Dayton Daily Empire

Escape of Col. Cross the Forger—A Slippery Customer.

Col. J. Buchanan Cross, the noted forger, made his escape from a Philadelphia police officer, on Saturday morning, as he was being taken from Moyamensing Prison to the Court of Quarter Sessions to be sentenced. The Bulletin gives the following account of the affair:

Cross was duly handed over to the officer, and after he was placed in his custody, a third party was permitted to hold a conversation with him which the officer did not hear. Mr. Porter and his prisoner then got into a chaise, and they were driven along Passyunk road, at Prime street, when Cross remarked that he expected to be sent out to Cherry Hill, and he would like to stop first at his old lodgings, at the Southwest corner of Moyamensing avenue, and Washington avenue, for the purpose of locking up his trunks. Mr. Porter states that he demurred at his proposition, but at length consented to the arrangement, and the chaise was accordingly driven to Miller's tavern, at the spot named. Cross and the officer proceeded up stairs to the third story, and they entered a room which was darkened. The prisoner alluded to this fact, and requested the officer to open the shutter. While the latter was obligingly doing this, Cross bolted out of the room, locked the door upon the outside, ran down stairs, and scaling the fence, leaped into a light wagon that was in waiting, and was driven off by a man already in the vehicle, as fast as the horse could carry him.

The officer, upon finding himself outwitted, kicked out a panel of the door and followed the fugitive. On the stairs he met a woman, and upon getting into the yard he saw a chair by the aid of which Cross had scaled the fence. Mr. Porter reached the street in time to see the wagon with the fugitive, going off in a Southerly direction. The discomfited officer came up to the city, and having lodged information at the Central Station, the telegraph was put into requisition, and scouts were sent out to intercept the fugitive, if possible. Cross is a shrewd fellow and the officers will experience some trouble in tracing him out.

The fugitive is celebrated in his line of business. He cut a great dash in Paris a few years since, and obtained the means of doing it by an extensive series of forgeries and swindling. On his return to the United States he organized a series of forgeries by which parties in Philadelphia, New York and Boston were heavily bled. With the fruits of these misdeeds he was living the life of a nabob in a South-western city, with his fast woman, valet, &c., when he was arrested and brought to Philadelphia for trial. He was cunning enough to cover up his traces, and he escaped conviction. Recently he was convicted of forging a check on the Consolidated Bank, in the name of Mr. Crawford, and he was to have been sentenced to-day. He is a stout, good-looking man, dressed with much taste, and has a gentlemanly bearing and prepossessing manners, which aid him greatly in his rascally operations.