LIFETIME IN GAOL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18759, 12 January 1923, Page 8

LIFETIME IN GAOL

OCTOGENARIAN CRIMINAL’S DEATH. 8 (From Our Own Corrkspondent.) SYDNEY, January 3. A career of crime commenced at the age of 14, a lifetime in gaols all over tho world and death at 82 in tho degradation of prison was the remarkable career of John Dawson, who lias just died at the 1 atala Stockade, near Adelaide. Dawspn had spent nearly the whole of his lifetimo in gaols in different parts of the world. An incurable offender, ho was no sooner free from one prison than liis footstops led him—via some misdeed —into another. Crime to him became a profession. Hia remarkable record showed that the terms of imprisonment imposed upon him aggregated more than the number of years that he has been alive. Dawson was born in England in 1840. At the age of 14 he began his criminal career by committing a theft at Hull. Six years later, he was sentenced to 20 years penal servitude for robbery with violence. That term having been served, he turned his attention to other countries. His trail led by devious routes half across tho world to Western Australia, when in 1885 ho was imprisoned fof»seven years for larceny and receiving. In 1911, in the same State, he was sentenced to six months for larceny. Since then there have been 92 other convictions against him, including a large number in Sydney and Victoria, among others for larceny, assault, and breaking gaol. In 1913 he was sent to gaol for unlawful possession and larceny in South Australia, and was ordered two months imprisonment on each charge. Dawson by this time was an old man, and his hand had lost much of its cunning. He had tho Bnglish-trait of tenacity in his ways of crime. Scorning the shelter and food which ho could have received for the rest of his life at an institution for tho aged and helpless, bo pursued his nefarious trade, mads desperate, apparently, by the thought of increasing feebleness and declining years. He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for attempted pocket-picking. Probably on account of his age, however, he was freed before the expiration of that period. A few days after hia liberation ho snatched a purse from a basket carried by a young girl. Tho sentence on that occasion of 12 months was the filial one for the sad old vagabond. He returned to the stockade that day, and never again saw the World beyond the prison walle.