Resourceful Prisoner, 'Jumbo' Carlson, Escapes Moline Jail

Rock Island County, Illinois, 1903

PLANS HIS ESCAPE FROM JAIL BUT IS CAPTURED

While Incarcerated In the Rock Island County Jail He Makes a Key From a Comb and Unlocks Leg Irons By Which He Is Bound, Runs Away But Is Discovered As He Leaves Jail and Landed After Hot Chase

"Jumbo" Carlson, the well known Moline character, who has been spending most of his time of late in the Rock Island county jail on some charge or other, yesterday attempted his second jail delivery within a period of a few months. He was less successful than on the former occasion, however, being recaptured by Sheriff Heider after a chase of a few blocks and is now back in jail, where he will be kept in close confinement.

Carlson is in for vagrancy and he was sent from Moline early in the winter for a period of six months. He still has four months to serve. Soon after he had been committed he scaled the wall of the workhouse where he had been set to crack rock and got away. The weather being very cold, however, he returned to his old haunts, and was recaptured at the end of a week.

The approach of spring seems to have stirred within him during the past few days a renewed desire for liberty and he exercised considerable ingenuity in his unsuccessful attempt to regain it. Since being brought back after his former attempt he has not been allowed outside of the grated bars without a "leg iron" attached to him to handicap him in the event that he attempted to run away.

From seeing the iron put on and taken off by his guard Carlson he became familiar with the shape of the key and he decided to make one for his own private use. So he obtained an aluminum comb and with patience that would be commendable in a worthier cause he rubbed it on the stones of the prison till he had gotten it in shape, finishing the operation with a sharp piece of steel that he appears to have taken from the sole of a shoe.

At noon yesterday he was taken out into the jail yard ironed as usual, and getting out of sight he used his key to free himself and then ran back through the kitchen, raising a window and getting out on the street.

He might have escaped had it not been for the fact that he was noticed by boys as he ran away from the jail and a crowd was quickly in pursuit. He wound back and forth and tried to dodge out of sight, but to no avail. Finally he wound up in David Don's barn between Second and Third avenues on Thirteenth street, where Sheriff Heider, who had joined the pursuit, effected his recapture.

—Davenport Daily Republican, Davenport, Iowa, March 14, 1903, page 6.