A PRISON STORY.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 September 1918, Page 6

A PRISON STORY.

MM; WHO,"HAD NO,CHANCE". HOW, HE DIED FOE B3S COUNTRY. How a man was sent to prison for a! crime of which he was not guilty, how ho became violent, and almost insane, as the result of brooding over the wrong, and how, after he was released, he served his country gallantly at the front until he was killed in action, was told recently by the Attorney-General of 'Sow South Wales (Mr Hall). Behind the bare announcement recently given in a table message that No. C 34, Private George Hdrris, had been killed in action on Bth August, lies a story which proves once more Chat • fact is stranger than, fiction. Publicity was first given to this story by Mr Hall iu the Sydney Sunday Times. "When I first .daw George Harris," said Mr Hall, "his number was 57, not 634. He was serving a life sentence in the Parramatta Gaol for attempted murder. The gaol records said of him, 'He nurses imaginary wrongs, is very cunning, irritable, and easily upset. He has made violent, treacherous, and unprovoked assaults on prison officials, and on fellow prisoners.' He was not allowed the use of a knife and fork, and ate his food from a wooden dish with a wooden spoon. 'The worst man in the gaol,' an official whispered to me when Harris came to complain that he had never had a 'fair deal.' "Harris told me," continued Mr Hall, "that he could not remember his parents. The first thing he could recall was being handed over, at the age of three, to someone in Sydney, to be looked after. At the age of 12 he was on the training ship Sobraon. When he left that, at 16, he at once got into trouble, and he was in and out of gaol for the next five years. On his 21st birthday he made np his mind to reform. He had to live with doubtful characters, because he knew no respectable persons, but he bought a basket, and earned an honest living by hawking. Then a woman, who had been hit and robbed of her handbag, wrongly identified him-as her assailant. At the time of the offence he was playing cards with ; a man and two women in a house in which he lived. He called these three persons as witnesses, but their admissions in cross-examination as to their character were such that the jury would not believe that they were speaking the truth. Harris, *ho said, 'Before God, I am innocent of this charge,' was found guilty, and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment." "Harris told ine," Mr Hall went on, "that during his previous ternjs in prison he had just made the best of it, ana was always regarded as a 'good' prisoner. But to be wrongly convicted after he had tried so hard to live hon'estly drove him nearly mad. He was always in trouble, and, after two year 3, he stabbed the governor oi the gaol with a knife. He was sentenced to death, but the governor recovered, and the sentence was turned into penal servitude for life. Then he went quite mad, and was put into the hospital for the criminal insane. After a year or more he escaped, but was recaptured. He told the constable who arrested him that he was not guilty of the robbery for which he was given 10 years, and the constable said that lie had heard of a number of persons who said the same. "Having told me his story, Harris begged me to test it in every way possible," said Mr Hall. "He asked me. if I found that be was not guilty of the robbery, to put a limit on his sentence, and not to leave him in prison for life. A careful and exhaustive study of the case lent color to his contentions. The statements of the constable who had arrested him after his escape greatly strengthened my doubts as to hi= guilt in the robbery case. In the ordinary way. Harris's case would have been reconsidered in 1927, but I wrote a minute expressing doubts as to the original crime charged against him. I stated thnt if at the end of six years the medical men were convinced that his mental condition was satisfactory, and if his conduct in gaol had been good, I would, if in office as Minister of Justice, release him. As a matter of fact, such was the change that this hope made in him that my last act before handing over the direct control of the prisons to Mr Garland, in 1916, was to give the order for his release. When I told him that he would be released in a f- (lavs. and asked what he would do, he said, 'I am now 34, and I have spent 16 years in gaol. I have not a relative in the world. There is only one thing that a decent man in my position ought to do, and that is to fight for his country. r f you will let me. I will enlist," "He went to Brisbane the day after he was released," added Mr Hall, "volunteered, and trained in the infantry. Then he volunteered for the machinegun section, remarking that he wanted to join the 'Suicide Club,' because he Ih&d no relatives to mourn if he were knocked out. This was literally true. Apart from the interest taken in him in my own household, there was only one other house in the world where anyone thought of him. A young man who had known Harris in gaol ihad sent his sister in with a Christmas dinner for him. After this, she never forgot Harris on the days when special dinners were allowed, and she is the heir, under his will, to the money saved by him during 20 months on service. While at the front. Harris always wrote cheerfully. His last letter told of the grand work done by the machine-gun-ners in stemming the great German offensive, and predicted that Marshal Poch would very soon give the Huns the surprise of their lives. Then came the end. He fell fighting bravely, I have no doubt. He did more for his country and for civilisation than was ever done for him."