A Book of Dartmoor: Second EditionBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
A Book of Dartmoor: Second Edition
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Dartmoor (England)
"Sir, it was just as though the doctor had made ready, and was
expecting us to supper. The table was laid, and there were chickens and
ham, tongue, and cold meats, with puddings, cakes, and decanters of
wine, making our mouths fairly water. We ate and ate as only two hungry
convicts could eat after the semi-starvation of prison diet. I could
not look at a bit more when I had finished. 'Try just a leetle slice
more of this ham,' said my chum. 'No, thank you, Bill; I couldn't eat
another mouthful to save my life.' And so we left, and were caught on
going out."
Soon after this the chaplain visited the fellow who had been
recaptured, and seeing him depressed and in a very unhappy frame
of mind, said to him, "Anything on your soul, man? Your conscience
troubling you?"
"Terrible," answered the convict; "I shall never get over my
self-reproach--not taking another slice of ham."
An old man succeeded in getting away in a fog; he ran as far as
Ilsington before he was caught.
When brought back he was rather oddly attired, and amongst other things
carried a labourer's hoe. This he employed vigorously when crossing
fields, if anyone came in sight. When captured a farmer came to view
him. "Why, drat it," he exclaimed, "that's the man I saw hoeing Farmer
Coaker's stubble fields the other day. It struck me as something new in
farming, and I was going to ask him what there was in it that he paid
a labourer to hoe his stubbles." This same convict, who was acquainted
with the neighbourhood, whilst temporarily at large paid a visit to his
wife one night. He asked her to let him come into the house, telling
who he was. "Not likely; you don't come in here. The policeman's about
the place, and I don't want 'ee," was her cheering reply.
During another recent escape from Dartmoor an amusing incident occurred
in a lonely lane on a dark night in the neighbourhood of Walkhampton.
Two warders on guard mistook an inoffensive but partially inebriated
farmer for the escaped convict, and he mistook them for a couple of
runaways.
"Here he comes," exclaimed one warder to the other at the sound of
approaching footsteps. "Now for him," as they both pounced out of the
hedge where they had been in hiding, and seized hold of the man.
"Look here, my good fellows," he cried. "I know who you be. You be
them two runaways from Princetown, and I'll give you all I've got,
clothes and all, if only you won't murder me. I've got a wife and
childer to home. I'm sure now I don't a bit mind goin' home wi'out
any of my clothes on to my body. My wife'll forgive that, under the
sarcumstances; but to go back wi'out nother my clothes nor my body
either--that would be more nor my missus could bear and forgive. I'd
niver hear the end of it."
Formerly the manner in which escapes were made was by the convicts when
peat-cutting building up a comrade in a peat-stack, but the warders are
now too much on the alert for this to take place successfully.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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