested in a betting raid. I have learned the lesson every man learns —that everyone who commits a crime pays for it. You can't beat the law. "Everj-one has been very kind to me. The police did everything they could. All my neighbours have been kind—my landlord, everybody. Now all I want is to get a job."