The railway station at Princetown was the scene of an unusual event in September 1895 when a released convict went back to Dartmoor Prison as he felt uncomfortable in the clothes he was wearing.
Royal Cornwall Gazette – Thursday 19 September 1895:
A Fastidious Convict.
An amusing scene was witnessed at Princetown Station last week.
A prison officer conveyed two released convicts to the railway station from Dartmoor Prison. On the way one of them gave the other his bundle to carry, saying he did not feel very comfortable in his plain clothes.
The train was about to start, when one of the men who had been booked for Exeter, deliberately divested himself of his hat, coat, and waistcoat, and threw them out of the carriage window on to the platform, much to the surprise of railway officials. They promptly had him out, and the train proceeded without him.
He said he would go back to the prison, and according did. An inhabitant of the village asked him why he had thus acted. In reply, he stated “he was not going home with a coat which did not fit him; it was too tight under the arm pits.”
The prison authorities soon rectified the matter to his complete satisfaction, and as Her Majesty’s convict prisons cannot be turned into “refuges for the homeless,” they conveyed him in a trap to Tavistock, whence he proceeded to his destination.
Ian Waugh
Old British News
