AN INCIDENT OF RIPA ISLAND.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 January 1918, Page 2

AN INCIDENT OF RIPA ISLAND.

CONVICT'S ESCAPE IN 1888. A correspondent writes to the Auckland Star:—A telegram from Wellington states that the military authorities arc preparing a "home" for the recaptured German prisoners on Ripa Island, in the Lyttelton Harbor. 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. The island is so near the mainland that Roberts was able to swim across to the peninsula, and has never been retaken. Wlißt 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 Roberta, who was serving a sentence of five years' imprisonment for horse-stealing, escaped from Timaru gaol on April 28, 18S8, and was recaptured on May 31. He was sent with a gang of convicts to work on Ripa Island, which lies about 60yds 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, and 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 first escape, and from a feeling that his sentence was severe.