r
was broken into on the night of August 11, 1859, and a substantial booty
carried away. This was found the following day concealed in a hole in
a field. The police left it undisturbed and awaited the return of
the robber. When Peace and another man arrived to carry it away, the
officers sprang out on them. Peace, after nearly killing the officer
who was trying to arrest him, would have made his escape, had not other
policemen come to the rescue. For this crime Peace was sentenced to six
years' penal servitude, in spite of a loyal act of perjury on the part
of his aged mother, who came all the way from Sheffield to swear that he
had been with her there on the night of the crime.

He was released from prison again in 1864, and returned to Sheffield.
Things did not prosper with him there, and he went back to Manchester.
In 1866 he was caught in the act of burglary at a house in Lower
Broughton. He admitted that at the time he was fuddled with whisky;
otherwise his capture would have been more difficult and dangerous.
Usually a temperate man, Peace realised on this occasion the value
of sobriety even in burglary, and never after allowed intemperance to
interfere with his success. A sentence of eight years' penal servitude
at Manchester Assizes on December 3, 1866, emphasised this wholesome
lesson.

Whilst serving this sentence Peace emulated Jack Sheppard in a daring
attempt to escape from Wakefield prison. Being engaged on some repairs,
he smuggled a small ladder into his cell. With the help of a saw made
out of some tin, he cut a hole through the ceiling of the cell, and was
about to get out on to the roof when a warder came in. As the latter
attempted to seize the ladder Peace knocked him down, ran along the
wall of the prison, fell off on the inside owing to the looseness of the
bricks, slipped into the governor's house where he changed his clothes,
and there, for an hour and a half, waited for an opportunity to escape.
This was denied him, and he was recaptured in the governor's bedroom.
The prisons at Millbank, Chatham and Gibraltar were all visited by Peace
before his final release in 1872. At Chatham he is said to have taken
part in a mutiny and been flogged for his pains.

On his liberation from prison Peace rejoined his family in Sheffield.
He was now a husband and father. In 1859 he had taken to wife a widow
of the name of Hannah Ward. Mrs. Ward was already the mother of a
son, Willie. Shortly after her marri