ESCAPING FROM GAOL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18598, 8 January 1935, Page 11

ESCAPING FROM GAOL

AUSTRALIAN PLOTTERS

DISCOVERIES BY WARDERS

REVOLVER IN ICED CAKE

SYDNEY, Dee. 28

Warders in Australian gaols always double their watch and take extraordinary precautions to prevent escapes at the Christmas season. Experience has proved- that this is the danger period of the year for convicts. The lure to be free for the annual festive season is great. Friends and relatives of some prisoners cannot resist temptation to outwit stone walls and prison bars. The prisoners thembecome restless and discontented.

Warders’ vigilance this Christmas resulted in tlie discovery of at least two attempts to escape. One was at Parramatta gaol, near Sydney, and the other at rent ridge gaol, Melbourne.

At Parramatta officials foiled a (less perate plot by discovering a revolver and seven cartridges in a big iced cake posted to a prisoner. They were convinced that an organised attempt 1o break gaol was intended, or that possibly a warder, recently threatened. was lo have been murdered. The gun and bullets may not have been for the particular man to whom tlie cake was addressed. Even if Ihe cake had reached him. Hie revolver might have been taken without his knowledge. Everything depended upon who the man was that knew the weapon was coming In.

FA MILT AR WITH GAOL ROUTINE The sender of the cake must have been familiar with prison routine, for the parcel arrived on a special clay when prisoners are allowed to receive food from friends nr relatives. lie did nof reckon, however, with the alertness of Mr. O’Conor, the gaol governor, and his si off. Every article of food received at the prison is tested to .see if it: contains tools nr weapons. Cakes are pierced all over with a thiu. steel wire. The probe on this occasion revealed the revolver. The cake was covered with pink icing. Jt, was shop made. It, had been clean]v cut in the middle, and the revolver, with its cartridges, placed in a hollow made at Hie centre. There was nothing in the appearance of the cake to show that it had been tampered with. -

It is believed that the revolver plot is an aftermath of the plan to start a gaol riot in January last. Mr. O’Conor on that occasion had .six ringleaders swiftly and secretly moved from Parramatta and sent to other prisons. In Parramatta, the most, desperate criminals are housed. They include “lifers” and long-sentence men, who would not stop at murder to gain tlieir liberty or pay olf a grudge. The Pentridgc warders' discovery was of a cunningly-concealed and in-geniously-prepared gaol-breakers’ kit. on which a prisoner serving an eightyears’ term for shop-breaking had built his hopes for a Christmas escape.