On the 20th November, a notorious vagabond, named John May, ineffectually attempted to get away. Brought up at the Police Court as a vagrant, he received three weeks' imprisonment; and in the course of a few days the police obtained reliable information that he was what was known as a " life-bolter," from Hobartown, for w h o m an anxious look-out had been kept for some time. This intelligence reached M a y in prison, and he was well aware that on the expiry of his vagrancy term, he would be re-arrested at the gaol gate, re-imprisoned, remanded to where he fled from, and dealt with as he deserved. This induced him to attempt an escape. H e was confined with two other prisoners, in a cell in the upper tier or corridor, and Hartnett, the head turnkey, having his suspicions excited, had May's cell unexpectedly entered, and there was the prisoner leisurely at hard labour of his own providing, chipping the window-sill, where one of the iron bars was imbedded. The tools employed were a piece of ironflattenedat one end like a chisel, a shoemaker's awl, and a screw, believed to be picked out of the machinery of the treadmill. The bar he had nearly got out, but it had been sunk only a quarter of an inch in the stone ; and on examination a second bar was found to have been removed and replaced, with the crevices in the stoneworkfilledin with soap. May's two companions were admiringly watching the industrial enterprise exhibited before them, and both said and did nothing. May was not only impudent and defiant, but offered considerable resistance; he was soon secured, and an application of Jack Harris' cat, a few days after, made him a sorer, though hardly a wiser man. H e was subsequently returned to Van Diemen's Land, where, possibly, "cats " with worse claws than the Melbourne ones, treated him to severer scratchings. Supposing May to have carried through his project so far as to get out through the cell window, he would have had to effect a forty-feet descent into the >ard, cross two walls studded with broken4 glass, and then chance the now loaded gun of the outside sentinel, before he could securely sniff the free air of liberty. THE TREADMILL IN ORDER.
The treadmill was so improved in its habits as to be a model in time-keeping for the Melbourne clocks, and it had attained such a degree of efficiency at the beginning of 1850, that the fellows compelled to hop on it, declared they could not, and would not stand such nonsense any longer; and so, on the 14th April, twenty-eight of them struck work, or rather, dancing, and swore lustily, that sooner than be longer sweated to death on the mill, they were prepared to undergo any degree of punishment short of hanging. The gaoler remonstrated ineffectually, and one of the chaplains implored them to be submissive, but he was irreverently told " to delay his clapper, and keep his • preachments for Sunday." Mr. E. P. Sturt was then the Visiting Justice, and he was, of course, appealed to. Sturt, though, as a rule, a humane and o-0od-natured man, was capable of much firmness in those times, and as the recusants would not listen to reason, he ordered the whole of them to seven days' "solitary" on bread and water With difficulty this sentence was carried into effect, through want of room, and on the justice and the gaoler going round the last day of the week, to ascertain how the half-starved "solitaries " fared, the refractories were found in such a depressed state of mind and stomach, that, save two, they were all not only willing, but glad to return to that detested mill which they had denounced in terms of unmitigated abhorrence, and on this condition they were enlarged. The two exceptions were a couple of worthies known as " Nobby " Smith and "Bob " Newell, under Supreme Court sentences. "Nobby" bullyragged Mr. Sturt in a style of such profane Billingsgate as would make the most foul-tongued bullock-driver blush; and "Bob" not only slang-whanged, but took to hammering a turnkey. A Court, consisting of the Mayor (Dr. Greeves), and the Visiting Justice, was formed the same day, when Smith was sentenced to thirty-five, and Newell to fifty lashes. Thefloggingwas performed in trenchant. style by T o m Cahill, a newly-appointed hangman, vice Harris dismissed ; and " Nobby " and " his pal " were so tamed thereby, that they returned quiet as lambs, and'rejoined their companions in the milling operations, now resumed with renewed vigour. ' During the night of the 17th June, 1850, William Taylor, alias Hawkins, managed a successful escape Serving a sentence of two years for uttering a forged cheque, he and two other prisoners were immured in a cell in the upper northern tier, the window of which overlooked the treadmill yard. Twisting a rope out of some blankets and forcing a bar, he got through the window, and, no doubt, helped by his companions, let himself down into the yard. From this place there was a door through the West end
