A BID FOR FREEDOM

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8192, 6 August 1912, Page 1

A BID FOR FREEDOM

ASYLUM PATIENT’S DASH CROSSES AUCKLAND HARBOUR IN A STORM. ' PEES 3 ASSOCIATION. AUCKLAND, August 5. Among the odd craft abroad on the harbour last mgUt was a small punt being strenuously paddled through wind and waves by a mental hospital patient from Motuihi Island, who was mailing a bold bid for liberty. Just last week the pressure on the aocommouation at Avondale Mental Hospital was relieved by the transfer of hfty patients to Tokanui and sixty others to Motuihi Island, the olu quarantine station in the harbour. Apparently the arrangements had not yet been made quite tight, for late yesterday afternoon one of the patients, a vigorous young man, eluded his keepers and got away. With punt and paddles, his eye on the mainland some tour or five miles distant, all night hy battled against the tide, his small craft twice swamping, and eventually, in the early hours of this morning, he literally blew into ' Sv. Heliers Bay, with his hands cruelly blistered by the long light to win across the four miles of storm-swept water. From his landing point he made his way to one of the southern suburbs, where from a one-time friend he heard that his wife was ill in the district hospital. He thereupon tramped .through the rain to the hospital to see his wife.

Meantime, news of his escape had preceded him over the telephone wires, and when he presented himself, drenched, dishevelled, and bleeding at the hospital, the' police were notified, ana ho was detained. He submitted quietly to the detention, and in due course was escorted back to the Avondale mental hospital.