MUTINOUS SCENES

Wairarapa Daily Times, 25 January 1932, Page 5

MUTINOUS SCENES

AT DARTMOOR PRISON. (Received Monday, 10.20 a.m.) LONDON, Sunday. As the result of a violent outbreak at tho Dartmoor Prison, at Princctown, following upon a fortnight’s unrest and culminating in serious mutinous scenes, sixty to seventy convicts and a dozen warders are in. the gaol hospital, suffering from injuries. It is believed that none are killed. A savage struggle between .jOO to 400 convicts and the full staff of armed warders, reinforced by hundreds of policemen from the surrounding districts, raged for two houis. A prisoner attempted to. escape on 19th. January, and the prisoners attacked and injured two warders on 23rd January. All yesterday and last night rumours prevailed that a demonstration would be attempted; consequently the warders’ week-end leave was st-op-The prison resounded with shouting at six o ’clock in the morning, the usual rising hour. Convicts yelled and hammered on tire doors, created pandemonium, and threw porridge over the warders who took breakfast to the cells. DESPERATE STRUGGLE. AT CHURCH PARADE. (Received Monday, 10.55 a.m.) LONDON,. Sunday.

A desperate struggle began when the prisoners paraded for cliurch at o’clock, tho convicts hurling themselves on the warders. A group of prisoners dashed to the Governor’s office in the centre of the prison, snatched embers of coal from the fire and ignited the building, flames being visible for miles. the noise of rifle fire, following upon Saturday night’s sleepless apprehension, deepened tire alarm of Princetown residents. The Governor telephoned to the chief constables at Exeter and Plymouth, whence police were rushed in motor cars. A fire-engine was despatched and one hundred soldiers at the barracks paraded in service kit and steel helmets, awaiting orders to rush to Princetown.

Meanwhile convicts attemped to escape in all directions. Warders, armed with rifles prevented one hundred scaling the boundary wall. Firemen controlled the flames by 1 o’clock. Ambulance men attended to casualties, their injuries being chiefly received from police charges or bullet wounds.

The fire damaged the clock tower, the offices in the central block and destroyed records, preventing the ascertaining if, as is believed, two convicts escaped. The inmates of the prison numbered 480 and warders, 150. Precautions believed to be adequate had been taken to maintain discipline but it was not anticipated that the mutineers would show such resource.

Nearly every resident of Princetown was enrolled as a special constable and armed with rifles. Fifty Plymouth constables patrolled fifteen miles of Dartmoor.

It was found tliat convicts bad deprived warders of keys, smashed every window, and broken into offices and stores, compelling the Governor to run for his life' to a block in which the inmates remained loyal. The liters were defying the warders to attack them. As reinforcements arrived, the warders covered the howling mob with rifles, and then a police officer ordered a baton charge, which culminated in a pitched battle. Before the outbreak was quelled, 70 convicts lay unconscious on the pavement. The police and warders hustled the remainder to the cells. Some surrendered, but over one hundred fought desperately until overpowered. Even an omnibus driver who brought reinforcements was given a rifle and told to fire at any convict mounting the walls. Mr Alexander Maxwell, chairman of the Prison Commissioners, declined to give a statement for publication. The police, however, have officially announced that the trouble had been foreseen, and the governor of the prison had arranged for the necessary assistance. An eye-witness declares that the police arrived in the nick of time to prevent 300 desperate convicts escaping and terrorising the countryside. ‘ I have never seen,” he said t “more ghastly hand-to-hand fighting, even during the war. The whole yard was blood spattered.” A convict saved a warder’s life } shutting him in an empty stokehold and defending him with a shovel against three assailants. Official: No convicts escaped and

none are killed. The convicts had complained of' the food, but the cause of the outbreak cannot be stated.