THE conversation dropped to a whisper and eyes turned askance as the male customer was served at a Hampshire newsagents.

However, after he had left the shop and driven off in a car, regulars looked at each other in bewilderment.

Builder’s foreman Jack Chase exclaimed: “I’ve seen that face before,” and 12-yearold Jennifer Fox was convinced: “It’s Hinds.”

The police were summoned and a photograph of the wanted man was urgently taken to Chase’s home.

After studying the print, he was even more conviced that it was Alfred Hinds, Britain’s most notorious jailbreaker, who was on his toes again after escaping from Chelmsford Prison six weeks earlier in June, 1958.

Hinds had reportedly been seen in France, but the young schoolgirl was sure that it was a case of mistaken identity, and that the real Hinds had popped into the Sarisbury Green newsagents.

She said: “I always read the papers and when the strange man came into the shop, I immediately thought ‘That’s Hinds’. I have seen his picture lots of times in the newspapers.

“I took special note of what he was wearing – a blazer with the initials EEA on it and grey trousers. He had a gingery moustache and was wearing glasses. He handed over 4d for a paper and then left the shop without saying a word.”

However, the man in question turned out to be 37-year-old Kenneth Mott, a clerk of works employed by Fareham Borough Council.

Mr Mott, who lived in a caravan in Burridge, told the Echo: “The girl must have very sharp eyes. I was only in the shop for about 30 seconds, yet she gave a very good description of me.

“The only mistake was that the letters were not EEA but E11A, the badge of the Royal Engineers, to which I belonged during the war.”

So did he think that he resembled Hinds?

He said: “No one has told me I looked like him before. I don’t know what Hinds looks like, so I can’t say.”