MEN ON PRISON ROOF

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 745, 19 August 1929, Page 11

MEN ON PRISON ROOF

AMAZING TEN-HOUR SIEGE IN LONDON SPEECHES TO CROWDS Pentonville Prison in London was the setting for an amazing scene on a recent evening. Just before three o’clock in the afternoon two men with torn clothes, grimy, and bleeding, appeared suddenly on the top of the roof of the inspection shed, a little way inside the prison walls. At the same moment the alarm siren in the prison blared its warning to the teeming streets of Isling ton that an attempt to escape was being made. Police whistles blew; constables arrived at the run; a special squad was sent from the local station, and in a few minutes the prison was surrounded. Meanwhile, the men on the roof shouted ’and gesticulated defiance at warders on the ground below. All this was in full view 0)f the gathering crowds in Roman Road, at the back of the prison.

The inspection shed, on the very top of which the men were now perched, is a few yards inside the 18-foot wall which surrounds the prison on that side.

Behind, on two sides of the, courtyard, arc the tali buildings which contain the cells, tier upon tier of barred windows behind which could be seen the faces of. convicts looking on, and, in many places, a glimpse of a white cloth waved in encouragement to their fellow-prisoners. Having got so far, however, the two men made no further attempt at escape. Instead they began to harangue the crowd in the manner of Hyde Park orators. One leaning against a chim-ney-pot, the oth.er astraddle the top ridge of a steeply sloping roof, 30ft from the ground, they shouted their alieged grievances to the world. “We do not want to escape,” they declared. “We have only got up here in a test attempt to call public attention to what we have to suffer. Send for the local M.P. We want him* to hear. “We are in the hands of brutes. We are starving. We have nothing to eat but dry bread and dirty carrots. “If we go to the infirmary we are not allowed to see a doctor, and they put us in strait-jackets. Three com rades of ours are starving in hospital. “X”—this from one of them—“have been in a strait-jacket for two and ahalf hours and have just been released. They made me bleed when they put it on me.”

He held up a bleeding arm. The Other man shrieked: “My pal is bleeding to death,” then scrambled across the coping to him, tore a piece out of his own shirt and bound the other prisoner’s wrist.

Both appeared to be in the early twenties. Both had long, tousled hair. Neither wore the broad arrow prison costume, but appeared-to be in ordinary clothes, owing, it was said, to their being mental cases under in firmary observation. They shouted continuously until they grew hoars%; then only at intervals. At five o'clock, for instance one called out: “They are trying bolow to tempt us to come down with tea, but we won’t. We’ll never go down until w*e get fair play.” Hours passed. Angry police moved tlie crowds to and fro in the streets. In the windows of all the surrounding houses, now like windows on the route of a great procession, privileged spectators. some of whom had paid for their seats, sat and watched the two men through opera glasses. At dusk they were still there. Older residents iu the vicinity recalled that some 23 years ago two other prisoners got on to this very same wall and remained there for three days and nights until, in the pangs of utter hunger, they surrendered to the lure of an appetising dinner, savourysmelling on a plate below. Shortly before one o’clock next morning one of the men on the roof shouted "We are coming down. 1 have lost a lot of blood up. here.” Then followed the sound of ladders being placed in position, and a warder appeared on the roof. A few seconds later the men began to grope their way toward the chimney stacks. Shortly afterward all three disappeared and the crowd dispersed.