The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-10-21
NEGRO ESCAPES
 FROM BIG PRISON Recent Affair Recalls Two Other
 Notable Escapes CRAWLED THROUGH SEWER Convict Who Had Been Released Short Time Before Made an
 Avenue of Escape for
 Ills Chum.
CRAWLED THROUGH SEWER

Baltimore, Saturday.-No trace has yet | been secured of Irving Talley, the negro | federal prisoner who escaped from jail | Monday last
 The remarkable and successful jail | breaking by Talley calls to mind two fa- nous eases of a similar character at the | Maryland penitentiary.
 The first of these was that of French | horse thief doing a long term. The pris- oner was an unusually bright man. well | educated and accomplished in many lines. ! With an ordinary jackknife he fashioned | beautiful carvings, and as an artist his | paintings were marvels He did odd jobs | about the pen.tentiary, and through this 1 enjoyed many privileges not granted other i convicts. In the old days there was a checking system in vogue. At the end of each day as the shops in the pen were closed each convict was given a brass check, which he took to his cell with him. When the lights out signal sounded at nine o'clock each night, and the convicts were supposed to go to sleep, the guard on each tier passed along and each pris- oner handed out his check. These were counted regularly, and always tallied with the number of prisoners on the books. One morning the Frenchman did not ap- pear with the other convicts.
 Dummy in Bed.
 In his bed was found a dummy shaped in the form of a man. There was also found fastened to the cell door a most perfectly formed hand of wax. Search was at once made for French" as the convict was called. After some | time the convict was discovered on the roof of the old penitentiary buildings, too far away from the walls to make his escape to the street and too near the guards to run q chance of being fired on. He was put in close confinement and the story was soon learned. His freedom of the pen had given him an opportunity to gather bits of wax and putty and in his spare moments he shaped the hand. He made duplicate key of his cell.
 When he was locked up at o'clock one stormy night he went to work on the dummy with his prison clothes and straw from his mattress To sleeve of his shirt he fastened the false hand and placed the brass check in the bent fingers, and, leaning the dummy" in the corner formed by the door of the cell and the wall tied the hand so that the fingers protruded beyond the cell grating Then he opened the door with the du- plcate key, and while the guards were below clamored to the top of the tier and out through a window to the roof At 9 D. m., three hours after the convicts had been locked up, the guard came along in a hurry, grabbed the check from the wax hand, counted the checks when he had finished the collection and was at ease for the night. The Frenchman had a good start, but the plan failed utterly in the end.
 Another Remarkable Escape.
 Another remarkable and successful es- cape from the pen was that of John Burke, who was a Jean Valjean in real life. He was an English crook, came of good family and had only been in this country about six months when sent to prison, in 1886, to do ten years for com plicity in bank robbery in this city. He was a machinlst and his duties took him | about the prison enclosure. He chummed with a petty thief named Lally, who was serving a short term. A plot was formed, and the day Lally was released the plans were put into execution. The drainage at the penitentary went through large sewers Into Jones Falls, under the jail yard, which adjoins the penitentiary. The main sewer opening, or pit, was guarded with heavy iron bars.
 Lally, so it was learned afterward, crawled through the sewer from it's out let at the falls, under the jail yard, to the grating at the pententiary enclosure and set to work filing the barred grating. He did his job well and left the several bars tied together with silk strands. Burke, in his goings to and fro in the yard soon discovered that the hour of escape was near through seeing the silken strands on the bars.
 One morning Burke was missing. Search about the place produced no trace of the | missing man until the severed bars of the grating were discovered. Then the mode