Attempt To Break Jail

ATTEMPT TO BREAK JAIL

Jimmie Blythman, Notorious Boy Thief

ATTEMPTS TO DIG OUT

He Works for Days at Walls With an Iron Wrenched from Bench, Concealing His Work

Again James Blythman has made an unsuccessful attempt to escape justice. Ann Arbor's notorious boy thief seems as clever a criminal in jail as out. but so far all his efforts to get outside the prison bars by fraud have availed him nothing. Not long ago he tried to file the bars off the door and was caught at it.

Since then he has been at work every available moment to dig out the brick wall leading to the basement under the sheriff's quarters adjoining the jail room. He had wrenched an iron brace from one of the benches in the corridor about the separate cells and with this two-foot implement and a 20-penny nail had begun the laborious task of dlgglng through the double brlck wall in very much the same manner as the old veterans of the civil war made their escape from the famous Libby prison. Blythman may be familiar with that historic event, but probably not. He had taken off the plastering for a length of two feetand the width of a brick, digging away the mortar encasing them. One brick had been loosened and had the young thief not been discovered just as he was no doubt his efforts would have been successful.

When one brick has been taken out the others easily follow and Blythman saw that his work was progressing rapidly under the skillful direction of his deft hands. Every precaution was taken by him. A newspaper concealed the hole in the wall. where he had picked out a place behind one of the benches. Evidently had sounded the wall correctly for there were no beams to obstruct the manipulation of his poor tools.

The jail-birds are kept In the outer corridor during the day and until 9 in the evening. During this period Blythman had been carrying on his work from day to day. His fellow prisoners are said to have known of his attempt to escape, but said nothing of it.

The young man will be watched closer than ever now and kept in his individual cell most of the time.