Having remained quiet for a month or more, just to lull suspicion, he was again discovered—and just in the nick of time—to be on the verge of a second evasion. The window of his cell was found to have the screws taken out, with other suspicious symptoms. Smith declared that the state of his window was the result of accident. He was removed to another cell, and Mr. Nihil himself proceeded to examine the one he had left. His hammock when unlashed revealed the state of his rug and blankets. They had been torn up into convenient strips for scaling purposes. When the prisoner was himself searched, between his stockings and the soles of his feet were pieces of flannel, and in one of them was a small piece of metal, ingeniously formed into a kind of picklock. A piece of iron, for this purpose no doubt, was missed from one side of the cell window. He was placed in the infirmary “strong room” for safety; then apart in F gallery by day, sleeping at night in a small cell below. But soon he destroyed everything in F gallery, and then he was handcuffed. His next method of disturbance was to make a violent noise by beating with his handcuffs against the door; upon which he was ordered to be removed to a dark cell, not for punishment, but to prevent disturbance. Presently a noise of loud hammering was heard in this same dark cell. The officers on duty rushed to the spot, and found that by some extraordinary contrivance Smith had possessed himself of one of the staples by which the iron work was made fast on the back of the door to the dark cell. By means of this instrument he had worked away an iron grating fixed for ventilation, and had been engaged making a hole in the wall by which he would have soon escaped. Smith was handcuffed and taken to another cell.
The governor is almost bewildered, and begs the committee to get rid of this prisoner. It would be inexpedient to place him among other prisoners, and yet that can hardly be avoided, owing to the influx of both military and other prisoners. “As to corporal punishment, he has already experienced it very severely without any beneficial effect. His knowledge of the localities, and the present unsafe condition of the prison, owing to the extensive repairs, will breed perpetual attempts, however unsuccessful, to escape,” writes the governor.
Soon afterwards Smith asked to be relieved from his handcuffs. “What’s the good of keeping them on me?” he said, “I can always get ’em off with an hour’s work.” He was told they would be fastened behind his back. “I can slip them in front; you know that,” he replied.
“I threatened, then,” says Mr. Nihil, “to fetter his arms as well as his hands, and that seemed to baffle him. To-day I held a long conversation with him, and cannot but lament that the powerful qualities he possesses should have been so greatly perverted. He spoke with great candour of his former courses. He exhibited an affectation of religious impressions, though he acknowledged much of the evil of his character. By and by I asked him if he wished to have the handcuffs taken off. He did, much, because they made him feel so cold.
“‘Will you promise if I take them off not to attempt to escape?’
“‘I’ll never make another promise as long as I am here. I have made one too many, and I am ashamed of myself for having broken it.’
“‘What am I to do with you? Where am I to send you?’
“‘It’s no use sending me anywhere, sir. If you let me go among the other prisoners I am satisfied; from what I know of the place, there isn’t a part from which I couldn’t escape.’”
But Pickard Smith cannot remain forever in the dark. Exercise in the open air becomes necessary, and the first time he is taken out is in a dense fog. Almost at once he eludes his officer’s observation, and, slipping off his shoes, clambers up a low projecting wall that communicates with the boundary wall of the yard, mounts it, jumps over on the other side, and runs for the infirmary staircase where he hopes to hide. Fortunately the taskmaster, coming out of the tower, catches sight of his legs disappearing through the door, and running after him captures him on the stairs. The fellow was quite incorrigible. Again he goes to the dark, again and again is he released and recommitted, till at length his health breaks down. If in the end he was tamed, it was of his own failure of strength, and not of the discipline of the place. I believe he died in the Penitentiary a year or two later, but I have been unable to find any authentic record of the fact.
I have lingered thus long over his story, which is at best but sad and disheartening, because it is a good illustration of the methods of coercion tried in those days in the Penitentiary, and moreover it opens up the whole question of escapes from prison. Of course the convicted criminal shares with all other captives an ever-present unsatisfied longing to be free. Like a caged blackbird, or a rat in a trap, the felon who has lost his liberty will certainly escape whenever the opportunity is offered to him. To leave gates ajar, or to withdraw a customary guard, would supply a temptation as irresistible as a bone to a hungry dog; and a prisoner’s faculties are so sharp set by his confinement, that he sees chances which are invisible to his gaolers. A resolute and skilful man will brave all dangers, will exhibit untold patience and ingenuity, will endure pain and lengthened hardship, if he sees but a loophole for escape in the end. The fiction of Edmond Dantes and his famous escape from the Chateau d’If, is but the embroidery of a poetical imagination working upon a sober groundwork of fact. The records of all ancient prisons contribute their quota of similar legends, showing how the fugitive triumphed over difficulties seemingly insurmountable. Baron Trenck’s escape from Spandau, and Casanova’s from the Piombi, are as familiar to us as household words.