Connecticut Western News

A Convict Conspiracy,
A New York Herald correspondent at St. John's, Newfoundland, sends the details of a conspiracy which has just been discovered among the convicts at the French naval station and penal settlement on the island of St. Pierre, situated at the entrance to Fortune Bay. The object of the conspirators was of course to escape from their imprisonment. According to the story this plot which has been so opportunely laid bare must be taken out of the vulgar category of the ordinary attempts at jail breaking and given a place of its own in criminal history. The whole thing reads like a dime novel in a single chapter. The governor of the island, or the judge who is just now performing the executive and judicial functions there, was to have been assassinated, and all the other officials of note were to have shared the same fate. This little undertaking accomplished, the murder of the guards, the firing of the town, the plunder of its inhabitants, the seizure of the arsenal were all to follow in due order, winding up with the grand climax of sailing away to some distant and unknown land where jails and gendarmes are unknown. Owing to the indiscretion of two of the conspirators and the fidelity of a poor invalid soldier the authorities, it is alleged, became informed of the whole murderous scheme, and the conspirators are now where they can do no harm. The whole story is characteristically French.