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.
Various outbreaks among the women—Drumming on the doors—The dumb cell—What happened at Durham—The Ladies’ Association—Greatest trouble from Convicts in passage to the Antipodes—McCarthy—Anne Williams—Julia Sinclair Newman’s extraordinary persistence in wrong-doing—Supposed to be mad—Returned from Bethlehem as sane—Mr. Nihil’s vain attempts to transfer her—No strait-waistcoat or means of restraint will prevail—Finally transferred to Van Diemen’s Land.