CONVICTS’ PLOT FOILED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 143, 19 June 1931, Page 11

CONVICTS’ PLOT FOILED

THE MAN WHO TOLD. AN ESCAPE FRUSTRATED. A plot by four convicts to escape in the streets of London was frustrated in dramatic fashion recently. Eight convicts, handcuffed together in two parties of four, were being taken in a police tender from Wandsworth Prison to Pentonville Prison before being finally sent, to Parkhurst. The party was in charge of a young police officer. Only four of the eight convicts were in the secret of tho attempt r.o escape, and it was planned to make the bid for liberty while the police tender was crossing Battersea Park, says the Sunday Express. Ouc of them, an expert at picking locks, succeeded ;q releasing his three companions and himself and waited to give tho signal to attack the guard. At this point, however, one of the freed men—a long-term convict—touched the police officer an<l signalled with a glance to the loosened handcuffs and hanging chain. The officer appeared not to noti'*e the signal, but went to .he driver’s window, and, after making a casual reference to the weather, he ordered him. in an undertone, to drive the van into the main road among the traffic. The police tender swung off the park thoroughfare and joined a stream of traffic in the main road. Then the guard told the four convicts that he know they had loosened their handcuffs and chains, and advised them to submit. They did so. When they reached Penton v-’lle the man who gave the warning was taken before the chief warder. He gave full details of the plans, and added that a number of convicts then in Wandsworth, who were shortly to be removed to Dartmoor, had also planned to escape.

The prisoner declared that if he were taken back to Wandsworth he would show where a handcuff key and a file were hidden.