LIFE-TIME IN GAOL.

Otaki Mail, 15 January 1923, Page 4

LIFE-TIME IN GAOL.

LONG CRIMINAL CAREER. Sydney, Jan. 5. A career of crime, commenced at the age of 14, a lifetime in gaols all over the world, and death at 82 in the degradation of prison, was the remarkable career of John Dawson, who has just died at the Yatala Stockdae, near Adelaide.

Dawson had spent nearly the whole of his lifetime in gaols in different parts of the world. An incurable offender, he was no sooner free from one prison than his footsteps led kirn —via some misdeed —into another. Crime to him became a profession. His remarkable showed thai the terms of imprisonment imposed upon hint aggregated more than the number of years that he has been alive.

Dawson was born in England in IS-iU. Ar the age of 1 1 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, ho turned hit? attention to other countries. His trail led by devious routes half across the world to Western Australia, when in 1885 he was imprisoned for seven years for larceny and receiving, hi 191.1, in the same Stale, he was sentenced to six months for larceny. Since then there have been 92 other convictions against, him. including ;t large number in Sydney ami 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 mouths' imprisonment on each charge.

Dawson by this time was an old man, and his hand had lost much of its cunning. He had the English trait of tenacity in his ways of crime. Scorning the shelter and food which he could have received for the rest of his life at an institution for the aged and helpless, he pursued his nefarious trade, made desperate, apparently, by the though of increasing feebleness and declining years. Hi.' was sentenced to six months' imprisonment tor pocket-pick-ing. Probably on account of his age. however, he was freed before the expiration of that period. A few days after his liberation, he snatched a purse from a basket carried by a young girl. The sentence on that occasion, of twelve months, was the final one for the sad, old vagabond. He returned to the stockade that day and never again sawtho world beyond the prison walls.