ATTEMPTED ESCAPES. 121 



eventually died in the prison, where he was always 

 considered perfectly sane. 



When I was a very little boy 1 remember beinp^ taken 

 into the gaol to see some condemned criminals, accom- 

 panying my father and several of his friends. We 

 visited Banks and the two Cribbs, under sentence of 

 death for horse-stealing ; they were heavily ironed with 

 chains round their ankles, tied up to their waists with a 

 handkerchief They were notorious thieves, the first of 

 whom acknowledged that he had stolen ninety-nine 

 horses at various times. They were confined in the 

 Old Gaol, the sleeping-cells of which were under the 

 floor of the Assize Courts. These men effected their 

 escape from prison in a very remarkable manner. By 

 some means they possessed themselves of a piece of iron 

 hoop, which they had notched and transformed into a 

 sort of saw ; with this and a pocket-knife they managed 

 to peck down the ceiling of their dormitories, and carried 

 away the dislodged plaster in their handkerchiefs each 

 morning and threw it down the drains ; they then sawed 

 through the beams and rafters overhead, using great 

 labour and perseverance until they managed to saw 

 throuo-h the floorino; and obtained an entrance to the 

 Assize Court. One of the Cribbs was a broad-shouldered 

 stout man, and they were more than an hour lifting him 

 through the hole, lacerating his shoulders very much in 

 the operation. From the courts they entered the 

 County Hall adjoining, where they found a long ladder 

 then being used in white-washing the ceiling ; they 

 thrust the end of the ladder through one of the windows 

 opening into the Market Square, and from the top spar 



