“I then booked from Masborough for Hull, but having got into the York part of the train (not knowing) in place of the Hull part, when the Hull part of the train was liberated from the York part at Normanton I was taken forward to York.
“I remained at York in the Railway Hotel in the station yard all night. I took the first train next morning for Beverley. I took the next train for Cottingham. I went from Cottingham to Hull.
“I went to see my wife and family at 27, Collier-street; this would be about ten o’clock in the morning. I had been away from my family a fortnight, and was talking to them in the kitchen when I heard two dectives (detectives) talking to my wife in the shop, asking if a young man of the name of Peace lived there.
“My wife said ‘Yes; but he has gone to Sheffield to see his grandmother,’ thinking that they meant my son.
“But I in the kitchen, hearing this, felt that it must be me they meant, went upstairs into my son’s bedroom, put the window up, and went between the two roof’s of the building, and remained there till the detectives had searched the house, and when they had gone out I came back again into the kitchen of my own house, and took my things and began to wash myself; but before I could finish washing myself I heard them in the shop again, so I went upstairs through the windows between the roof till they had searched the house and gone out again. So I then went down again into the kitchen.
“My wife and daughter were sobbing fit to break their heart, for they did not know what was the matter and I could not tell them.
“So I washed me, and put on my clothes, and bid them all good-bye, and went out through the window again between the roofs. I remained there again for some hours, till just before dusk.
“I then went down the spout at the further end of the building, which brought me into the next yard but one, and went to a woman’s house that dealt at our shop, and told the woman I had to get away out of the shop over a warrant, or something of that, and asked her if she would go into our house and ask my wife to send me something to eat out, but mind the detectives did not hear and see her, and I had my tea in this woman’s house.
“I then asked the woman to let me go through her kitchen window in her back yard and also go ask the woman in the next yard if she would let me go through her kitchen window, and pass through the house into another yard.
“She went and asked and got consent, so that I went through the window and house into the other yard. This was three clear yards away from my house. It was then just dark.