AN INCIDENT AT RIPA ISLAND.

Taihape Daily Times, 5 January 1918, Page 3

AN INCIDENT AT RIPA ISLAND.

CONVICT’S ESCAPE IN 1888. A telegram from Wellington states that the military authorities are preparing a “.home” for the recaptured German prisoners on Ripa Island, in the Lyttelton Harbour A good many years ago a prisoner named. Jonathan Roberts escaped from a gang that had been sent from the gaol to work at Ripa Island. This island Is so near the mainland that Roberts was able to swim across to the peninsula, and has never been retaken. What Roberts was able to do the Germans would like to emulate, and it appears to me that Motuihi, properly guarded and managed, would be a safer place for interned prisoners of war than this last adopted child of the Defence Minister. Since Te Kooti’s escape New Zealand has paid away many thousands sterling for the recapture of runaways, and yet we do not appear to have profited by our past experiences. Jonathan Roberts, who was serving a term of five years’ imprisonment for horse-stealing, escaped from Timaru gaol on April 28, 1888, and was recaptured on May 31. He was sent with a gang of convicts to work on Ripa Island, which lies about fniyds from the mainland, and escaped from the island on June 8, 1888. The prisoners were locked in an iron shed on the island, for dinner, surd Roberts got out by removing a sheet of iron from the back of the building. He swam to the mainland unobserved, and, beyond the fact that his coat, soaked with water, was subsequently found 50yds up the hill on the mainland, no further trace of him was obtained by the authorities. Considerable sympathy was felt for Roberts on account of his daring and adroitness, as well as from the fact that he tried to live honestly after his firsr escape and from a feeling that h!s sentence was severe.