Now a new danger overtook him: his escape had been discovered and its direction. Several of the Newgate runners had therefore been let into the sewer to look for him. "And here," he says, "I had been taken again had I not found a hollow place in the side of the brickwork into which I crowded myself, and they passed by me twice while I stood in that nook." He remained forty-eight hours in the sewer, but eventually got out in a yard "against the pump in Town Ditch, behind Christ's Hospital." Once more he narrowly escaped detection, for a woman in the yard saw and suspected him to be after no good. However, he was suffered to go free, and got as far as Little Britain, where he came across a friend who gave him a pot of beer and procured a smith to knock off his fetters.
Malden's adventures after this were very varied. He got first to Enfield, when some friends subscribed forty-five shillings to buy him a suit of clothes at Rag Fair. Thence he passed over to Flushing, where he was nearly persuaded to take foreign service, but he refused and returned to England in search of his wife. Finding her, the two wandered about the country taking what work they could find. While at Canterbury, employed in the hop-fields, he was nearly discovered by a fellow who beat the drum in a show, and who spoke of him openly as "a man who had broken twice out of Newgate." Next he turned jockey, and while thus employed was betrayed by a man to whom he had
been kind. Malden was carried before the Canterbury justices on suspicion of being the man who had escaped from Newgate, and a communication was sent to the authorities of that prison. Mr. Akerman and two of his officers came in person to identify the prisoner, and, if the true Malden, to convey him back to London. But Malden once more nearly gave his gaolers the slip. He obtained somehow an old saw, "a spike such as is used for splicing ropes, a piece of an old sword jagged and notched, and an old knife." These he concealed rather imprudently upon his person, where they were seen and taken from him, otherwise Mr. Akerman, as Malden told him, "would have been like to have come upon a Canterbury story" instead of the missing prisoner. However, the Newgate officers secured Malden effectually, and brought him to London on the 26th of September, 1737, which he reached "guarded by about thirty or forty horsemen, the roads all the way being lined with spectators." "Thus was I got to London," he says in his last dying confession, "handcuffed, and my legs chained under the horse's belly; I got to Newgate that Sunday evening about five o'clock, and rid quite up into the lodge, where I was taken off my horse, then was conveyed up to the old condemned hole, handcuffed, and chained to the floor."
On Friday, the 15th October, the last day of Sessions, Malden was called into court and informed that his former judgment of death must be executed
upon him, and he was accordingly hanged upon the 2d November following.
Stratagem and disguise in some shape or other were, however, the most favourite and generally the most successful forms of escape. Extraordinary and quite culpable facilities for changing clothes were given by the lax discipline of the prison. The substitution of persons, devoted wife or friend, taking the place of the accused, as in the story of Sydney Carton, as told by Dickens; or the well-known exchange between Lord and Lady Nithsdale, which occurred at Newgate. George Flint, an imprisoned journalist, who continued to edit his objectionable periodical from the prison, got away in the costume of a footman. His wife was suffered to live with him, and helped him to the disguise. She concealed the escape for two or three days, pretending that her husband was dangerously ill in bed, and not fit to be disturbed; for which fidelity to her husband, who was now beyond the seas, having made the most of the time thus gained, Mrs. Flint was cast into the condemned hold, and "used after a most barbarous manner to extort a confession." Another very similar and unsuccessful case was that of Alexander Scott, a highwayman suspected of robbing the Worcester and Portsmouth mails. Scott attempted to get out in the "habit" of an oyster-woman, whom his wife had persuaded to favour their design. The change was made, and the lodge bell rung to give egress to
Scott. Unfortunately for the prisoner the gatekeeper was dilatory. Meanwhile, an assistant turnkey, missing Scott, conjectured that he had escaped, and seeing the oyster-woman standing at the gate, began to question her, and insisted upon looking at her face. Scott being at once detected, he struck the turnkey a blow in the face, hoping to knock him down. A scuffle ensued, the turnkey proved the strongest, and Scott was secured.
Female disguise was one of the many methods employed by the imprisoned Jacobites to compass escape, but it was not always successful. Among others Mr. Barlow of Burton Hall tried it. In the first instance a crazy woman, Elizabeth Powell, well known in Westminster Market, came to Mr. Barlow with a whole suit of female apparel, but "he, fearing it might be a trick, or that he might fail in the attempt, discovered her." A week or two later, as if inspired by the proposal, Mr. Barlow did make the attempt. Close shaved and neatly dressed in female clothes, he came to the gate with a crowd of ladies who had been visiting their Jacobite friends, hoping to pass out unobserved with the others. But the turnkey—escapes had been very frequent, and all officials were on the alert—caught hold of him, turned him about, and in the struggle threw him down. The rest of the women cried out in a lamentable tone, "Don't hurt the poor lady; she is with child;" and some of them cried, "Oh, my dear mother!" whereupon the turnkey,
convinced he had to do with a lady, let him go. Mr. Barlow, says the account, acted the part to the life. He was padded, his face was painted red and white, and he would certainly have made his escape had not Mr. Carleton Smith, one of the special commissioners appointed to ensure the safe custody of the rebels, strictly examined the would-be fugitive and detected his disguise. Mr. Barlow offered Smith ten guineas to let him go, but instead of accepting the bribe, Mr. Smith carried his prisoner just as he was, in female disguise, before the court then sitting at the Old Bailey. Mr. Barlow declared that the clothes had been brought him by his wife. "The court," says the account, "was very well pleased to see him thus metamorphosed, but ordered him to be put in heavy irons, and the clothes to be kept as a testimony against him."
The circumstances under which Mr. Pitt, the governor of Newgate, was superseded in his functions have been described in a previous chapter. Mr. Pitt was so strongly suspected of Jacobite leanings that he was tried for his life. No doubt escapes were scandalously frequent during his régime, and it is just possible that they were due to the governor's complicity, although Mr. Pitt was actually acquitted of the charge. More probably they owed their success to the ingenuity of desperate men easily triumphing over the prevailing carelessness of their keepers. The first escape which made a considerable noise was that of Mr. Forster,