ATTEMPTED ESCAPE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1845, 21 January 1880, Page 2

ATTEMPTED ESCAPE.

A prisoner, Edward Clarkson, convicted at the last July session of the Supreme Court on a charge of robbery with violence, and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude, attempted to escape this morning at nine o'clock. Ha was out with a gang, numbering twenty-five, at work at the Lyttelton Orphanage, under the guardianship of four warders, at the time of the attempt, and was at work in the front yard of the premises. Principal Warder Byan and Warder Kidd were at their stations, within a few yards of the spot whence the prisoner made a start for the road. Clarkson's first spring was out of the yard over a low hedge. He was no sooner there than Warder Byan challenged him to stop, at the same time giving the order "Fall in" to the other prisoners. Clarkson, who is a powerfully-framed man, quite six feet in height, disregarded the challenge, and Warders Kidd and Willmot vent in pursuit of him. Warder Eyas, in the meantime, had called loudly for assistance, to which the residents in the neighbourhood and the workmen at the graving dock responded immediately, the master of the Orphanage being amongst the foremost in the chase. One, two, three shots were fired after the prisoner, by this time up on the slope of the hill above Brittain terrace. After the report of the thitd fire he fell, throwing up his hands as he came to the ground upon his faee. For the moment, those in pursuit supposed the shot had struck him, an opinion which was a second later disproved, as Clarkson sprang up and took along the Yoelas road. When at the junction near to the late Mr Dransfield's house a fourth shot was fired, the effect being that he stopped short, though net struck by the ball, and was captured, and returned to the gang, and thence to the Lyttelton prison.