April 1, 1862
Escape of Rebel Prisoners.--On Sunday night, George Dusky and Josiah Parsons, two rebel prisoners, escaped from the Sprigg House Hospital, where they had been recently sent to be treated for real or feigned illness. Dusky is a devilish, defiant rebel, and never ought to have been permitted to escape. They climbed out of a window of the Hospital building upon the roof of an adjoining house, and it is believed that they were assisted to the ground by sympathizers who had been permitted to communicate with them. AFter the escape was discovered, guards were placed upon the corners of the streets and alleys all over the city, but the rebels were no doubt well concealed until advised by sympathizers of the proper time to skadaddle.
George Deering, the daring rebel who escaped from the Atheneum on Saturday night, has shown himself to be a very enterprising young man. The prisoners are in the second story of the building. Deering set to work under his bed, and with a common case knife improvised into a saw, cut a whole [sic] through the floor. He then let himself down to the ground floor of the basement, and with the assistance of a shovel, dug a hole under the securely fastened door opening upon Market street, and thus made his escape. The hole is a small one,a nd must have afforded him a pretty tight squeeze. There was no guard upon the outside, as there should have been, and this fact was of course well known to the prisoners. Deering was confined for aiding and assisting the rebels by carrying letters to and fro through our lines and acting as a spy.
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: March 1862