I love reading about old jail and prison escapes. From 1921:
Bank Burglar Escapes From West Side Jail
Bitzberger Leaps to Safety After Bar Is Sawed, Apparently From Outside
General Break Foiled
Other Inmates Rush Head Keeper But Are Checked by Rifles and Revolvers
Investigation of the incredibly swift escape of Henry Lloyd Blitzberger, bank burglar, from the West Side Prison this morning through a corridor window at which an inch bar of steel was sawed and bent aside, has led to the belief that this was an “outside” job and that it may have been for the purpose of a general jail delivery.
Color is given to this view by the fact that soon after Blitzberger got away the other prisoners on the first tier rushed the keeper who discovered the escape and were only subdued by the arrival of half a dozen other keepers armed with rifles and revolvers.
Another prisoner tried to escape after Blitzberger, but was caught. In view of the fact that this man, Thomas Hunt, is likely to be a long resident of the prison, his pal in the saloon hold-up with which he is charged being in Bellevue Hospital severely wounded, the police are seeking today to find out whether any of Hunt’s friends outside could have cut the window bar. Another bar with a cut an eighth of an inch deep in it was found in the same window.
Hunt was arraigned this afternoon before Magistrate Levine in the West Side Court charged with attempting to escape and with aiding and abetting escape.
Only fifteen minutes elapsed from the time Bitzberger was released from his cell for morning exercise and the time the bent bar was discovered. In that interval, Principal Keeper George Anton was on a tour of inspection of the cell block, which hold twenty prisoners. He came around the block after Bitzberger had escaped, but just in time to see Hunt, who is accused of having stuck up a saloon at Columbus Avenue and 88d Street, halfway through the nine-inch aperture by which Bitzberger had won freedom.
Anton drew his revolver and shouted to Hunt: “Come out of that window or I’ll blow you through it!” Hunt obeyed, dropping to the floor of the corridor. At that moment the nineteen prisoners, who had been lined up against the wall by Anton’s gun, rushed him. He blew his whistle and seven keepers dashed into the corridor, armed with rifles and revolvers, and the prisoners were hustled into their cells and locked in.
As a result of the escape, Dr. James A. Hamilton, Commissioner of Correction, ordered the immediate suspension of Keeper Anton, and, going to the prison, began a personal investigation of the escape.
Police Surround Block, But Fail To Find Fugitive
Bitzberger’s escape was made in broad daylight, between 7 and 7:15 o’clock, and although the reserves of the West 47th Street Station surrounded the block and searched every building, he was not found. Behind the radiator in the corridor, upon which he mounted to gain the window, a hack saw and a file were found, but the authorities cannot believe that even with these sharp tools Bitzberger could have had time in which to cut through the steel bar.
As soon as Bitzberger had squeezed through the narrow opening he jumped a three-foot space to the roof of a blacksmith shop in the New York Railways yard which adjoined the prison. There he crossed the roof to the left and by means of a guy line attached to a chimney, swung himself off the roof into one of the company’s motor trucks in the yard.
Dennis McGowan, chauffeur of the truck, was tinkering with his engine at the time and looked up as he heard something fall in the body of the vehicle. He saw a man in a grey-belted overcoat and a slouch hat leap from the truck and make for an alley which runs at one side of the yard toward Ninth Avenue. This was Bitzberger, and he entered the rear basement of the tenement at No. 341 West 53d Street, came out the front door and darted off in the direction of Ninth Avenue.
Bitzberger and Jerome B. Chaffee, his cell mate, were arrested on Dec. 29 at Broadway and 72d Street, charged with having robbed the Milltown National Bank of New Brunswick, N.J., and were being held for extradition. When Detective Manning of the West Street Station, who helped make the arrest was told of the escape he said: “The man who catches him will have to go very fast. That fellow will kill any one who tries to take him.” Bitzberger is 24 years old.
Source: The Evening World newspaper. January 03, 1921. New York, N.Y.
