The window was let down, and Peace, stooping in front of it, was using the bag, which the warders thought he was going to throw out as usual. Suddenly, with all the agility of a cat, Peace took a “header,” and threw himself out of the window. The under warder sprang forward, and was just in time to catch him by the left foot.
There he held Peace, head downwards, dangling out of the window—an extraordinary sight to those who happened to be passing at the time. Peace with his other foot kicked the warder’s hands, and struggled most determinedly to get free from the warder’s grasp.
The chief warder, finding the space too narrow to help his associate in the struggle, seized the rope communicating with the guard’s van, and endeavoured to stop the train.
Peace, knowing that the window was too narrow to let the other get forward, became more savage and ferocious still, and kicked and wriggled about with great violence.
Still the warder clung to him, and, for a distance of two miles, Peace was hanging head downwards by the carriage side. At last, by supreme effort, he managed to wriggle off his boot, which was left in the warder’s hand, and the convict fell on the stepboard of the carriage, from which he bounded upon the ends of the sleepers.
The train was still travelling very rapidly. The communication cord having failed to work until a gentleman in the next compartment, hearing a noise, and suspecting something was wrong, managed to pull the rope, and the warders had the satisfaction of hearing the deep “boom” of the gong.
The train slackened speed and the warders got out and ran back up the line for nearly a mile, where they found Peace lying as he had fallen, having evidently received injuries sufficient to prevent his getting away.
He was conscious, however, and gave the warders a smile of satisfaction as they came up to him. They found him in the act of trying to wriggle the handcuffs off his wrists.
Blood was flowing from a wound in his head. They picked him up, and, as the slow train which arrives at Sheffield at 9.20 a.m. was coming up, they signalled it to stop. The convict was put into the guard’s van, where for the rest of the journey the warders kept a sharp look-out.
He asked to be wrapped up in a rug, as it was a very cold morning, exclaiming, “Oh, my head!—oh, my poor head!” precisely the same observation he made when he was brought to Greenwich Police-station, after his encounter with Police-constable Robinson, the morning he was caught.