BREAKING PRISON.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4922, 6 January 1926, Page 4

BREAKING PRISON.

SOME AMAZING ESCAPES. The ingenuity of the prisoner is endless. The fact is that when a man's whole mind and energies are concentrated upon one subject he can and does achieve miracles (writes <i former goal governor 1 in the “Daily Mail”). While it is dillicult ,to imagine a more toilsome task than cutting through thick masonry with a pair of scissors, as the two prisoners who escaped from Pcntonville did, there are cas.es on record of even less likely tools being employed for a. similar purpose. Five years ago all the convicts confined in Marion County Gaol, Indianapolis (U.S A.), escaped through one of their number managing to obtain a. watchmaker’s ssaw, which was smuggled to him inside the cover, of a small book. The bars of the cells were immensely thick, and made of specially tempered steel, but this prisoner managed to remove their temper by wrapping round them a cloth saturated in formaldehyde, the prison disinfectant. The sawing took many days, the marks being hidden by soap. r:-

Alfred Thomas, an English burglar, was caught red-handed at Breda and put in prison, where he w.as employed in his cell at box-making. He managed to cut from his bench a long, flat piece of iron, and this he fashioned into a chisel. A 1 metal pin he got by taking off the leg of his table, replacing it with a wooden pin, and imitating the metal nut with .a piece of brown bread pinched into the proper shape-

Armed with pin, chisel, and tile leg of the table as mallet, he cut away the wood around the lock of his cell door, opened it, and began .to grope his way to freedom. Reaching the gaoler’s room he found his keys, but presently came to m door Which none of the keys would unlock. He went back, found a knife, and with this picked- the lock. He reached the exercise yard, only ,to find great, iron railings that could not be scaled. Undismayed, he dug out under them, taking out a load of, stones which would take a navvy a day to put back. He wrote on the wall: “A : pleasant night I” Then he vanished. Equally amazing was the escape of the notorious criminal Vanden Wegarte from Lille Gaol. To ensure his saftey he was confined in the condemned cel 1, • u ndergrou nd. Somehow he melted down his pewter mug and made two skeleton keys, having first taken an impression of the lock with bread pulp. He scaled the interior wall, 9 feet high, another wall by a waterspout, then dropped 15 feet, with the aid of a blanket taken from his cell. Breaking into a tailor’s shop he exchanged his prison uniform tor a smart suit, helped himself to money and cigars, and has not since been heard of.