Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. A few
Speaker 1: years ago, I was in Philadelphia and went to the
Speaker 1: Eastern State Penitentiary, which was a prison for about a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years and now it's a historic site.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I learned about while I
Speaker 1: was there was a dramatic escape from the prison in
Speaker 1: and I immediately put that into my little notes hap
Speaker 1: on my phone where I shot things down when I'm
Speaker 1: on vacation. It was one of those things, though that
Speaker 1: I couldn't quite figure out how to make it work
Speaker 1: as an episode, and I kept circling back to it periodically.
Speaker 1: It finally dawned on me that it might work as
Speaker 1: a set of six impossible episodes because there are some
Speaker 1: common themes among a lot of the prison break stories,
Speaker 1: like there's often a lot of tunneling. Uh So, a
Speaker 1: couple of times a year I pulled together six episodes
Speaker 1: that are are grouped together in some way, and and
Speaker 1: so now we're gonna have six prison breaks and just
Speaker 1: two level set here. I would not at all call
Speaker 1: this a representative sample of history's prison escape attempts because
Speaker 1: number One, the vast majority of information we have for
Speaker 1: this episode is from places where English is the predominant language,
Speaker 1: and that's just a matter of what's available to us.
Speaker 1: Number Two, I was really focused on escapes that seemed
Speaker 1: particularly ingenious and how they were planned and carried out,
Speaker 1: not on ones that were violent. So there is a
Speaker 1: little violence in this episode, but it is not one
Speaker 1: where the you know, a prison break happened in the
Speaker 1: middle of a violent uprising where a lot of people
Speaker 1: got killed. I was really looking at the ones that
Speaker 1: are kind of offbeat a little bit in some ways. Right,
Speaker 1: this is more Shawshank redemption than horrible riot situation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: several of them seem like clear inspirations for some of
Speaker 1: the Shawshank escape. So know that going in, all right,
Speaker 1: So we're going to start with the prison break that
Speaker 1: inspired this episode. The Eastern State Penitentiary opened in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine, and it was built in an era when
Speaker 1: reformers were trying to change the way prisons and the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system worked in Philadelphia. This effort was led
Speaker 1: by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the miseries of public
Speaker 1: prisons whose members were predominantly Quakers. The prison was called
Speaker 1: a penitentiary because its purpose was to inspire penitents among
Speaker 1: the people housed there by keeping them in a state
Speaker 1: of isolated, silent contemplation. Hundreds of prisons that followed this
Speaker 1: theory were built around the world in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Although these reformers were trying to move away from things
Speaker 1: like public floggings and executions for relatively minor crimes, and
Speaker 1: also to make incarceration more humane, this system that they
Speaker 1: devised was innately cruel. It came to be known as
Speaker 1: the Pennsylvania system, and it was basically perpetual solitary confinement.
Speaker 1: People were totally alone in these single occupancy cells that
Speaker 1: had attached small walled in exercise yards. They were forced
Speaker 1: to wear hoods when they were in common areas so
Speaker 1: they couldn't see or talk to anybody else, and over
Speaker 1: time the prison moved away from this practice, and the
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania system was officially abandoned by nineteen By that point,
Speaker 1: more people had recognized that endless solitary confinement was in
Speaker 1: fact cruel, but the system that replaced it was cruel
Speaker 1: just in a different way. Overcrowding became a major issue,
Speaker 1: with new cell blocks built between the existing ones, until
Speaker 1: a prison that had originally housed two hundred fifty people
Speaker 1: instead housed seventeen hundred. A series of riots and uprisings
Speaker 1: took place in the nineteen thirties in response to poor
Speaker 1: conditions at the prison and to low pay at the
Speaker 1: on site workshops and factories where they were forced to work.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty four, a plasterer and stonemason named Clarence Kleinbens,
Speaker 1: who was known as Cliny, was housed in cell sixty
Speaker 1: eight of Cell Blocks seven, and this was at the
Speaker 1: far end of one of those cell blocks that had
Speaker 1: been planned as part of the prisons initial design as
Speaker 1: a penitentiary, and it's possible that he moved into the
Speaker 1: cell with the intention of tunneling out of it. From
Speaker 1: the beginning, it had been used for storage, and he
Speaker 1: had offered to repair it so that he could live
Speaker 1: in it. Once he was housed in cell sixty eight,
Speaker 1: he and his cellmate William Russell started digging a tunnel
Speaker 1: in secret, one that went through the cell wall then
Speaker 1: down twelve feet, requiring a ladder to get to the bottom.
Speaker 1: From there, the tunnel leveled out and stretched about one
Speaker 1: hundred feet, running under the exercise yard and the wall
Speaker 1: that encircled the prison, and then up again to the
Speaker 1: street outside. They made a plaster mask so it would
Speaker 1: look like one of them was in bed that one
Speaker 1: would dig while the other kept watch, and they put
Speaker 1: the dirt they dug up in their pockets and then
Speaker 1: scatter it in the exercise yard. Kleindent hid the entrance
Speaker 1: to this tunnel with a panel that he made to
Speaker 1: roughly match the intact walls of the cell, and then
Speaker 1: put a metal trash can in front of it, and
Speaker 1: in the tunnel. He shored it up with wood and
Speaker 1: installed lights and ventilation fans. When the tunnel intersected with
Speaker 1: a sewer pipe under the prison, they built a connection
Speaker 1: to the pipe so they could dispose of their waste
Speaker 1: through a sewer. This was a complex engineering feat handled
Speaker 1: with whatever they could cobble together. It's pretty ingenious. On
Speaker 1: April third, nine, twelve men escaped through this tune going
Speaker 1: to sell sixty eight while everyone else was on the
Speaker 1: way to breakfast. At the end of the tunnel, they
Speaker 1: broke through the last few feet of earth and scattered
Speaker 1: in different directions as they came out of it. Most
Speaker 1: of them, though, we're back in the prison within a day,
Speaker 1: and all of them had been caught within a few months.
Speaker 1: Notorious bank robber Willie Sutton, who would later totally take
Speaker 1: credit for this escape and his autobiography, he was caught
Speaker 1: almost immediately. He basically came out of the hall and
Speaker 1: they grabbed him right there. Clarence kleindenced was in custody
Speaker 1: after about three hours. One group tried to make their
Speaker 1: getaway in a milk truck that they stole, and they
Speaker 1: were caught after police rammed the truck with a police car.
Speaker 1: One man, who was twenty four year old, James Grace,
Speaker 1: turned himself in eight days after the escape. William Russell
Speaker 1: and one other man were both shot during the escape
Speaker 1: attempt and they were brought back to the prison infirmary. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: the men who tried to escape were punished. Some of
Speaker 1: them were placed into these tiny windowless underground cells known
Speaker 1: as klondikes. These were too small to even stand up in.
Speaker 1: Of course, this whole escape was enormously embarrassing for the prison.
Speaker 1: It was not at all the first escape attempt or
Speaker 1: even the first successful escape attempt from the Eastern State
Speaker 1: Penitentiary that had happened all the way back in eighty two,
Speaker 1: but it was a colossal security breach. Months of digging
Speaker 1: had gone unnoticed and more than one inspection of Cell
Speaker 1: sixty eight had failed to spot that tunnel entrance. Prison
Speaker 1: authorities investigated and mapped the tunnel, and then they filled
Speaker 1: it in and covered up the entrance with cement. Then
Speaker 1: later in two thousand five, Eastern State Penitentiary embarked on
Speaker 1: an archaeological study to find and map the tunnel. This
Speaker 1: effort included ground penetrating radar work cameras, and a small
Speaker 1: robotic rover that was kind of remote controlled and went
Speaker 1: down the tunnel. They had to use a jackhammer to
Speaker 1: get through the tunnels covered over entrance. As we said earlier,
Speaker 1: Eastern State Penitentiary is now a historic site and as
Speaker 1: of seventeen, its mission is to interpret the legacy of
Speaker 1: American criminal justice reform. Okay, we'll talk about that a
Speaker 1: little bit more in the behind the scenes on Friday.
Speaker 1: Moving on, for about eighty years, starting in people convicted
Speaker 1: of crimes in the UK could be transported to Australia
Speaker 1: as punishment other colonies as well, but Australia is the
Speaker 1: focus here. Often this was for a period of seven years,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people sent to Australia never returned
Speaker 1: to Britain again. They either couldn't afford to make the
Speaker 1: trip or they didn't want to after having made a
Speaker 1: life for themselves in Australia. And only a small number
Speaker 1: of people who were sentenced to transportation had been convicted
Speaker 1: of a violent crime. A lot of them had been
Speaker 1: convicted of offenses that most people would think of as
Speaker 1: pretty petty today. Women in particular, tended to have been
Speaker 1: convicted of things like stealing handkerchiefs or cloth, or pickpocketing.
Speaker 1: Our next prison break was a group of women who
Speaker 1: were being held at Limerick Jail in Ireland awaiting transportation
Speaker 1: to Australia. They were supposed to be transferred to a
Speaker 1: prison in Cork on May thirty, which is where they
Speaker 1: would embark on this ship that was going to take
Speaker 1: them to Australia. But the night before that transfer to
Speaker 1: a Cork nine women and a baby escape from Limerick Jail.
Speaker 1: The women were Mary King, Mary Hurley, Mary Devon, Ellen Hurley,
Speaker 1: Margaret Shaughnessy, Margaret Clancy, Bridget Shelton, Mary Hickey, and Katherine Welsh,
Speaker 1: and the baby was Mary Devon's eleven month old daughter.
Speaker 1: As escapes go, this one is maybe less dramatic than
Speaker 1: some of the others that we're talking about today, but
Speaker 1: it does still involve some ingenuity leading a to their
Speaker 1: transfer date. These women made a habit of singing and
Speaker 1: quote noisy vociferations after dark, so it had been established
Speaker 1: that they were just loud. Someone had provided them with
Speaker 1: a file, some nitric acid also called aquafortis, and other
Speaker 1: tools to help them get out of their cells. Then,
Speaker 1: on the twenty three, two men used a ladder that
Speaker 1: workers had left behind while making repairs to get into
Speaker 1: the women's ward. The men started helping the women get
Speaker 1: their cells open, while the women got to their nightly
Speaker 1: singing to cover up the noise, and the words of
Speaker 1: the monmouthster Merlin quote this amusement they enjoyed with more
Speaker 1: than ordinary spirit on this occasion, and without exciting any
Speaker 1: particular notice. Meantime, the iron fastenings were assailed by the
Speaker 1: burglars with extraordinary success. That continued knocking was heard in
Speaker 1: the adjacent ward, but the sound of their operations was
Speaker 1: so drowned and the melody of the accompanying voices as
Speaker 1: not to reach the ears of the jail governor or
Speaker 1: his assistance. The locks gave way before repeated efforts, and
Speaker 1: nine females with an infant were extricated from Durance Vile.
Speaker 1: Once they were out of their cells, the women and
Speaker 1: their accomplices climbed back down the ladder and used it
Speaker 1: to get over the outer walls unnoticed. But these women
Speaker 1: did not stay at large for long. Mary Hickey was
Speaker 1: caught the night of the escape, and newspapers reported on
Speaker 1: the capture of other women in the following days, including
Speaker 1: Catherine Welsh, who asked to be taken back to the
Speaker 1: Limerick jail after being caught shoplifting. Yeah, they were going
Speaker 1: to take her to a different jail and she was like,
Speaker 1: can I just go back to Limerick because that's where
Speaker 1: I escaped from. It appears that, with one possible exception,
Speaker 1: all of the women involved in this prison break did
Speaker 1: wind up being transported to Australia. Two of them are
Speaker 1: mentioned in an article about a ship that departed for
Speaker 1: Australia on January twenty nine of eighteen thirty one, and
Speaker 1: then all but one of the rest of them are
Speaker 1: listed on ships actual registers of the people being transported.
Speaker 1: So there were five on a ship that departed on
Speaker 1: September eighteen thirty one, and then one on a ship
Speaker 1: that left on March nine of eighteen thirty three, so
Speaker 1: that leaves only one of the women unaccounted for. We
Speaker 1: are going to take a sponsor break, uh and after
Speaker 1: that will come back to more escape stories. Next up,
Speaker 1: we have the escape from Alcatraz in nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: and way back in two thousand eight, prior hosts of
Speaker 1: the show, Candice and Josh did an episode title Did
Speaker 1: Someone Really Escape from Alcatraz? Number one? That is fourever Ago.
Speaker 1: It was an entirely different show with the different format
Speaker 1: at that point, and most of that ten minute episode
Speaker 1: is focused more on the general history of Alcatraz as
Speaker 1: a prison and not on the escape itself. If you're
Speaker 1: interested in the more general history of Alcatraz, we talk
Speaker 1: about that a bit in our two parter on the
Speaker 1: Occupation of Alcatraz. Those episodes came out in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: So Alcatraz is an island in San Francisco Bay. It
Speaker 1: has a steep rocky shoreline, and it is surrounded by
Speaker 1: treacherous waters. Although this may have discouraged people from trying
Speaker 1: to escape, there were still fourteen different escape attempts during
Speaker 1: Alcatraz's time as a federal prison that was from four
Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty three. Nearly all of the thirty six
Speaker 1: men involved in these attempts were captured or killed, but
Speaker 1: five of them are classified as missing and presumed drowned.
Speaker 1: Two of them were Theodore Cole and Ralph Row, who
Speaker 1: filed through the bars of a window in the mat
Speaker 1: shop and tried to escape during a storm in ninety seven.
Speaker 1: The other three were involved in the nineteen sixty two escape.
Speaker 1: There were actually four men involved in this attempt, Frank Morris,
Speaker 1: John Anglin, John's brother Clarence, and Allan West. They had
Speaker 1: all been convicted of various burglaries, robberies, and thefts, and
Speaker 1: they'd all been incarcerated together before, and they all knew
Speaker 1: each other. They had been transferred to Alcatraz after having
Speaker 1: tried to escape from other prisons. They started planning to
Speaker 1: escape from Alcatraz in December of nineteen sixty one. Morrison
Speaker 1: the Englands had been assigned cells that were adjacent to
Speaker 1: one another, and one of them found some old saw
Speaker 1: blades they thought they could use. These men improvised so
Speaker 1: much for this escape attempt. They improvised tools to dig
Speaker 1: and break through walls, including making a drill from a
Speaker 1: vacuum cleaner motor, although that turned out to be too
Speaker 1: noisy for them to really use. Scrap wood became basic paddles,
Speaker 1: and a concertina that is a musical instrument that's sort
Speaker 1: of like an accordion became a pump to inflate their raft,
Speaker 1: and that raft, apparently using instructions they found in popular mechanics,
Speaker 1: they made a six ft by fourteen foot raft out
Speaker 1: of about fifty raincoats. They may have taken some of
Speaker 1: these raincoats from other men by force, but there was
Speaker 1: also a rumor that if anybody successfully escaped from Alcatraz,
Speaker 1: the government would shut the prison down, So it seems
Speaker 1: like some of the men were happy to kind of
Speaker 1: wear their raincoats out to the exercise yard and then
Speaker 1: leave them there to be picked up, kind of donating
Speaker 1: them to this effort to get the prison shut down.
Speaker 1: The escaping men then used contact cement they had stolen
Speaker 1: from various workshops around the prison and heat from the
Speaker 1: steam pipes to vulcanize the seams of the raft. They
Speaker 1: used this same method to also make life preservers. Each
Speaker 1: of their cells had an air vent, and they used
Speaker 1: various tools to make a series of holes around these
Speaker 1: vents so that the whole thing in each cell could
Speaker 1: be pulled out from the wall. This got them into
Speaker 1: a utility corridor, where they made and hid what they
Speaker 1: would need to escape. Yet another improvised tool with all
Speaker 1: this was a periscope, which they used to watch for
Speaker 1: guards while they were working. They also worked out a
Speaker 1: way to get from the corridor and onto the prison roof.
Speaker 1: Similarly to how Clarence Kleinen and William Russell had used
Speaker 1: a mask they made to make it look like one
Speaker 1: of them was in bed while the other one was
Speaker 1: digging a tunnel, these four men made heads out of
Speaker 1: homemade plaster and painted them topped them with human hair
Speaker 1: so that it would make it look like they were
Speaker 1: asleep in their beds. Um these heads, I think they're
Speaker 1: actually pretty good, better than I could do, I think.
Speaker 1: On June, Frank Risks and the England Brothers went out
Speaker 1: through their removed ventilation grates, covering the hole behind them
Speaker 1: with whatever they could. Alan West had tried to reinforce
Speaker 1: the concrete around his grate and had accidentally cemented it
Speaker 1: in place, and by the time he was able to
Speaker 1: get it free, his accomplices had already left. From up
Speaker 1: on the roof Morris and the Englands climbed down a
Speaker 1: smokestack and then over a fence, cutting through the barbed
Speaker 1: wire at the top of the fence, and then they
Speaker 1: seemed to have launched their raft from the northeast corner
Speaker 1: of the island. But then what happened to them after
Speaker 1: that is a mystery. During bed check on the morning
Speaker 1: of June twelve, a guard at first thought that the
Speaker 1: three men were still asleep in their beds, but then
Speaker 1: realized they weren't in their cells after touching one of
Speaker 1: the fake heads through the bars, and a man hunt began.
Speaker 1: Authorities recovered a package of letters sealed in rubber paddles
Speaker 1: and life vests, either in the water or washed up
Speaker 1: at various points around the San France Ascope Bay. Sailors
Speaker 1: from a Norwegian freighter reportedly saw a body in the
Speaker 1: water on July seventeenth, but did not report that until October.
Speaker 1: Although there have been some simulations that suggests that the
Speaker 1: three men could have made it to shore was theoretically possible.
Speaker 1: At this point, they are presumed to have drowned in
Speaker 1: their escape attempt. The FBI closed the case on December
Speaker 1: thirty one of nineteen seventy nine. Although Alcatraz did close
Speaker 1: less than a year after this escape, it was because
Speaker 1: the prison needed a multimillion dollar restoration project, and on
Speaker 1: top of that, it was expensive to operate because of
Speaker 1: its island location. The federal government decided that it would
Speaker 1: be cheaper to just build a whole new prison than
Speaker 1: to try to restore and keep running Alcatraz. Next up,
Speaker 1: Libby Prison was originally a food warehouse and then later
Speaker 1: it became home to a grocery and ship provisioning business.
Speaker 1: Was in Richmond, Virginia, and during the US Civil War,
Speaker 1: the Confederate government ticket over and turned it into a
Speaker 1: prison to house US prisoners of war, particularly US military officers,
Speaker 1: and conditions there were really just appalling. Obviously, it was
Speaker 1: not built to be a prison, and beyond that, it
Speaker 1: was situated on a canal that routinely flooded the building.
Speaker 1: Cellar in wet weather and the rising waters drove rats
Speaker 1: out of the cellar and into the rest of the structure.
Speaker 1: The windows were open spaces covered in bars, and they
Speaker 1: let in little fresh air, but not much light, and
Speaker 1: they didn't offer much protection from storms or extreme temperatures.
Speaker 1: The upper two floors where the prisoners were housed, were
Speaker 1: very sparsely furnished. There weren't even enough bunks for everyone.
Speaker 1: This was an immensely overcrowded facility, with as many as
Speaker 1: one thousand people packed into just six rooms, without enough
Speaker 1: food or supplies. Un Surprisingly, disease was rampant. Colonel Thomas E.
Speaker 1: Rose of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry started planning an escape
Speaker 1: almost as soon as he arrived at Libby Prison. He
Speaker 1: thought it might be possible to dig a tunnel from
Speaker 1: that rat filled cellar to a nearby tobacco shed where
Speaker 1: they could get out without being seen by guards. Because
Speaker 1: all of the rats and the ongoing flooding problems made
Speaker 1: the seller smell terrible, so bad that it was nicknamed
Speaker 1: rat Hell. That also meant the Confederate guards mostly stayed
Speaker 1: out of it, so this was one place they could
Speaker 1: work on. A tunnel mostly undetected. Construction of an escape
Speaker 1: tunnel started with removing bricks from behind a stove in
Speaker 1: the kitchen, which was the only room the imprisoned men
Speaker 1: were allowed free access to. This made an entry into
Speaker 1: the cellar, and from there Rose and his accomplices started
Speaker 1: digging with makeshift tools, putting the into an old spatoon
Speaker 1: to take it away. It was hard to tell how
Speaker 1: far they had gotten, though, and at one point they
Speaker 1: broke through the surface and realized that they still had
Speaker 1: several feet left to go. They managed to fill that
Speaker 1: accidental opening in before they were noticed. Robert Knox Needen
Speaker 1: was a cartographer who was being held at a neighboring prison,
Speaker 1: and he wrote this account of the escape, which happened
Speaker 1: on February nine, eight sixty four. Quote. Everyone wanted to
Speaker 1: be first. In order to get down the chimney as
Speaker 1: well as the long tunnel. It was necessary to strip naked,
Speaker 1: wrap the clothes in a bundle and push this on
Speaker 1: before them. As soon as it was seen that only
Speaker 1: a few men could possibly get out for daylight, all
Speaker 1: rushed for the mouth of the tunnel who could, each
Speaker 1: man being determined to get out first. The room was
Speaker 1: now crowded to suffocation, all struggling to get in the hole.
Speaker 1: The strongest men forced their way to the front, while
Speaker 1: the weak ones were more roughly brushed side and jammed
Speaker 1: up against the walls. Sneeton also made a map of
Speaker 1: the prison in watercolor, showing the prison, the tunnel route,
Speaker 1: nearby streets and other buildings, and the James River and
Speaker 1: its adjacent canal. That map is now in the collection
Speaker 1: of the Virginia Historical Society, and one account of this
Speaker 1: escape During the roll call the next day, a Confederate
Speaker 1: official said, where are they all? And somebody answered, they
Speaker 1: fell out the window, which cracks me up a whole
Speaker 1: lot of window drops. One hundred nine men managed to
Speaker 1: escape through that tunnel, with more than half of them
Speaker 1: successfully making it to Union territory. Some of the ones
Speaker 1: who managed to evade capture had helped from Unions by
Speaker 1: Elizabeth van Lew who was mentioned in our prior episode
Speaker 1: on Mary Elizabeth Bowser, which was a Saturday classic not
Speaker 1: too long ago. Forty eight of the men were recaptured
Speaker 1: and too drowned while trying to cross a river. Colonel Rose,
Speaker 1: who had started the whole escape plan, was one of
Speaker 1: the Ones recaptured, and he was held at Libby until
Speaker 1: April eighteen sixty four, when he was released as part
Speaker 1: of a prisoner exchange. A few weeks after this escape,
Speaker 1: h Judson Kilpatrick and Ulric Dollgren tried to liberate the prison,
Speaker 1: but they were discovered. Dolgren was killed, and papers he
Speaker 1: was carrying with him suggested that there was a plan
Speaker 1: in the works to burn down Richmond and kill Confederate
Speaker 1: President Jefferson Davis. After this, Richmond's proest Marshal John H. Winder,
Speaker 1: authorized Major Thomas Pratt Turner, who was commandant of the prison,
Speaker 1: to dig a pit under the prison, fill it with gunpowder,
Speaker 1: and blow the whole thing up if there were any
Speaker 1: further escape attempts. That threat was never carried out. Soon
Speaker 1: the Confederate Army started transferring men out of Libby to
Speaker 1: other prisons. After the war was over, the entire thing
Speaker 1: was dismantled and moved to Chicago, where it operated is
Speaker 1: the Libby Prison War Museum from eighty nine to I
Speaker 1: have many questions about that, but I did not look
Speaker 1: into answering them because it was outside the scope of
Speaker 1: this podcast. We're going to take a quick sponsor break
Speaker 1: and then get to two more escapes. Next up we
Speaker 1: have Shira Torre Oshier, who successfully escaped from four different
Speaker 1: prisons in Japan in the thirties and forties. English language
Speaker 1: accounts of these escapes have some contradictions. This was also
Speaker 1: true of Japanese accounts that I found and ran through
Speaker 1: Google Translate, but still the basics and the places where
Speaker 1: they kind of intersector just fascinating. He was initially imprisoned
Speaker 1: for burglary and murder in a crime that had been
Speaker 1: committed by a group of men, and he maintained that
Speaker 1: he had not been involved in the murder, and there
Speaker 1: are some accounts of this that described him as falsely accused.
Speaker 1: His first escape was from Almori Prison after he'd been
Speaker 1: incarcerated there for about three years. He had found a
Speaker 1: piece of wire in a wash tub and he used
Speaker 1: that wire to pick the locks. He was caught just
Speaker 1: a few days later. Then in two he was transferred
Speaker 1: to Akita Prison. His cell had been designed to deter
Speaker 1: escape attempts, but he noticed that the wood around a
Speaker 1: skylight in the ceiling was starting to rot, so he
Speaker 1: climbed up there night after night, loosening the rotten wood.
Speaker 1: Then he waited for a stormy night to disguise the
Speaker 1: sound of his moving along the prison roof, and then
Speaker 1: he climbed up through that skylight he removed and then
Speaker 1: climbed out. Shura Tory maintained that the accusations against him
Speaker 1: were false and that his incarceration was unjust. And then
Speaker 1: he went to the home of a police officer who
Speaker 1: had previously been kind to him. He had hoped that
Speaker 1: the officer would be willing to help him, but instead
Speaker 1: the officer turned him in and Shiratry wound up at
Speaker 1: a boschery prison. This was Japan's northernmost prison, and it
Speaker 1: was a place where some of the nation's most notorious
Speaker 1: people were housed. Even though the prison was supposed to
Speaker 1: be escape proof, Shiratry was kept handcuffed there except when
Speaker 1: he was bathing. For this escape, and this is the
Speaker 1: detail that made me put this on the list. Shira
Speaker 1: Torri spit the miso soup from his meals onto his handcuffs,
Speaker 1: and the meal slot in his door had miso soup.
Speaker 1: You know, it's really salty, so he was wanting the
Speaker 1: salt in the soup to weaken the metal in his
Speaker 1: handcuffs and that meal slot. This was during World War
Speaker 1: two and the prison had huge skylights in the roof,
Speaker 1: so it was kept in blackout conditions at night. On
Speaker 1: the night of August, Shiratory broke through his weekend handcuffs
Speaker 1: and meal slot, reportedly dislocated his shoulders to do so
Speaker 1: and escape through the skylights under cover of darkness. A
Speaker 1: Boscherie prison is now a museum and has a model
Speaker 1: of Shiratory climbing to the windowed roof to escape in
Speaker 1: his underwear, although details are fuzzy about how exactly he
Speaker 1: climbed up to the skylights. If he had just dislocated
Speaker 1: his shoulders, yeah, even if he had popped his own
Speaker 1: shoulders back into place, that seems like it would have
Speaker 1: been incredibly painful and difficult to try to do because
Speaker 1: it was. It's not a low ceiling. It's like a
Speaker 1: very high ceiling with big skylights up there. Regardless of
Speaker 1: the detail with that though, Sharratory hid in an abandoned
Speaker 1: mine until after the end of World War two, and
Speaker 1: then a farmer caught him stealing food from the fields
Speaker 1: and Shiratory stabbed him. The farmer later died of his injuries,
Speaker 1: and Shiratory maintained that the stabbing had been done in
Speaker 1: self defense. At this point, Shiratory had escaped from prison
Speaker 1: three times and he had been convicted of committing other
Speaker 1: crimes in addition to that first robbery and murder during
Speaker 1: his escape, so he was sentenced to death. He was
Speaker 1: housed at Supporto Prison to await his execution. Two of
Speaker 1: his previous escapes had involved climbing up through ceilings and roofs,
Speaker 1: so that was apparently where the guards focused when they
Speaker 1: secured his cell, So in ninety seven he went out
Speaker 1: through the floor instead. He pried up the floorboards and
Speaker 1: then used again the bulls from his meals, used them
Speaker 1: ashovels to shovel through the dirt underneath the floor. He
Speaker 1: was once again caught. That was about a year later,
Speaker 1: but this time, rather than adding to his sentence again,
Speaker 1: a court ruled that Serratory really had stabbed the farmer
Speaker 1: in self defense after he had escaped from Abbashery prison.
Speaker 1: His sentence was reduced to twenty years in prison, and
Speaker 1: he was released in nineteen sixty one. He lived free
Speaker 1: for quite some time. He died in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Yeah he as I understand, it became kind of an
Speaker 1: anti hero in in in Japan because of all of this.
Speaker 1: And now we have one last escape ee who is
Speaker 1: another man, but his wife is the one who should
Speaker 1: really be credited with planning it and carrying it out.
Speaker 1: This was William Maxwell, the fifth Earl of knits Dale,
Speaker 1: who was probably born at Terrible's Castle in Scotland in
Speaker 1: sixteen seventy six. His father had died when he was
Speaker 1: a child, and he was raised mostly by his mother,
Speaker 1: who was a Catholic and then later a Jacobite that is,
Speaker 1: a supporter of the Stewart claim to the British throne.
Speaker 1: After the Stewarts were forced into exile during the Glorious
Speaker 1: Revolution of six when William became an adult, he married
Speaker 1: Lady Winnifred Herbert. They met while William was in France
Speaker 1: to pledge his loyalty to the exiled James the second
Speaker 1: and seventh and Winnifred was visiting her father, who was
Speaker 1: one of the people who helped get James's wife and
Speaker 1: son out of England during the Glorious Revolution. Once the
Speaker 1: returned to Scotland, they tried to be discreet about their religion,
Speaker 1: and their political views since most of their neighbors were Protestants,
Speaker 1: but they were still the targets of suspicion, and on
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve seventeen o three, a mom broke down the
Speaker 1: castle gates and ransacked the property, looking for any Catholics
Speaker 1: they might be harboring. Yeah, their political views also would
Speaker 1: have been treason, so it was very important to keep
Speaker 1: that very quiet. William was cleared of any wrongdoing after
Speaker 1: this mob breaking down his door, but he was stripped
Speaker 1: of one of his titles and ordered to pay a
Speaker 1: bond to ensure that he would not plot against the throne.
Speaker 1: Authorities kept him under close watch, and during all of
Speaker 1: this he bequeathed most of his property to his eldest son.
Speaker 1: This might have been an attempt to protect that property
Speaker 1: from being confiscated if he were arrested again. In seventeen fifteen,
Speaker 1: William was part of the Jacobite Rising of seventeen fifteen.
Speaker 1: We have covered the Jacobite risings on the show before,
Speaker 1: and briefly. This was one of a series of failed
Speaker 1: attempts to restore the Stewards to the British throne. William
Speaker 1: commanded a group of gentlemen volunteers, and after the Battle
Speaker 1: of Preston he was one of almost fifteen hundred Jacobites
Speaker 1: taken prisoner. In January of seven sixteen, he pled guilty
Speaker 1: to treason, and on February nine he was sentenced to
Speaker 1: be hanged, drawn and quartered. His execution was scheduled for
Speaker 1: February twenty one. Winnifred was determined to get him released,
Speaker 1: so she traveled to London. This was wintertime, when the
Speaker 1: snow became too deep for her carriage to get through,
Speaker 1: she finished the journey on horseback. She met with King
Speaker 1: George the First, clinging to his robes when he refused
Speaker 1: to accept a petition on her husband's behalf. She refused
Speaker 1: to let go of those robes as he tried to
Speaker 1: walk away from her, and so he dragged her across
Speaker 1: the room. And as words spread about that that wound
Speaker 1: up earning her some popular support. People did not like
Speaker 1: the idea that the uh the king had dragged this
Speaker 1: distraught wife across the room. She bribed the guards at
Speaker 1: the Tower of London where William was being held, to
Speaker 1: allow him to receive visitors in gifts, and she visited
Speaker 1: him repeatedly, often with the company of other women. On
Speaker 1: the night before he was to be executed, she arrived
Speaker 1: with her maid, Cecilia Evans, and her friends Mrs Morgan
Speaker 1: and Mrs Mills, and she had brought women's clothes and
Speaker 1: makeup with her. As Winnifred got William dressed and made up,
Speaker 1: she had a loud conversation with her friends about where
Speaker 1: in the world Cecilia had disappeared to she knew exactly
Speaker 1: where Cecilia was. This was all part of a ruse
Speaker 1: meant to be overheard by the guards. Winnifred's companions then
Speaker 1: left the prison one by one, and then they were
Speaker 1: followed by Winifred and William together as though William were
Speaker 1: her maid. He was hiding the lower part of his
Speaker 1: space behind a handkerchief because they did not have time
Speaker 1: to shave him for leading him out. Ah, this is
Speaker 1: I can think of so many comedy troops I would
Speaker 1: love to see recreate this. Once William was outside, Winnifred
Speaker 1: doubled back, went to his empty cell and had a
Speaker 1: pretend conversation with him, closing the door behind her when
Speaker 1: she left. On the way out, she told the guards
Speaker 1: he was at prayer and should not be disturbed. The
Speaker 1: guards didn't even realize William was gone until everyone involved
Speaker 1: in this ruse was safely away from the tower. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this whole thing really banked on causing the guards to
Speaker 1: be confused about exactly how many women had arrived with
Speaker 1: her and where precisely they were at any given moment.
Speaker 1: After getting out of the tower, William took refuge at
Speaker 1: the Venetian embassy and then he escaped to Dover while
Speaker 1: dressed as a Venetian ambassador. He went to Bruges by
Speaker 1: boats and then to Paris, where he reconnected with his wife.
Speaker 1: The two of them became part of the Stewart Court
Speaker 1: in exile. In seventeen seventeen, they moved to Rome and
Speaker 1: that is where William died in seventeen forty four. William
Speaker 1: had a reputation for always living beyond his memes, and
Speaker 1: he died in debt. But when a Fred became a
Speaker 1: popular heroine in Jacobite writing, she died in seventeen forty nine. Alright,
Speaker 1: if you're thinking, hey, why wasn't the John Dillinger escape
Speaker 1: in here, that was pretty ingenious. Yes, that's true, but
Speaker 1: there is an episode on Dillinger already that is going
Speaker 1: to be an upcoming Saturday Classic. Yeah, it seemed like
Speaker 1: a good thing to add in there, since um, they
Speaker 1: do talk about that escape in that prior episode. Do
Speaker 1: you have a little bit of listener mail that may
Speaker 1: or may not involve things escaping? I do. I mean,
Speaker 1: it could involve things escaping, but I hope not because
Speaker 1: it's mostly about cats. This is from Elizabeth, who wrote, hello,
Speaker 1: two of my favorite podcasters. I'm a graduate of the
Speaker 1: mist In History University, but have never had anything really
Speaker 1: superior to offer, but I figured Tracy's comment about black
Speaker 1: cats being automatic friends with her cats gave me a
Speaker 1: good excuse to write. Also, I'm a masshole who now
Speaker 1: lives in North Carolina, so Tracy and I pretty much
Speaker 1: swapped locations. I grew up near Cape cod but went
Speaker 1: to graduate school at Emerson in Boston, so her references
Speaker 1: to things in Boston make me happy. I've lived outside
Speaker 1: of Riley for the last fifteen years. So in January one,
Speaker 1: as a single health care worker, suffering tremendously in every
Speaker 1: way at work, lack of socializing, etcetera, in the midst
Speaker 1: of a pandemic, I started fostering for my local animal shelter.
Speaker 1: Since then, I've had thirty five foster cats and kittens,
Speaker 1: and I'm extremely proud of myself for only adopting one
Speaker 1: of them. This girl became friends with my younger cat.
Speaker 1: I have two almost fifteen year old that were mad
Speaker 1: when I brought home a ten week old kitten in
Speaker 1: December twenty nineteen that my coworker had found hit by
Speaker 1: a car. This foster was approximately two years old and
Speaker 1: was trapped in downtown Raleigh with a horrible looking nose.
Speaker 1: Has seen one of the in one of the picks,
Speaker 1: now completely healed and from an upper respiratory infection. She
Speaker 1: was the sweetest thing ever from the very first day,
Speaker 1: despite her being so sick. And Malcolm, my other younger cat,
Speaker 1: finally had a best friend. I named her Salem, thinking
Speaker 1: it was a great name due to my Massachusetts roots
Speaker 1: and not realizing what a common name it was for
Speaker 1: black cats. But Malcolm and Salem sound similar, and I
Speaker 1: can't imagine her having any other name or my life
Speaker 1: without her. I'm a speech therapist and I had bought
Speaker 1: talk buttons for Malcolm, but he never quite figured them out.
Speaker 1: Salem did within days, and I keep adding more buttons
Speaker 1: for her to push to communicate. She's the sweetest, smartest
Speaker 1: girl ever and has become Mama Salem to all the
Speaker 1: foster kittens I've had. She also came to work with
Speaker 1: me frequently at the nursing home I worked at until
Speaker 1: last summer as a therapy cat. Just thought I would
Speaker 1: let Tracy know that her cats have another friend in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. Attached are some picks with former foster kittens
Speaker 1: and her best friend, Malcolm the Big Boy. I love
Speaker 1: her so much, uh so, then there's just just a
Speaker 1: glorious gallery of cat pictures. Kiddies. Number one, thank you
Speaker 1: for for fostering kittens. I know a lot of people
Speaker 1: who do that and who have started doing that specifically
Speaker 1: during the pandemic or have started fostering other animals during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, And it's so important and can also be
Speaker 1: a really good way for people who want to have
Speaker 1: animals around, but like can't be the permanent caregiver for
Speaker 1: an animal for forever for whatever reason. I also love
Speaker 1: the talk buttons for cats and have been considering getting
Speaker 1: uh some for my own cats, but I have not
Speaker 1: actually started that whole process yet. Um I kind of
Speaker 1: think if I did our cat Onyx would just push
Speaker 1: the open button over and over because all she wants
Speaker 1: to do is to have my office store be open.
Speaker 1: She especially wants it to be open while we're recording podcasts,
Speaker 1: and she sits out there and bangs on the doorknob.
Speaker 1: It's not great. Uh So these pictures were all so
Speaker 1: so adorable. I am guessing one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: Salem is a popular name for black cats is that
Speaker 1: Salem is the name of Sabrina the teenage which her
Speaker 1: black cat familiar is named Salem. So I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that Salem and black cats go together.
Speaker 1: Uh So, anyway, thank you so much, Elizabeth. I love
Speaker 1: all of these pictures and all of these stories, and
Speaker 1: I want to put all these kiddy cats. Uh if
Speaker 1: you would like to write to us about this or
Speaker 1: any other podcast, or just your cats, or just any
Speaker 1: pets you have, or a dog you saw, or maybe
Speaker 1: you were outside and there was a cute bird, whatever,
Speaker 1: it's great. We're at History Podcast at I heart radio
Speaker 1: dot com, and we're all over social media at missed
Speaker 1: in History, which is where you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
Speaker 1: in Instagram. Uh and you can subscribe to our show
Speaker 1: on the I heart Radio app, or wherever you'll like
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Speaker 1: is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts
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