In a bold daylight escape, two prisoners broke out of the county jail one Sunday afternoon, locking a guard in a cell and climbing out a fourth-floor window! How did they do it? Well, apparently someone smuggled in a saw.
Daring Escape
Chicago. September 23, 1907. — After having locked a jail guard and a “trusty” in a cell, two prisoners climbed through a window on the fourth floor of the county jail here Sunday afternoon and made their escape in plain view of a number of persons who were passing in the street.
A third prisoners, after having started to descend from the window, climbed back in and returned to his cell when the alarm was given.
Within a few minutes the police were on the trail of the jail-breakers.
The escape was accomplished by a clever ruse. Choosing a moment when all of the prisoners in that tier of cells were in the exercise room, one of the prisoners asked the guard, Michael Bloomberg, to unlock his cell that he might get a pack of playing cards. John Scott, the “trusty,” was about to hand Bloomberg a note when both he and the guard were seized, the keys secured and the two were forced into the cell and locked in.
Producing saws which are supposed to have been smuggled to them by some accomplice, the prisoners sawed two iron bars from the windows and descended from the window by clinging to the bars on the windows below and dropping into the street.
The men who escaped were William Rogers, 25 years old, charged with larceny and Stanley Weslek, 26 years old, held for burglary.
Source: The Marion daily mirror. (Marion, Ohio), 23 Sept. 1907.
