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SOURCE: Bell's Weekly Messenger, No. 1795, Sunday, August 22, 1830

[Convicts under sentence of Transportation]

It will be remembered, that in November last, a Manchester coach coming to London, laden chiefly with convicts under sentence of transportation for different periods, upset near Birmingham, and that during the delay some friends of the prisoners living in the latter town supplied them with tools calculated to enable them to rid themselves of their fetters; and it will be further recollected, that when the coach was righted, and had proceeded some distance on its journey, the convicts, in a lone part of the road, rose upon the coachman and guard, and having secured them, made their escape. Four of them were captured soon after, but the rest having continued to elude the vigilance of the police until Friday se'nnight when Mr. Burgess, the High Constable of Macclesfield, ascertained that the ringleader and manager of the escape, whose name is Wm. Stowe, was secreted in a lone cottage, occupied by an aged couple, in the neighbourhood of that town. Stowe was known to be a desperate as well as an ingenious fellow, and Mr. Burgess went armed and attended by two other constables from Macclesfield to the spot pointed out. They found Stowe there, but so far from offering resistance, he submitted with perfect willingness, and even cheerfulness, and said he was glad that he was taken, for he had been wandering about in misery, a proscribed being, ever since his escape. Mr Burgess brought him to London, and lodged him in Newgate on Thursday night, in order that he may be conveyed to the hulks, and thence to Botany Bay, pursuant to his sentence.