Rensselaer Standard, Volume 1, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 October 1879 — A Prisoner’s Wonderful Escape. [ARTICLE]

A Prisoner’s Wonderful Escape.

Oil City (Pa.) Derrick. Who will believe tliata man 20 years old, and 150 pounds in weight, crawled through a hole in a stone wall six by eleven inches in size, twenty-five feet from the ground, and escaped down a rope? These were the exact circumstances under which Gharles Croton, sentenced on Friday last to one year’s imprisonment and SIOO fine and cost on two. indictments for assault and battery, escaped from the Venango county jail at 12 o’clock Monday night. Croton, with John Murray, convicted of the same offence and sentenced at the same time, was confined in the cell farthest removed from the apartments of the sheriff. Using two case knives, which has been converted into saws, lie first cut through one and a halfinch upright irofl bar dividing the window, which is six inches wide. He then, with a cold chisel, cut into the wall, which is composed of a soft freestone, until he had freed both ends of a flat cross bar of half-inch iron, through a hole in which the upright was passed. Just below the next cross bar above hecut into the upright to a depth of three-sixteeiiths_ofuninch, aud, inserting one end of a bed slat, lie and his partner, by applying their united strength to the slat, broke of the bar where the nick had been made. This left a space six inches wide and eleven inches high. Previously he and his partner had torn their blankets into narrow strips and platted quite a neat rope there from. Securing the rope to what was left of the upright rod, he thoroughly soaped the sides of the opening, soaped his own naked body and wriggled through this small hole,climbed down the rope, dressed himself after his clothes were thrown down by his accomplice, /md escaped through a storm of rain. His companion, being of larger frame, did not attempt the hopeless task of getting througlL the window, but went quietly to sleep. There were found in the cell two knives, one cold chisel, one hammer and two bags, converted into sacks from the sleeves of a shirt, connected by a cord of sufficient length to bring them, if hung over his shoulders, down to his hips, and which may have been used to protect his sides as he edged his way through the aperture, although this is scarcely probable. These were filled with soft bread.