However, he walked straight on, and though the warder looked at him, and actually turned, he never stopped, and thus once more Peace escaped detection and apprehension. Had he been “tackled” there and then, doubtless he would have made a desperate resistance, and what the result would have been can only be a matter of conjecture—for at this time he never went out unarmed.
When in confinement Peace, during his leisure moments, used to employ himself in studying mechanics. He was, as we have already signified, exceedingly fond of watching machinery in motion, and had a good idea, with regard to its essentials—he having, in the earlier part of his life, worked at a rolling mill.
At Dartmoor he suggested some very important improvements in the machinery used there.
His notions were tried, and then adopted, and up to the present time they have not been superseded, there having been no improvement upon them.
Indeed, many of his inventions were adopted in other of the convict establishments.
Whatever Peace undertook, whether it was a burglary or a piece of other handiwork, he always did it well, and in that sense he may be said to have been a successful man, but in that sense alone.
During his imprisonment for the Rusholme robbery his poor wife had a hard time of it. In addition to the boy, Willie Ward, she had a child by Peace to look after.
The lonely wife had to sell up her home to provide the means of defence at his trial, and afterwards she began to keep a shop—the little bow-windowed shop so well known in Kenyon-alley. Hither came, one night in the summer of 1864, the returned convict, released on ticket-of-leave.
It was now that Peace again commenced the picture-frame making, which was the ostensible business of the remainder of his life, and for a time he seems to have been industrious and to have done well.
The wretched criminal had many good chances of placing himself in a respectable position, but was so steeped in crime that he would not avail himself of the chances thrown into his way.