From the Dublin Evening Telegraph, 15 May 1893:
“BOLTED FROM THE POLICE COURTS
Run to Earth by Detective Stratford.
This afternoon the ordinary prosaic procedure of the Police Courts had somewhat a novel variation. It is not every day that a prisoner bolts from the custody of the police, but such an incident took place today.
A prisoner was put forward on remand, charged with picking pockets in Stephen’s Green. After the hearing of the case he was being conveyed from the court to the cell below. The passage is close to the open yard. On the way the prisoner bolted from the constable in charge. The officer of course was astonished, but soon, to use a venatic expression, ‘a view hallo’ was given, and constables were in pursuit of their quarry.
Though a somewhat middle-aged man he was remarkably active, and probably in an even 440 yards race he would have come in a good first. He dashed down Pill Lane to the consternation of a number of the fish girls and women, the representatives of the law being in full chase. Here he doubled on his pursuers and laid the venue of the chase over several hurdles in the form of walls between yards in the locality. He scaled the first with wonderful agility for a man of his years and finally came to the open.
This was unfortunate, for one of the best known Dublin detectives happened to be in the vicinity at the time. Mr ‘Bill’ Stratford thought he knew the man; he certainly had seen him before, and at once joined in the chase.
The alleged thief was soon overhauled, but before being seized doubled with his head under the detective, who came to the ground, but was immediately on his feet, and the party pursued was soon in custody, and conveyed to the cells under the police courts.”
This was not the only police chase to take place in the vicinity of the Four Courts, though it was the one closest to home, the Dublin Police Courts being immediately at the back of the Four Courts complex in what was then Pill Lane and today Chancery Street.
Read about an even more dramatic 1904 escape from Green Street Courthouse here.
Readers will note the reference to women fish-sellers, despite the Lord Mayor of Dublin having led a very public eviction of fishmongers from this street back in 1829, some of the women among them returned and continued to to ply their trade on Pill Lane/Chancery Street up to the end of the 19th century.
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