SCARECROWS AND PRISON BREAKERS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 227, 17 November 1916, Page 2 (Supplement)

SCARECROWS AND PRISON BREAKERS.

WHY GERMANY HAS FORBIDDEN USE OF THE FORMER.

Orders have recently been issued in Germany compelling tlie peasants to remove any old ciothing from scarecrows in the fields.

The reason for this somewhat extraordinary bell est is that escaping prisoners of war have exchanged clothes with the dummy figures, and, so disguised, they have, in many instances, succeeded in reaching the frontier unsuspected. The dodge is of course.. tio new one. Over a hundred years ago two French officers, confined as prsoners o war on Dartmoor, escaped to the coast in scarecrows' rags annexed rom a farmer's cornfields, and eventually reached France in a smuggling sloop. In November, 1597, again, a prisoner who escaped from Shrewsbury Gaol annexed the clothes from two scarecrows dressed up in feminine attire in an orchard. He then retired to a thick wood, and with a pair of scissors and a needle and cotton, converted the skirts into a coat and a> pair of trousers. Tn this case, however, freedom did not reward his ingenuity, for he. was speedily recaptured.