DARTMOOR RECORD.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 662, 16 January 1933, Page 5

DARTMOOR RECORD.

No Escaped Convict Gets Clear Away. MEN’S WEEK OF NIGHTMARE. Two convicts, John Michael Gasken and Frederick Amey, who escaped from Dartmoor prison, were recaptured near Cowley Bridge, Exeter, after being at liberty seven days—a Dartmoor record —and their capture means that the Dartmoor tradition that no convict ever gets clear away remains unbroken. Sergeant Greet and Constable Sangster, of the Exeter City police, were walking along the railway when suddenly they heard footsteps. As they .got closer the policemen stepped aside on the embankment and waited. When the men were level with them they challenged, them. Immediately Gasken and Amey jumped off j the line, ran up the embankment, and over a hedge. Both officers dashed after them, and when they got within a few yards of them the convicts gave up without any resistance. Eggs and Bacon and Cocoa. The two men were taken to a cottage nearby, where they were given tea, and the constables telephoned the Exeter i.olice, who came out by car. The men were driven to the police i station, where they were provided with j eggs and bacon and cocoa. It wus the first hot meal that either | of the men had had for nearly a week. The whole town of Crediton had been i surrounded by police patrols following | reports of burglaries, and it was in the i belief that the men might have tried ; to get through along the Southern Railway line that a special patrol was ' placed at short intervals between i Crediton and Exeter. I Sergeant Greet, describing the oap- | ture, said: “I went for Amey and ! Sangster took Gasken. The men made | a 10-foot drop from the embankment. ; We took a flying leap at them, but had to run about 200 yards before we : caught them.” i One of the men said he had seen the aeroplane which had been searching for them and had remarked to his companion, “ I’ll bet that is Major Morns up there.” “ A Regular Nightmare.” Constable Sangster said: “They told us that they had lived practically for the whole time since they left Dartmoor on mangel-wurzels and on bits *of green stuff they had got out of the fields. “ We asked them what they had been doing and which way they had come during the last week, but they said that they scarcely knew themselves. Amey said it had been ‘ a regular nightmare.’ ” The previous Dartmoor escape record was held by Gasken. who was nun ted for five days before being caught in February of last year,