HOW A PRISONER CAN ESCAPE ?

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 6, 1 June 1883, Page 23

HOW A PRISONER CAN ESCAPE ?

LtTCCA, says an Italian correspondent of the N.Y. Sun, the old capital of the microscopic duchy, has a penitentiary. An inmate was Eu« genio Fiocchi, from Varlu'ngo, a village near Florence. He was serving a term of twenty-nine years for the murder of a girl and a sacrilegious robbery. He was a cabinet-maker, so skilful that he won a golden prize at the last Milan exhibition. He quarrelled with the prison superintendent, and he planned and executed a wonderful pro* ject of escape. Removing a few bricks from the flooring of his cell, he made' his way into the subterranean chambers of the prison. During the day the brick flooring was kept firm by an ingenious contrivance, and all shavings were carefully concealed. There were five chambers in the vaults. From the last one Fiocchi dug a tunnel twenty yards long. He says that it took him only eleven months to do it, but competent engineers assert that it must have taken him at least two years. He made a wheelbarrow to cart the earth from the tunnel. The earth filled one of the subterranean rooms. Once he was stopped by water, but he did not lose his courage. He im* provised a pump, and worked for several nights waist deep in water before he drained" the tunnel. He slept only two hours a night for eleven months, and he was always in his cell when the watchman called. His good behaviour and his skilful work in the daytime lulled all suspicion, and he carried out his plan of. escape totally uadisturbed. He finally completed his tunnel, and escaped. He went to Florence, where his mother resided. As his affection for her was well known, the police raided tha house and recaptured him. Draw* ing his knife he fought like a tiger, and the officers shot him down with their revolvers. He recovered from his wounds, however, and was taken back to prison. A special commission made an examination of the tunnel, and of his makeshift tools, and declared them marvellous. The superintendent of the prison is to be dismissed. When Fiocchi heard of it he said : ''I knew that they would catch me again. I ran away only for the purpose of getting the superintendent into hot water."