MENTAL ASYLUM ESCAPEE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 232, 19 February 1913, Page 8

MENTAL ASYLUM ESCAPEE.

AN EXCITING TIME. Auckland, February 17. The story of the escape of 'Piomas Henry Johnston, of Waihi, from the Avondale (Mental Hospital and his subsequent wanderings, in which he so successfully eluded the police, warders and everyone sent after him, makes interesting reading. On the Saturday morning after Xew Year he was one of a gang of,men employed under a warder stocking oats. When the attendant was busy working, Johnson bolted through a fence along a swamp, and hid in a clump of gorse. ''Boiling myself up into a ball, with my knees to my chin like a cat. and pulling the gorse into place again," as he expressed it. lie bad a most exciting time, as the search party which at once set out upon L the alarm being given walked round the clump repeatedly. , "By shifting my position." said he, "I could have seized the blue serge of their trousers." He passed a most uncomfortable tim? !in his cramped position, and it was not until 4 o'clock (hat he was able to stretch himself. Tie says it was most amusing to hear the search parties discussing him and his liight while they were standing right alongside him time after time, tie did not venture out until after dark, and then made off, eventually getting out to Penrose. Thence he followed the line to WestfiehL "where T had a drink of water," he remarked. "The porter called out and asked me where 1 was going. I said home to Otahnhu. He asked me where my eoat was. I said, 'Left behind —been on the shicker.' "

Gradually working down the line, Johnson made his way through the Waikato. begging food, and occasionally getting a lift. Once lie managed to get a cheap train ride by lying in an empty truck with a cover on it. Eventually be worked his way down to Te Aroha, whence he took the ranges for a straight cut to Wailii. After a bad time in tho hills, lie struck the electric power line from Horahora to Waihi, and then the going was better. Tie got home on January 7, three days after his escape, nnd says he never left the house, in spite of several searches that the police made.