DARING ADVENTURE AT WAKEFIELD.
In serving his time Peace made the acquaintance of the prisons of Millbank, Chatham (where he was mixed up in a mutiny, for his share in which he was punished—flogged), and Gibraltar. His handiness caused him then, as at other times, to be employed as a sort of general utility man about the prisons, doing any odd jobs in which dexterity and tact were needed. It was this sort of work which enabled him to make that daring attempt to escape from Wakefield during one of his sojourns there. Perhaps it is worth while to tell the story in some detail. The repairs he was executing gave him an excuse for smuggling a short ladder into his cell, and an opportunity also of nicking for himself a sort of saw out of a piece of zinc or tin. Thus armed he cut through a beam in the ceiling, made a hole through the plaster, and got through on to the roof. He was just drawing the ladder after him when an official opened the cell door. As he attempted to seize the ladder Peace gave him a blow with it in the chest and knocked him down. Then running along the roof he got on to the prison wall and was making his way along it when, the bricks being loose, he fell. It was supposed that he had fallen outside, and there was a hue and cry after him, but he had really fallen inside, not far from where some servants were looking out from the door of the governor’s house. Their attention was, however, directed away from Peace, and with the cunning of a hunted fox he slipped quietly past them into the house, and ran upstairs. Stripping off his prison clothes, he appropriated a suit of the governor’s, and watched for an opportunity to escape. But none came; and after being in the bedroom for an hour and a half, he was found and recaptured.
THE PICTURE-FRAME BUSINESS.
At the end of November, 1859, not long after Peace’s enforced departure for penal quarters, his wife gave birth to a daughter—now Mrs. Bolsover. The lonely wife had sold up her home to provide the means of defence at his trial, and had afterwards begun to keep a shop—that little bow-windowed shop so well known in Kenyon-alley. Hither he came, one night in the summer of 1864, the returned convict, released on ticket-of-leave, after serving nearly five of his six years.
It was now that he commenced that 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. It was in Kenyon-alley that he began this trade, and he worked for Close’s in Gibraltar-street. Afterwards he was manager at Peters’ in Westbar-green. Then he engaged a workshop at the end of Kenyon-alley, and found so much to do, that from having only a boy he employed two journeymen to help him. In this way he got a good business together, and the place being too small, he made the unfortunate venture of taking a shop in West-street, two doors from Rockingham-street. The moment he got there his luck seemed to turn, and the takings were not as great in a month as they had been in Kenyon-alley in a day.
EIGHT YEARS’ PENAL SERVITUDE.
In this state of things the West-street shop was given up, and Peace migrated with his family to Manchester. He took with him a stock of frames; but he had not been there a fortnight when he was once more in the hands of the officers of the law. “Doing a job” at a house in Lower Broughton, he was caught in the act, and his excuse for such clumsiness was that he, who was usually strictly temperate, had had nine glasses of whiskey, and did not know what he was doing. He was tried at the Manchester Assizes on the 3rd of December, 1866, under the name of George Barker, alias Alexander Mann, and he was sentenced to eight years’ penal servitude.
HIS LAST RETURN.
Upon that Mrs. Peace for a short time kept a little shop in Long Millgate, Manchester, but before long she came bak to Sheffield, and got employment in charing, and in the bottling department of a wine merchant. At first she lived in Trippet-lane, but afterwards in Orchard-street, where Peace’s mother also lived. In 1865, shortly before leaving Kenyon-alley, there had been a son—John Charles—born, but he did not live to see the return of his father, who, on the night of the 9th of August, 1872, re-appeared at home. His eight years’ sentence had been commuted to less than six.
Having provided himself with picture-frame making tools, Peace then took a house in Brocco, and lived a few doors from Inspector Twibell, and his family helped him in the business. Here Brahma fowls were kept, and Peace there, besides resuming his performances on the violin, attempted, but without much success, to instruct Willie in the art. The frame-making prospering, there was a removal to Scotland-street. The testimony is that Peace was really industrious at this time, and being particular in the execution of his work he got much custom. His children attended the day and Sunday-schools of the parish church in Queen-street, and he was very strict with them as to the companions and the hours they kept. For himself he had never been known to go to church. He was accustomed to profess his belief in the existence of a God and a Devil, but he declared that he feared neither one nor the other. But he wished his children, he said, to believe in God and to fear Him.