IN TEARS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 37, 13 February 1930, Page 7

IN TEARS

PRISONER'S FAREWELL "PRAYING DICK'S" CHANCE (From "The Post's" Representative.) SYDNEY, 6th February. Farewelled by a small group of men and women who stood on the wharf singing hymns, a thin-faced man leaned over the rail of a liner bound from Sydney to London the other day and sobbed. Released from the Parraraatta gaol after serving 10 years of a life sentence, "l'raying Dick" was saying good-bye to Australia. And on the wharf stood the man whom he had shot iv 1913, and for whose shooting he had been imprisoned. They parted with a firm handshake, and behind that simple gesture of friendship lay the dramatic story of a man's untiring efforts for five years to secure the- release of another man who had shot him down without provocation and had left him to die. At the age of 18 "Praying Dick" heard the sentence of life imprisonment passed upon him. Last mouth, with almost half his lifetime spent behind the grey prison walls of Parramatta—one of the ■ oldest gaols in the State—he stepped out, a free man, ready, at the age of 35, to start life afresh among his own people. In a little cottage in Balmain, one of Sydney's industrial suburbs, lives the man who was able to forgive. He bears no malice, and, in his own words, "hopes from the bottom of his heart that 'Praying Dick' will be able to start with a clean sheet in England." Petty theft—a lady's handbag—was responsible for the sensational ghooting affray that sent "Praying Dick" to the gaol. He had been sleeping in the Domain and was walking towards the city when he passed a man who was accompanied by two young ladies. Tempted suddenly, he snatched a handbag from one of the girls, and was making his escape when the man who was with her closed with him. Dick drew a revolver, which he had bought two daj-s before for self protection, he insisted, and fired several shots, one bullet striking the man in the body. As his victim fell unconscious Dick darted away, but the shots had been heard and a passerby was close at his heels. They came to grips, and in desperation Dick fired again, wounding his assailant. That is the story of the crime, for which Dick received his life sentence. The man who was first wounded, and ' who hovered between life and death for a month, was the man who stood on the wharf and waved Dick farewell. Dick, according to the story told by a friend, was! born in England, and when a youth was in a number of escapades. After a roving life he came to Australia, and it was not long before he was in gaol for petty thieving. The reformation of "Praying Dick" did not come immediately. For a time his soul was embittered, but little by little he became accustomed to the monotonous prison life. It was then that he yielded to the efforts of prison reformers whose kindly influences has long spread happiness among the prison inmates of the State. And so it was that he became "Praying Dick." He was proud of that nickname, a tribute, he considered, to his earnestness and fervour. In religion he found consolation, and when the prison gates eventually opened before him he passed beyond them a reformed man. He has stated his intention of telling his people in England the whole story of his life in Australia. He. says that he will hide nothing, and perhaps, in the little business that is waiting for him, he will find forge tf illness—to remember occasionally the big-hearted man at Balmain who knew how to forgive. Dick was still sobbing when the liner pulled out of the wharf. And many of those who were there to see him off were sobbing also.