The case of Pickard Smith—Sent repeatedly to the Penitentiary—Escapes again and again—Best methods of preventing escapes as seen in modern Prisons—Remarkable case of Punch Howard—Escape ingeniously effected—Cleverly recaptured—Jack Robinson at Dartmoor—George Hackett at Pentonville.

The most annoying of the many anxieties that weighed upon Governor Nihil at this time was the deportment of a certain Pickard Smith, who seemed more than a match for all the authority of the place. His case is interesting as an example of the length to which a prisoner can go, even in times when better influences were, it was hoped, at work with all.

On the day he arrived at the Penitentiary under the name of Smith, it was discovered that he had been there before as Pickard, when he was known for notorious misconduct, though towards the end of his sentence he had assumed an appearance of reformation. On his recommittal he was at first quiet and amenable to discipline, but he seemed to have conceived suddenly a desire to be sent abroad to the colonies. From henceforth his conduct was detestable. At length he destroyed everything in his cell: furniture, clothing, glass, books, including “Bishop Green’s Discourses,” and then he endeavoured to brain the officer who came to expostulate. “If I am to go to the dark, I may as well go for something,” he said; and after he was removed it was found that he had written the following lines on the back of his cell door:

“London is the place where I was bred and born,
Newgate has been too often my situation,
The Penitentiary has been too often my dwelling-place,
And New South Wales is my expectation.”

Not a very high poetical flight, to which the governor-chaplain remained insensible, and had the poet forthwith flogged.

The magistrate came as before from the nearest police office, for the express purpose of passing sentence. Seventy-five lashes out of three hundred ordered were inflicted, greatly to the benefit, it is recorded, of other unruly prisoners, all of whom were brought out to witness the punishment. “They appeared much subdued in spirit,” says Mr. Nihil, and for some days afterwards the prison exhibited quite an altered character. But upon the culprit himself the sentence had no effect whatever. He spent his time from that day forth in whistling, idleness, and impertinence, sometimes in his own cell, oftener in the dark. His insolence grew more and more insupportable; he told the governor to hold his jaw, and his warder to go about his business. One fine morning it was found that he had gone. His cell was empty, and he had disappeared.

“The mode of escape,” said the governor in his journal, “was most ingenious, daring, and masterly, though the prisoner is only eighteen years of age. There was a combination of sagacity, courage, and ready resource, indicating extraordinary powers, both mental and bodily.”

He had got, unknown to his officer, an iron pin used for turning the handle of the ventilator of the stove. The stove not being in use the handle was not missed. The prisoner was let out of his cell by himself, being kept apart from other prisoners in consequence of frequent insubordination and the mischievous tendency of his example. With this pin he had made a hole in the brick arch which formed the roof of his cell large enough to admit his body. The iron pin, stuck into one of the slits for ventilation in the wall, served as a hook, to which he had probably suspended a small ladder, ingeniously constructed of shreds of cotton and coarse thread (it was found in the roof); and with such assistance to his own activity and strength he had got through the ceiling and into the roof, along the interior of which he had proceeded some distance, till he was able at length to break a hole in the slates. But the battens to which the slates were fastened were too narrow to let him through, so he travelled on till he found others wider apart, and here, making a second hole, he contrived to get out on to the roof. The descent was his next difficulty, but he had provided for this by carrying with him a number of suitable articles to assist him in his purpose. It must be mentioned that he had chosen his time well: not only were the officers later coming in on Sunday mornings, but on Saturday evenings the prisoners receive their clean clothes (their dirty ones were not returned till next morning), so that Smith had in his cell two sets of clothes—two shirts, two pairs of long stockings, and two handkerchiefs. He had washed his feet also on Saturday night, and had been given a round towel to dry them. Having torn his blankets and rugs into strips, he had sewn them together by lengths, making each, like the round towel, a link in a chain to which his neckerchiefs and pocket-handkerchiefs, similarly prepared, added further lengths. With all of these, and attired in his clean shirt, he had ascended as already described to the roof, where he must have found his chain too short, for he had added his shirt to the apparatus. This rope he fastened to one of the rafters of the roof, and then slung himself down to where he judged the attic window was to be found, and he judged accurately. The sill of the window formed the first stage, and to its bars he fastened part of his chain, thus economizing its length, instead of having one long rope from the roof downwards. Descending in like manner to the second window, he repeated the process, and again to the third (or first floor), after which he reached the ground in safety. His next difficulty was to scale the boundary wall. Much work happened to be going on in the rebuilding of parts destroyed by fire, and a quantity of masons’ and carpenters’ materials were lying about. First he contrived to remove a long and prodigiously heavy ladder (which two men ordinarily could not carry), from against the scaffolding, and this he dragged to the iron fence of the burial ground, against which he rested it, but he could not rear it the whole height of the boundary wall. Next he got two planks, and lashing them firmly together with a rope he picked up, he thus made an inclined plane long enough to allow of his walking up it to the top of the wall. Weighting one end with a heavy stone, he easily got the planking on to the wall and thus got over.

As soon as the escape was discovered immediate search was made in all adjoining lurking-places. Officers acquainted with Pickard’s haunts were despatched to a far-off part of the town, information was lodged at Bow Street, and a reward of £50 offered by authority of the Secretary of State. He was eventually recaptured through the connivance of his relatives. Soon anonymous letters reached the governor, offering to give the fugitive up for the reward. A confidential officer was despatched to a concerted place of meeting, and by the assistance of the police, and his own friends, Pickard Smith was secured and brought back to the Penitentiary. Mr. Nihil was much exercised in spirit at his return. It appeared that he belonged to a family which had all been transported. He came to the Penitentiary himself as a boy, grew up in it to manhood, and five months after his release was again convicted and returned under a new name. Mr. Nihil says: “Had it been known that the benevolent system of the Penitentiary had been previously tried in vain upon him, he would not probably have been sent here a second time. It is plain that he was not a fit subject for it, and his previous experience within our walls, and probable acquaintance with their exterior localities, acquired during the interval of his freedom, rendered him a dangerous inmate. After his flogging continued misconduct rendered it necessary to keep him apart from other prisoners—a circumstance which facilitated those operations by which he lately accomplished his escape. It is now highly dangerous to keep him in the same ward with other prisoners, our means of preventing intercourse being extremely inadequate. On the other hand, conversant as he is with the localities of the prison, aware of the aid to be derived from the materials strewed about in consequence of the extensive repairs after the late fire, and flushed with his former success, it becomes no less objectionable to place him apart where he may be less liable to any interruption in any attempt he may make. A man of his capabilities ought not to be kept in a prison with so low a boundary wall as ours. I do not fear his escape, watched as he now will be, but I fear his attempts.”

Nevertheless, though repeated efforts were made to get this prisoner removed to the hulks or to some other prison, the Secretary of State would not give his consent. He said it would be considered discreditable to the Penitentiary if prisoners were transferred on account of its inability to secure them. “Why not chain him heavily?” asks the Secretary of State. “Why not?” replies Mr. Nihil. “Because if he is prosecuted and receives an additional sentence of three years, we cannot keep him all his time in chains. The peculiarity of our system,” goes on the governor, “hardly appears to be considered as an objection to his continuance here.” The principle of the Penitentiary was that it was not merely a place of safe custody and punishment, but a place of reformation; and, therefore, if it failed of this latter object in any instance, a power was reserved of sending away the prisoner as incorrigible, for fear of his interfering with the progress of the system among other prisoners. Next day he was told he would have to remain three years extra in the Penitentiary, whereupon he promised, of his own accord, to abstain from making any further attempts at escape, provided he were allowed to go among the other prisoners. He was so much more tractable and so much improved in temper that his request was granted, and he was brought once more under ordinary discipline.

Having remained quiet for a month or more, just to lull suspicion, he was again discovered—and just in the nick of time—to be on the verge of a second evasion. The window of his cell was found to have the screws taken out, with other suspicious symptoms. Smith declared that the state of his window was the result of accident. He was removed to another cell, and Mr. Nihil himself proceeded to examine the one he had left. His hammock when unlashed revealed the state of his rug and blankets. They had been torn up into convenient strips for scaling purposes. When the prisoner was himself searched, between his stockings and the soles of his feet were pieces of flannel, and in one of them was a small piece of metal, ingeniously formed into a kind of picklock. A piece of iron, for this purpose no doubt, was missed from one side of the cell window. He was placed in the infirmary “strong room” for safety; then apart in F gallery by day, sleeping at night in a small cell below. But soon he destroyed everything in F gallery, and then he was handcuffed. His next method of disturbance was to make a violent noise by beating with his handcuffs against the door; upon which he was ordered to be removed to a dark cell, not for punishment, but to prevent disturbance. Presently a noise of loud hammering was heard in this same dark cell. The officers on duty rushed to the spot, and found that by some extraordinary contrivance Smith had possessed himself of one of the staples by which the iron work was made fast on the back of the door to the dark cell. By means of this instrument he had worked away an iron grating fixed for ventilation, and had been engaged making a hole in the wall by which he would have soon escaped. Smith was handcuffed and taken to another cell.

The governor is almost bewildered, and begs the committee to get rid of this prisoner. It would be inexpedient to place him among other prisoners, and yet that can hardly be avoided, owing to the influx of both military and other prisoners. “As to corporal punishment, he has already experienced it very severely without any beneficial effect. His knowledge of the localities, and the present unsafe condition of the prison, owing to the extensive repairs, will breed perpetual attempts, however unsuccessful, to escape,” writes the governor.

Soon afterwards Smith asked to be relieved from his handcuffs. “What’s the good of keeping them on me?” he said, “I can always get ’em off with an hour’s work.” He was told they would be fastened behind his back. “I can slip them in front; you know that,” he replied.

“I threatened, then,” says Mr. Nihil, “to fetter his arms as well as his hands, and that seemed to baffle him. To-day I held a long conversation with him, and cannot but lament that the powerful qualities he possesses should have been so greatly perverted. He spoke with great candour of his former courses. He exhibited an affectation of religious impressions, though he acknowledged much of the evil of his character. By and by I asked him if he wished to have the handcuffs taken off. He did, much, because they made him feel so cold.

“‘Will you promise if I take them off not to attempt to escape?’

“‘I’ll never make another promise as long as I am here. I have made one too many, and I am ashamed of myself for having broken it.’

“‘What am I to do with you? Where am I to send you?’

“‘It’s no use sending me anywhere, sir. If you let me go among the other prisoners I am satisfied; from what I know of the place, there isn’t a part from which I couldn’t escape.’”

But Pickard Smith cannot remain forever in the dark. Exercise in the open air becomes necessary, and the first time he is taken out is in a dense fog. Almost at once he eludes his officer’s observation, and, slipping off his shoes, clambers up a low projecting wall that communicates with the boundary wall of the yard, mounts it, jumps over on the other side, and runs for the infirmary staircase where he hopes to hide. Fortunately the taskmaster, coming out of the tower, catches sight of his legs disappearing through the door, and running after him captures him on the stairs. The fellow was quite incorrigible. Again he goes to the dark, again and again is he released and recommitted, till at length his health breaks down. If in the end he was tamed, it was of his own failure of strength, and not of the discipline of the place. I believe he died in the Penitentiary a year or two later, but I have been unable to find any authentic record of the fact.

I have lingered thus long over his story, which is at best but sad and disheartening, because it is a good illustration of the methods of coercion tried in those days in the Penitentiary, and moreover it opens up the whole question of escapes from prison. Of course the convicted criminal shares with all other captives an ever-present unsatisfied longing to be free. Like a caged blackbird, or a rat in a trap, the felon who has lost his liberty will certainly escape whenever the opportunity is offered to him. To leave gates ajar, or to withdraw a customary guard, would supply a temptation as irresistible as a bone to a hungry dog; and a prisoner’s faculties are so sharp set by his confinement, that he sees chances which are invisible to his gaolers. A resolute and skilful man will brave all dangers, will exhibit untold patience and ingenuity, will endure pain and lengthened hardship, if he sees but a loophole for escape in the end. The fiction of Edmond Dantes and his famous escape from the Chateau d’If, is but the embroidery of a poetical imagination working upon a sober groundwork of fact. The records of all ancient prisons contribute their quota of similar legends, showing how the fugitive triumphed over difficulties seemingly insurmountable. Baron Trenck’s escape from Spandau, and Casanova’s from the Piombi, are as familiar to us as household words.

In this present time escapes are of rarer occurrence, and for many reasons. It is not that prisons are really more secure per se:—so far as construction can be depended upon, a gaol like Newgate seems as safe as stone and iron can make it:—but the principles of security are so much better realized and understood. Our forefathers trusted to physical means, and thought enough was done. To-day our reliance is placed on the moral aid of continuous supervision. An escapade like that of Pickard Smith would be next to impossible now. He would have been defeated with his own weapons. To compass his ends a prisoner must have privacy; hours of quiet undisturbed by the intrusive visit of a lynx-eyed official, and a cell all to himself. He has now the cell to himself—at least he has with him no companion felon—but he is for ever tended by an “old man of the mountain,” in the shape of his warder, who is always with him—“turning him over,” as the prison slang calls it; searching him, that is to say, several times a day, both his person and the cell he occupies. To conceal implements, to carry on works like the removal of bricks, of flooring, or of bars, is next to impossible, or feasible only through a lack of vigilance for which the official in fault would be called seriously to account. The whole system as pursued in British Government prisons even where prisoners work in the open air miles beyond prison gates or boundary walls depends on the close observance of certain principles which have come to be regarded as axioms almost with the officials. No prisoner is allowed to be for one moment out of an officer’s sight; that officer starts in the morning with a certain number of convicts in charge: he must bring in the same number on his return to the prison. Beyond the vigilant eye of these officers in charge of small parties ranges a wide cordon of warder-sentries, who are raised on high platforms and have an uninterrupted view around. A carefully prepared code of signals serves to give immediate notice of escape. A shrill note on the whistle, a single shot from a sentry’s breechloader sounds the alarm—“A man gone!” Next second, the whistles re-echo, shot answers shot; the parties are assembled in the twinkling of an eye, and a force of spare officers hasten at once to the point from whence came the first note of distress. It is next to impossible for the fugitive to get away: if he runs for it he is chased; if he goes to ground they dig him out; if he takes to the water he is soon overhauled. The cases are few and far between of successful evasion. In every case the luck or the stratagem has been exceptional—as when at Chatham a man was buried by his comrades brick by brick beneath a heap, and interment was completed before the man was missed; or when at Dartmoor, another broke into the chaplain’s house, stole clothes, food, and a good horse, on which he rode triumphantly away.

At Millbank from first to last the escapes, successful and unsuccessful, have been many and varied. Pickard Smith’s was not the first nor the last. The earliest on record occurred in April, 1831. One night about 10 o’clock it was reported to the governor that the rooms of three of the officers had been entered and a quantity of wearing apparel abstracted therefrom. Almost at the same moment the sergeant patrol came in from the garden to say that the patrol on duty in going his rounds had discovered two men in the act of getting over the garden wall by means of a white rope, made of a “cut of cross-over.”[4] Both men were on the rope, and when it was shaken by the patrol they fell off and back into the garden; but they attacked the officer, knocked him down, and then ran off in an opposite direction. The patrol, as soon as he could recover himself, gave the alarm, and presently the governor, chaplain, surgeon, steward, and a number of other officers arrived on the spot. They separated in parties to make search, while the governor took possession of the cross-over cut, which was fastened to the top of the wall by means of a large iron rake twisted into a hook. This rake was used in the ward for bringing out large cinders from the long stove. It was thought at first that, in the patrol’s absence when giving the alarm, the fugitives must have got over the wall; but the search was continued in the dark, in and out of the tongues between the pentagons, and through all the gardens. Just by the external tower of Pentagon four, the governor and chaplain, who were together, came upon two men crouching in close under the wall. These were two prisoners, named Alexander Wallie, the wardsman, and Robert Thompson, the instructor of C Ward, Pentagon five. Thompson said at once, “You are gentlemen; we will surrender to you. We will make no resistance.” But the governor being immediately joined by the other officers, it was as much as he could do to protect the prisoners from attack and assault, as the former were greatly excited. One of the prisoners was dressed in a fustian frock and trousers belonging to Warder Hay; the other had no coat, but a waistcoat and trousers belonging to some other officer.

At the top of the tower in C Ward, Pentagon five, out of one of the loopholes near the water cistern, another cut of cross-over had been found hanging, by which the prisoners had evidently descended. On going up to the place there were found close by, a large hammer, a chisel, and a screwdriver, articles used in repairing the looms, and the large poker belonging to the airing stoves. Several bricks had been removed from one side of the loophole, leaving a space wide enough for one person to get through. To the iron bar in the centre of the loophole one end of the cross-over was made fast; the other reached the ground. The prisoners’ prison clothing was close by this cistern, and in Wallie’s pocket was a skeleton key made of pewter, which opened many of the officers’ bedroom doors. The prisoners confessed they had let themselves out of their cells by means of false keys made of pewter, and four of these were found near the place where the prisoners had been caught crouching down. The keys were partially buried into the ground. There were two check-gate keys, one cell key, and a skeleton key made of pewter.

Attempts at escape were not unknown in the interval between this and the time when Pickard Smith bewildered Mr. Nihil. But they were abortive and hardly worth recounting. It was not till years after the Reverend Governor had resigned his command that serious efforts at evasion became really frequent and successful. This was when Millbank had become changed in constitution, and from a Penitentiary had been made a depot for all convicts awaiting transportation beyond the seas. I shall have occasion to refer to this change in another volume, but will so far anticipate as to include in the present chapter some of the escapes that happened later. The prison was filled to overflowing with desperate characters; every hole and corner was crammed; there had been no commensurate increase of official staff, and therefore those indispensable precautions by which only escapes could be prevented were greatly neglected. Weak points are soon detected by the watchful prisoner, and in these days every loophole of escape was quickly explored and turned to account. That some of these convicts were resolute in their determination to get free may be believed when it is stated that one, en route from Liverpool to Millbank, offered his escort a bribe of £600 to allow him to escape. There was no doubt that accomplices were close at hand ready to assist him, but happily the virtuous officers resisted temptation.

One of the first attempts of those days was made by a man named Cummings, who broke through the ceiling of his cell. He traversed the roof of his pentagon, but could get no further. Then he commenced to sing and to shout, and by this he was discovered. A ladder having been placed for him to descend, he was secured. The prisoner himself stated that he got through the arch by means of a hole he made with a nail he had picked up in the ward. The man was evidently cowed when he found himself on the top of the Penitentiary, and declared while they were trying to secure him that he would throw himself down. He had made no provision for his own descent; his rug, blanket, towels, etc., were found in his cell untouched. He had, however, traversed the roof along one side of the pentagon.

Soon afterward seven prisoners made their escape in a body from the prison. They were lodged in a large room—afterward the officers’ mess—the windows of which were without bars; and they were able therefore to climb through them on to the roof. They took their blankets with them, and making a ladder, descended by it. The policeman on duty outside roused the lodge-keeper, to say he had seen a man scale the boundary wall between one and two in the morning, by a heavy ladder reared against the wall. All the officers were roused and stationed round the prison; while close search was made in the numerous gardens, stone-yards, etc. At half-past four, two officers came back with four prisoners in a cab. They had been tracked almost from the walls of the prison and captured at Chiswick. The other three were caught at Watford by a recruiting-sergeant and an inspector of the Hertfordshire police. They were on their way to Two Waters.

Next day a conspiracy was detected among the prisoners, who brought in coke from the garden, to escape while so employed. Almost immediately afterwards four other prisoners were caught in the very act of escaping through the top of the cell they occupied. They had broken away the lath and plaster ceiling of the cell, removed the slate slab above it, and had taken off the roof slate to a sufficient extent to allow of easy egress; their sheets had been torn up and were knotted together, and everything was ready for their descent.

The next attempt, within a week or two, was made by a prisoner who found that the mouth of the foul air shaft, to which his cell was adjacent, was not protected by bars; accordingly he broke through the wall of his cell, and having thus gained access to the shaft, would have gained the roof easily had his artifice not been discovered just in time. Two others picked the lock leading to the garden, meaning to escape in the evening; and just then by chance it fell out that the prisoner bookbinders had been long maturing a plan of escape. They had made a large aperture in the floor of their cell, which hole had been concealed by pasteboard. The whole of the party (three in number) were privy to the plot, and each descended in turn to the vault below the cell, which was on the ground floor, to work at the external wall of the prison. This, when their plot was discovered, they had cut three parts through. They had also prepared three suits of clothing from their towels, and had hidden these disguises beneath some rubbish in the vault, where were also discovered a mason’s hammer, the blade of a shears, and a cold chisel. A rope ladder had also been made for scaling the boundary wall, but it had been subsequently cut up as useless. The intending fugitives thought of making a better ladder from broom handles, to be supplied by a brush-maker in an adjoining cell, who was also in the plot. They had worked at night by candlelight. In this case it is not too much to say that the officials in charge of these prisoners were really much to blame. Had they exercised only ordinary vigilance the scheme could not have remained so long undiscovered. By the prisoners’ own confession the hole had been in existence for more than three months, and therefore the cell could never have been searched.

But the most marvellous escape from Millbank was effected in the winter of 1847, by a prisoner named Howard, better known as Punch Howard. He had been equally successful before both at Newgate and Horsemonger Lane Gaol; but the ingenuity and determination he displayed in this last affair was quite beyond everything previously accomplished.

He was sentenced to transportation, and had only been received a few days when he was removed to a cell at the top of the infirmary, part of the room called later on E Ward. The window in this cell was long and narrow, running parallel to the floor but at some height above it. The extreme length is about three feet, the width but six inches and a half.[5] It was closed by a window that revolved on a central bar forming an axle. This bar was riveted into the stone at each end of the window. In those days the prisoners used ordinary steel knives, which were given them at meal times, and then immediately removed. Howard at dinner-time converted his knife into a rough saw, by hammering the edge of the blade on the corner of his iron bedstead, and with this sawed through one rivet, leaving the window in statu quo. The whole thing was effected within the dinner hour: saw made, bar cut, and knife returned. No examination of the knife could have been made, and so far luck favoured the prisoner. As soon as the warders went off duty, and the pentagon was left to one single officer as patrol, Howard set to work. Hoisting himself again to the window, by hanging his blanket on a hammock hook in the wall just beneath, he removed the window bodily—one rivet having been sawn through, the other soon gave way. The way of egress, such as it was, was now open—a narrow slit three feet by six inches and a half. Howard was a stoutly built man, with by no means a small head, yet he managed to get this head through the opening. Having accomplished this, no doubt after tremendous pressure and much pain to himself, he turned so as to lie on his back, and worked his shoulders and arms out. He had previously put the window with its central iron bar half in, half out of the orifice, meaning to use it as a platform to stand on, the weight of his body pressing down one end while the other caught against the roof of the opening, and so gave him a firm foothold. He had also torn up his blankets and sheets in strips, and tied them together, so as to form a long rope, one end of which was fastened to his legs. He was now half way out of the window, lying in a horizontal position, with his arms free, his body nipped about the centre by the narrow opening, his legs still inside his cell. It was not difficult for him now to draw out the rest of his body, and as soon as he had length enough he threw himself up and caught the coping-stone of the roof above. All this took place on the top story, at a height of some thirty-five feet from the ground. He was now outside the wall, and standing on the outer end of the window bar. To draw out the whole lengths of blanket and sheeting rope, throw them on to the roof, and clamber after, were his next exploits. He thereupon descended into the garden below, which encircles all of the buildings, and is itself surrounded by a low boundary wall. This garden was patrolled by six sentries, who divided the whole distance between them. He could see them very plainly as he stood on the roof between Pentagons three and four. He took the descent by degrees, lowering himself from the roof to a third floor window, and from third floor to second, from second to first, and from first to the ground itself. The back of the nearest patrol just then was turned, and Howard’s descent to terra firma was unobserved. Next moment he was seen standing in his white shirt, but otherwise naked, in among the tombstones of the Penitentiary graveyard, which is just at this point. Concluding he was a ghost, the sentry, as he afterwards admitted, turned tail and ran, leaving the coast quite clear. Howard was not slow to profit by the chance. Some planks lay close by, one of which he raised against the boundary wall, and walked up the incline thus formed. Next moment he dropped down on the far side and was free. His friends lived close by the prison in Pye Street, Westminster, and within a minute or two he was in his mother’s house, got food and clothing, and again made off for the country.

Naturally the excitement in the prison on the following morning was intense. Howard was gone, and he could be tracked by his means of exit from his cell to the roof, down the outer wall, across the garden, and over the boundary wall. Here the trail stopped; and though his home in Pye Street was immediately searched, no one would confess to having seen him. It was felt that recapture was almost hopeless. It occurred, however, to Denis Power, the warder of Howard’s ward, that this man had come to prison with a “pal,” a certain Jerry Simcox, who had been convicted at the same time and for the same offence. Mr. Power thereupon visited Simcox in his cell.

“So Punch has gone, sir?”

“How did you know that?”

“Why, sir, you couldn’t keep him. We was in Newgate together, him and me, and in Horsemonger too; but we got out of both. There ain’t no jail ’ll hold Punch Howard.”

“Oh, you got out together, did you?” said the officer, growing interested.

“Yes, and could again out of any ‘stir’ in the three kingdoms, and they could not take us either. We got to too safe a crib for that.”

“Ah—?” Power spoke unconcernedly. If he had appeared too anxious Simcox would have remained silent.

“Punch has got an uncle down Uxbridge way who works at some brick fields at West Drayton. Six or eight hundred of them—Mr. Hearn’s lot, they is. That’s where we went, and the police daren’t follow us there. They don’t allow no ‘coppers’ on the premises thereabouts, Mr. Power. That’s the place to hide.”

“No doubt,” thought Mr. Power; “and Howard’s gone there now.”

Within an hour he had obtained the governor’s permission to go in pursuit, with a brace of pistols in his pocket, and unlimited credit.

At the inn of West Drayton he bought from the ostler a suit of navvy’s clothes, and went thus disguised with a spade over his shoulder towards the brickworks. The field was full and busy. There was an alehouse close by, and it was early morning, no one about but a sort of serving wench, a middle-aged woman, one-eyed, and bearing on her face the marks of a life of dissipation and rough usage.

“Morrow, mistress. Any work going?” said Power.

“Ah! work enough,” replied the woman, fixing him with her one eye, which was as good as four or five in any other head. “But you don’t want no work.”

“No?”

“No; I know you. You’re not what you seem. That spade and them duds ain’t no sort of good. You’re after work, but not that sort of work.”

Doubtful whether she meant to help or thwart him, Power could only trust himself to order a pot of ale.

“Have a drain, missus.”

“And I’ll help you too—no, not with the ale, but to cop young Punch.”

“Punch?”

“Aye—Punch Howard. That’s the work you’re after; and you shall get it too, or my name’s not Martha Jonas. This three-and-twenty years I’ve lived with his uncle, Dan Cockett, man and wife, though no parson blessed us. Three-and-twenty I slaved and bore with the mean white-faced hound, and now he leaves me for a younger woman, and I am brought to this. Help you!—by the great powers, I’d put a knife in Dan Cockett too.”

“And how am I to take him?”

“Not by daylight. Bless you, if you went into that field they’d never let you out alive. Why, no bobby durst go there, nor yet a dozen together.”

“Is Punch Howard in the field with them?”

“There; look yonder. D’ye see that lad in the striped shirt and blue belcher tie, blue and big white spots? Can’t you tell him a mile off?”

Sure enough it was Punch Howard, standing by a brick “table,” at which a number of others were at work, smoothing and finishing the bricks, or coming and going with the bearing-off barrows.

“Come to-night, master. They sleep mostly out there, on top of the brick stacks—and heavy sleep, for the beer in this house isn’t water. Come with a bobby or two, and look them all over. Punch’ll be among them, and you’ll be able to steal him away before the rest awake.”

So Power went back to the village, interviewed the superintendent of police, kept quiet during the rest of the day, and that night came in force to draw his covert. Stealthily they searched it from end to end. Among all the villainous faces into which they peered there was not one that bore the least resemblance to Punch Howard. Had the woman played him false? Power could hardly make up his mind to distrust her, so earnest and embittered had been her language against Dan Cockett. No doubt another night he would have more success. Meanwhile time pressed, and he resolved to try a plan of his own.

“Have you a good horse and four-wheeled shay?” he asked of his landlord next morning.

“The best in all England.”

“Every man’s goose is a swan,” thought Power. “Let’s see the nag.”

He was a good one, and no mistake; but an out-and-out good one was wanted for the job in hand.

At one end of the brick field—a spacious place covering two or three hundred acres—was an office for the time-keeper and foreman of the works. He was an old police sergeant, long pensioned off, but he had his wits about him still. The office was approached by a narrow lane, with room for one set of wheels only, a quarter of a mile in length, and branching off from the high road to Uxbridge. Up this lane, half hidden by the hedge, Mr. Power drove to the foreman’s shed. The ex-sergeant was alone, and readily fell in with the plan proposed. “Here!” he cried to a young fellow who went his errands and assisted in the office; “run up to the field and ask Dan Cockett if he wants a job for that idle young nephew. I see he’s back in these parts. I need a lad to screen coal dust, and I’ll give him twelve shillings a week. Look sharp!”

The messenger went off immediately.

“A job for my nephew?” said old Dan. “Ay—heartily thank you too, master. You’re a gentleman. Hi! Punch, you’re in luck. They say they’ll take you on. Twelve shillings a week. Run along with the master: they want to ‘book you’ at the office.”

So unsuspecting Punch accompanied the other back to where Power was waiting for his prey. This warder was an extremely powerful man—tall, with tremendous shoulders, and just then in the prime of life and activity.

He stepped forward at once.

“What, Punch! What are you doing in these parts?”

“I’ll swear I never saw you in all—“ He never finished those words. His captor was on him and had him fast. In less time than it takes to describe, the handcuffs were locked upon his wrists, and, taking him up in his arms, Power fairly lifted him off the ground and carried him into the chaise. Without loosing his hold he took his seat too, gave reins to the horse, and started off at a hand gallop down the lane. He had the reins in one hand, the other arm tightly bound round Howard’s neck, and the hand used as far as it was possible as a gag. But though it was possible to hold this captive tight, it was not so easy to keep him silent. Before they had gone a dozen yards Howard had managed to send off more than one yell of distress, as a signal to his friends in the field. The sight of the galloping horse, the burly figure of the driver, and the lad crouching close by his side—all three betrayed the plot. Almost simultaneously several hundred men dropped work and gave chase—some down the lane, others trying to head the trap at the junction with the high road. Power had his hands full: in one, a struggling criminal, desperate, ready to fling himself out of the chaise at any risk; in the other a bunch of reins and a whip. However, he had the start and advantage of his pursuers. Once only was his escape in doubt: on reaching the road, the horse tried to turn sharp to the left, back to his stable at West Drayton, instead of to the right to Uxbridge. With a jerk that almost upset the trap, Power turned the horse in the right direction, and half an hour afterwards had left his pursuers miles behind, and was safe at the police station. Within forty-eight hours of his escape Punch Howard was back in a Millbank cell, and Mr. Power was handsomely rewarded for the remarkable pluck and energy he had displayed.

A similar feat to Punch Howard’s was accomplished by a man named Jack Robinson, at Dartmoor. This man had long pretended to be weak-minded, and had thus put his keepers off their guard. He was in the habit of exercising himself shoeless and bare-headed, and wearing an old hat without a brim. In his bosom he carried generally a few tame rats, which issued forth now and then to walk over his arms and shoulders, and to lick his hands and face. A frequent joke with Robinson was to tell the chaplain that he had put his feet too far through his trousers—which caused infinite amusement always to his convict audience. Jack, however, was fond of foretelling that he meant to make April fools of every one—and so in effect he did. One morning he had flown, and with him two companions. He had cut through the bars of his cell by some artful contrivance; which still remains a mystery to this day. Some think he used a watchspring, others some chemical process. He was not recaptured, but later was re-convicted for stealing a railway rug.

No account of escapes from prison would be complete without some reference to George Hackett, who escaped from Pentonville in a manner nearly marvellous. Through some neglect he had been allowed to take his sheets and bedrope into chapel with him. At that time the chapel was divided into a number of small compartments, one for each prisoner. Hackett worked unobserved in his, till he had forced up the flooring, and so gained the gallery; whence, by breaking a zinc ventilator, he climbed through a window on to the parapet leading to the governor’s house. This he entered, and stealing some good clothes, changed, and so got clean away. Soon afterwards he wrote the following letter to the governor of Pentonville:

“George Hackett presents his compliments to the Governor of the Model Prison, and begs to apprise him of his happy escape from the gaol. He is in excellent spirits, and assures the governor it would be useless to pursue him. He is quite safe, and intends in a few days to proceed to the continent to recruit his health.”

Hackett was a very desperate man. He had already escaped from a police cell at Marlborough Street, when confined on a charge of burglary. The cell was secured by two bolts and a patent Chubb lock. After his escape from Pentonville he remained at large till the following Derby day. He was then recognized going “down the road,” by a police officer, who proceeded to arrest him, but met with violent resistance. Hackett knocked down the policeman with a life preserver and made off, but was intercepted by a labouring man, who, though badly mauled, succeeded in capturing him. Hackett on all the charges was sentenced to fifteen years’ transportation.

A later escape from Millbank was that of three prisoners on one Sunday, by working a hole in the floor. They were located on the ground floor, and having removed the ventilating plate which communicated with a shaft, thus got down into a cellar and so to a party wall with iron gratings. These removed, they issued out into the garden, where, as it was summer time, the thick vegetation concealed them. By and by a gentleman passing gave the alarm at the gate that he had seen two men climbing over the boundary wall. Some officers immediately gave chase, but the fugitives took a hansom and drove off. Their pursuers followed in another cab, and presently ran down their men somewhere near St. Luke’s. The third prisoner was caught in among the bushes of the garden, which he had never left.

In this case the officers of the ward were very seriously to blame. They were indeed suspected of collusion, and without that it is difficult to understand how the prisoners could have effected their purpose. They must have been long engaged in preparing to make good their exit, and in the cellar were found great quantities of weapons, tools, cards, and other things.