CONVICT'S ESCAPE FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8164, 22 June 1906, Page 7

CONVICT'S ESCAPE FROM DEVIL'S ISLAND.

200 MILE JOURNEY ON A EAFT. Not often is Bow Street the theatre of romance. But one of the most remarkable adventures of modern times—the escape of several prisoners from the French nenal settlement known as Devil's Island—is recalled by a charge preferred at Bow Street against a man who is said to have been the RINGLEADER OF THAT REVOLT. Prisoner, who was reminded for inquiries, was a tall, well-dresßed man, wearing a long overooat and carrying a silk hat in his hand. His name was given as Edward or Eddie Guerin, and bis age as 47. He was brought up on a provisional extradition warrant charging him with BEING CONVICTED of the crime of larceny in France. Deteofcive-lnpseotor Sexton reai the warrant to prisoner at Tottenham Court Road Police Station, in the presence of Chief-Detective Inspector Kane,and further eaid to Gaerin, * 'Larceny was the original charge on which you were sentenced to penal servitude for life, but you managed; to escape from the Frenon penal settlement." At Bow Street Guerin said he was an Irishman, born in ' London. He refused his address, and in Court, looking very meek and calm, he asked the officers no ; questions. The remarkable, adventures said to be associated with the present charge go back to July, 1888, when a man was arrested in London, for offences in France, and after prolonged extradition proceedings prisoner asserting that he was a British subject born in Ireland, and therefore not liable to extradition to France—the H igh Court decided, in January, 1889, that he ' MUST GO BACK TO FRANCE. There he was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude for robbing a bank in Lyona. One night during the summer of 1900—after the man had served this term—the negro caretaker of the Amerioan Express ' Bank, opposite the Paris Opera House, was aroused from a casual slumber by a hand grip on the throat and a threat of instant death if he broke the silenoe. Two men HELD REVOLVERS AT HIM, and a third carried a dark lantern, The negro was gagged and bound, the burglars, having muffled the bank safe with rags, blew it up with dynamite, and decamped <?ith £5,000, of whiob the police afterwards recovered. The "wanted" man and his associates were arrested, and sentenced to penal servitude for life on Devil's Island, the Oaribean settlement, where Dreyfus was imprisoned. The oonviot was a well-behaved man, and after a time was allowed privileges not accorded to ordinary oonviots. From first setting foot on the settlement he seems tb have made up bis mind to escape, and ultimately he got away from the prison with two companions. Out of a fallen tree they fashioned a raft and paddles, AND ONE DARK NIGHT they made for Dutch Guiana, knowing that they dared not land for 200 miles. They paddled and slept, by turns, and it wasf said that one of them was devoured by sharks; but according to an account said to have been given by the ringleader > himself, his two companions turned traitors, and he kept them rowing three days and nights BY MEANS OF A LOADED REVOLVER, and when land was reached he left them in the "dug out," thoroughly exhausted, while be trudged northward. Again, according to his dwn account, he was afterwards captured by a band of natives, and' he suffered horribly before he escaped, and finally staggered into Paramaribo, Dutch Guiana, "a bag of bones, suffering from fever." There are other thrilling accounts of what happened. According to one of these, ELEVEN MEN ESCAPED ■ with prisoner, and there are bloodcurdling reports of some of them being devoured by sharks, . others being shot by prison 'guards, and of some of the escaped prisoners dying of starvation in trees in preference to entrusting themselves - to the tender mercies of wolves lying in wait below. It is difficult to reconcile ali the storiej, but it seems tolerably certain that some of them are true, and that ' SOMEONE DID~SURVIVE THE ESCAPE from Devil's Island. The present arrest in London is said to be due to the remarkable memory and vigilanoe of P. U. Helps, who had a man in custody in 1888 for the French affair referred to. The officer had been informed by Chief Inspector Kane that the man was supposed to be in London, and in Charlotte Street Helps saw the pre" sent prisoner, and, it is said, identified him as the man he bad in ous-' tody in 1888. The prisoner denies that he is the man wanted, and the .task remaining for the police is to prove that their ideu< ifloation is correct.