The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1871-04-10
The Most Expert 5aii.Breaker An the
Country-SkeseN or the Career OF
Charles Eavtlle. Burglar, Highway.
man, and Horsc.Thaef.

AAukh "a =
Charles Laville, one OF the most expert
thieves in the United States, was released
from the Wisconsin penitentiary a few DAYS
ago, having served five years Imprisonment
in that institution for stealing q horse and
| buggy. A reporter Of the Milwaukee WIS
coasin has interviewed the man, and gives
the following interesting sketch of his en-.
reer in crime:
"Charles Lavillc was arrested in this city
in 1865 for hiring n horse and buggy OF
Burnham & Post, with the intention Of sell.
ing it. No evidence was offered at his trial
that he made any attempt to sell It; it was
his notorious career as a burglar, highway
man, and thief that secured his sentence to
prison for five years. He says he got the
buggy to enable a fellow.rascal TO escape,
which he did, and was about to bring It
back when identified and nabbed. But
he doesn't complain Of injustice on that
score, admitting that, on general princi-
pies, having caught bin, it was all right to
send him up. he had then but recently
arrived from Michigan, where his exploits
In crime, under the name of Hilderbrand,
had marked him for the penitentiary,
wherever he MIGHT be found, on any pre-.
text that might serve.
"He was then about thirty years old, and
having just completed his term of five
years. his age is a simple sum in
addition. Although but halfway along
to the PsalmistSs allotment of hui
man life, few men OF the utmost
age attainable have passed through
such a feartully eyenttul existence. Born
in Dearborn, Wayne county, Michigan, he
Joined a circus when u years old, and soon
found his way to England, then to France,
He committed bold thetts in those coun-
tries, for which he saw the inside Of English
II and Eranrh nriSnnS Rafnrpinr fN A yoari
ca. he robbed a man IN Allegheny bridge,
at P~ittsburg, IL dark night, when 19 years
OF age. He was caught and sent to the
| penitentiary for 10 years. Although closely
| searched when he entered prison, he had
on his person a saw made from the MAIN
spring Of a watch. Four times within the
first three years he cut his way out of the
cell with that saw, cut was caught before
| he could get clear Of the walls. For each
attempt his term of Imprisonment was
heightened, az in the case Of Jean Vatican.
| eluded the most rigid search of the officers,
| who now had esource to all the toruures
| practiced in prison in those days-and in
| some even now. Every day for three weeks
| he was in the shower.bath till he tainted,
| then placed in the black hole and fed on
bread and water, and was told that this
treatment would last till he gave up his
saw.
Expecting to be killed by inches, he
| still remained obdurate as adamant, till the
surgeon ordered him to the hospital, seeing
| his health was feariully broken. Returning
to his cell. he was chained upon the stone
floor, by the arms and legs, and kept so day
and night, let up to walk only a few minutes
each day, closely attended and handcutfed.
To read the account cthiS treatment there, as
| it came out in the Pittsburg papers Of 1853,
| when be finally escaped, is like going over a
few chapters Of Charles Reade's Never too
Late to Mend
"The surgeon at length interposed and
| insisted on his being sent back to labor,
even if special attendance was necessary
day and night. In three weeks after this
! was done, Laville sawed the bolts of his cell
one night and fled!
Gle asserted to us the general truth of
the statements condensed above. but said
he had zone through SO many similar eXpe-
liences he could not recall details. He says
ne has been arrested seventy-nine times,
and been in t%hirty-nine jallS; has been sem
fenced TO twelve different prisons-three
in England, one in France, and the rest
in Canada and the United States. In the
Trenton a.. j. prison he served a term
of one year; in the French prison at Caen
eighteen months. Those and the prison
at Waupum are the only ones where lie
has served his terms out. From two Eng
lisa prisons he escaped, and from one he
was pardOned. He has been pardoned or
escaped from the other six prisons i'll
America. The terms OF Imprisonment to
which he has been sentenced make an ag-
gregate of tiity-eight years. He has shaved
It down so as to crowd it all in between his
fourteenth and thirty-ffth years, besides
leaving a good deal Of time for professional
operations.
"He talked with us nearly two hours,
interesting biography on our files. He
also showed us sixty remarkable artistic
| ~pen-drawings of cells, corridors, and
| grounds of prisons in which he has been
| confined. He asserts that his true name,
notwithstanding all others he has given as
such, is William H. Bucklln. He left for a
| visit to his relatives in Michigan last night"