The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks (70 page)

BOOK: The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks
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“The second category is comprised of those to whom the possibility of escape presents a challenge. Anyone who has read
The Prisoner of Zenda
or even
Huckleberry Finn
will know the feeling that exists in all of us, particularly when reading about these matters or when reading stories about escapes from prisoner-of-war camps. I believe that these feelings are sometimes projected into escapes from Her Majesty’s Prisons. With the right kind of prisoner, one possible way of dealing with the problem would be to remove the challenge by offering him open conditions. Any challenge having been removed, there are certain types of prisoner who would no longer be impelled to escape.

“The third group comprises two categories of men. There is the man with a genuine or imaginary ‘beef’, because he is really innocent or because of something which has happened inside the prison. The other category is the man with a personal problem, possibly to whom some kind friend has indicated that his wife is carrying on with a neighbour. Unless he can be satisfied in some way, he will be impelled to break out.

“Then there is the man who is unable to resist temptation, and who, if he sees the hole to which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heller) referred, cannot resist walking through it. In that case, clearly the only satisfactory safeguard is to make sure that there are no holes of that kind left accidentally.”

– Peter Archer, MP for Rowley Regis and Tipton, 16 February 1967, in the House of Commons debate following the escape of George Blake from Wandsworth Prison, and the Great Train Robbers. Extracted from Hansard

Acknowledgements

My grateful thanks to the many people who suggested stories for this book, and especially all those who checked out the histories of their part of the world for me to provide some of the more obscure tales contained in these pages: Brian J. Robb, Andy Frankham-Allen, Adina Mihaela Roman, and Patricia Hyatt.

My thanks also to:

Duncan Proudfoot for commissioning this in the first place, and for helping to ease the burden a little to allow real life to continue; and my copyeditor Gabriella Nemeth, who once again saved me from some idiocies of my own making.

Revd Clay Knowles for background information on St John of the Cross’ escape.

Michael, our guide in Berlin at Easter 2012, who showed us round the route of the Wall, and shared stories about the escapes, many of which feature in this book.

Brian J. Robb again for wading through the material and providing some pithy comments which helped to focus the book.

The staff of The Laptop Workshop in Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath (
http://www.laptopworkshop.com/
) who were able to get me back up and running within 36 hours. (And to the maintainers of Dropbox for the secure facility that made sure nothing was lost!)

The librarians at the Hassocks branch of the West Sussex Public Library. I say this in every book, but it continues to be key: great as the internet is, it will never replace libraries, and I am grateful to the team for their help in tracking down some of the more obscure books needed for this volume.

Lee Harris, Amanda Rutter, Caitlin Fultz, Scott Pearson, and Clare Hey for providing other avenues while this was ongoing, and to the members of ASCAT church choir, All the Right Notes choir, and the Hurst Singers for the musical outlets.

Finally, and most importantly, my partner Barbara and daughter Sophie for their love and support, and for letting me disappear into the office to get this completed – and our terriers, Rani and Rodo, who have finally got the message about the correlation between desk, computer and staying quiet!

BOOK: The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks
2.41Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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