An escapee arrested at the Coffee Tavern

Opened in October 1882 on Bourke St between Swanston and Russell streets, the 90-foot-tall Melbourne Coffee Tavern featured 161 bedrooms and was also home to a sewing machine business owned by Hugo Wertheim.

As the name suggests, the Tavern was a hotel that served coffee as an alcohol-free alternative to the pubs and hotels that lured civilians with the temptations of beer, wine and spirits.

But despite its reputation as a place of morality, the hotel would become the site of a dramatic arrest, ending the chapter of one of the most daring prison breaks in Melbourne history.

In 1890, Frenchman Pierre Douar decided to break out of Pentridge Prison in Coburg where he was serving an eight-year sentence for possession of counterfeiting and housebreaking tools. It’s possible he feared being sent back to New Caledonia when his sentence was up. Taking advantage of the lax security of the prison’s C-Division, he stole materials and tools from a workshop, including sheet metal to create a skeleton key. 

On the early morning of February 13, 1890, he bored holes in his cell lock, undid the bolt, snuck outside in the rain, scaled a wall, and used a rope to hoist himself over the boundary wall to meet a waiting accomplice. By the time the guards discovered the empty cell the next morning, Pierre was already a free man.

Two detectives, Detective Sergeant Ward and Detective Macmanamy, received information that the fugitive was likely in Melbourne and searched hotels and restaurants within the CBD. As the clock passed midnight on February 15, they arrived at the Melbourne Coffee Tavern, where a new guest had registered as “Clarence”. They lured him out with a request to leave his shoes out for cleaning, and out stepped Pierre, who was immediately apprehended.

They quickly deduced from extra clothes in Pierre’s room that there was an accomplice. By morning, a mining manager named Mr Hebbard reported his clothes and money missing. According to The Age (February 17, 1890), an overcoat found under his bed suggested the accomplice had been hiding there during the police search, before stealing Hebbard’s clothes and fleeing.

Pierre would never get another taste of freedom. Sentenced to an extra two years in irons and placed in solitary confinement, he was found dead in his cell on July 17, 1890, having hanged himself. An inquest deemed he had ended his life “whilst of sound mind” (Herald, July 18, 1890).

The Melbourne Coffee Tavern continued serving as a hotel until the 1950s, before becoming a furniture shop, then part of Walton’s Department Store, then the Village Cinema, which closed in 2006. Today it serves as a shopping arcade – with a police station located next door. •