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