WEBVTT - Six Impossible Episodes: Prison Breaks 0:00:01.280 --> 0:00:04.279 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.440 of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:17.360 I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. A few 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:20.040 years ago, I was in Philadelphia and went to the 0:00:20.079 --> 0:00:23.160 Eastern State Penitentiary, which was a prison for about a 0:00:23.239 --> 0:00:25.800 hundred and fifty years and now it's a historic site. 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:28.400 And one of the things I learned about while I 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:32.159 was there was a dramatic escape from the prison in 0:00:33.720 --> 0:00:37.839 and I immediately put that into my little notes hap 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:40.599 on my phone where I shot things down when I'm 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:43.080 on vacation. It was one of those things, though that 0:00:43.120 --> 0:00:45.720 I couldn't quite figure out how to make it work 0:00:45.760 --> 0:00:49.080 as an episode, and I kept circling back to it periodically. 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:52.400 It finally dawned on me that it might work as 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:55.560 a set of six impossible episodes because there are some 0:00:55.680 --> 0:01:00.800 common themes among a lot of the prison break stories, 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:07.679 like there's often a lot of tunneling. Uh So, a 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:10.640 couple of times a year I pulled together six episodes 0:01:10.680 --> 0:01:14.240 that are are grouped together in some way, and and 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.080 so now we're gonna have six prison breaks and just 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:20.600 two level set here. I would not at all call 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:25.959 this a representative sample of history's prison escape attempts because 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:29.440 number One, the vast majority of information we have for 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:34.160 this episode is from places where English is the predominant language, 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:37.520 and that's just a matter of what's available to us. 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:41.880 Number Two, I was really focused on escapes that seemed 0:01:41.959 --> 0:01:46.240 particularly ingenious and how they were planned and carried out, 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:50.840 not on ones that were violent. So there is a 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.480 little violence in this episode, but it is not one 0:01:54.520 --> 0:01:57.640 where the you know, a prison break happened in the 0:01:57.640 --> 0:01:59.880 middle of a violent uprising where a lot of people 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:01.960 got killed. I was really looking at the ones that 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.560 are kind of offbeat a little bit in some ways. Right, 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:10.280 this is more Shawshank redemption than horrible riot situation. Yeah, 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:14.560 several of them seem like clear inspirations for some of 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:19.400 the Shawshank escape. So know that going in, all right, 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:21.240 So we're going to start with the prison break that 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.840 inspired this episode. The Eastern State Penitentiary opened in eighteen 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:28.079 twenty nine, and it was built in an era when 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:30.800 reformers were trying to change the way prisons and the 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:35.000 criminal justice system worked in Philadelphia. This effort was led 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:38.560 by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the miseries of public 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:43.720 prisons whose members were predominantly Quakers. The prison was called 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:47.640 a penitentiary because its purpose was to inspire penitents among 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:50.320 the people housed there by keeping them in a state 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:55.640 of isolated, silent contemplation. Hundreds of prisons that followed this 0:02:55.760 --> 0:02:58.680 theory were built around the world in the nineteenth century. 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:03.680 Although these reformers were trying to move away from things 0:03:03.720 --> 0:03:09.080 like public floggings and executions for relatively minor crimes, and 0:03:09.120 --> 0:03:13.480 also to make incarceration more humane, this system that they 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:16.960 devised was innately cruel. It came to be known as 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:21.560 the Pennsylvania system, and it was basically perpetual solitary confinement. 0:03:22.040 --> 0:03:26.120 People were totally alone in these single occupancy cells that 0:03:26.160 --> 0:03:31.560 had attached small walled in exercise yards. They were forced 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:33.840 to wear hoods when they were in common areas so 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:36.720 they couldn't see or talk to anybody else, and over 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:39.880 time the prison moved away from this practice, and the 0:03:39.880 --> 0:03:45.000 Pennsylvania system was officially abandoned by nineteen By that point, 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.160 more people had recognized that endless solitary confinement was in 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:52.440 fact cruel, but the system that replaced it was cruel 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:56.520 just in a different way. Overcrowding became a major issue, 0:03:56.680 --> 0:03:59.960 with new cell blocks built between the existing ones, until 0:04:00.040 --> 0:04:03.320 a prison that had originally housed two hundred fifty people 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:08.840 instead housed seventeen hundred. A series of riots and uprisings 0:04:08.840 --> 0:04:11.480 took place in the nineteen thirties in response to poor 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:14.240 conditions at the prison and to low pay at the 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.400 on site workshops and factories where they were forced to work. 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:23.720 In nineteen forty four, a plasterer and stonemason named Clarence Kleinbens, 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:26.920 who was known as Cliny, was housed in cell sixty 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:29.440 eight of Cell Blocks seven, and this was at the 0:04:29.600 --> 0:04:32.040 far end of one of those cell blocks that had 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.160 been planned as part of the prisons initial design as 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:38.560 a penitentiary, and it's possible that he moved into the 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:41.040 cell with the intention of tunneling out of it. From 0:04:41.080 --> 0:04:44.159 the beginning, it had been used for storage, and he 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:46.080 had offered to repair it so that he could live 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:49.239 in it. Once he was housed in cell sixty eight, 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.880 he and his cellmate William Russell started digging a tunnel 0:04:52.920 --> 0:04:56.080 in secret, one that went through the cell wall then 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:59.400 down twelve feet, requiring a ladder to get to the bottom. 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:02.800 From there, the tunnel leveled out and stretched about one 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:05.880 hundred feet, running under the exercise yard and the wall 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:08.440 that encircled the prison, and then up again to the 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:12.400 street outside. They made a plaster mask so it would 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.480 look like one of them was in bed that one 0:05:15.520 --> 0:05:18.520 would dig while the other kept watch, and they put 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:20.720 the dirt they dug up in their pockets and then 0:05:20.800 --> 0:05:25.360 scatter it in the exercise yard. Kleindent hid the entrance 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:27.880 to this tunnel with a panel that he made to 0:05:28.160 --> 0:05:31.200 roughly match the intact walls of the cell, and then 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:33.919 put a metal trash can in front of it, and 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:37.000 in the tunnel. He shored it up with wood and 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:41.440 installed lights and ventilation fans. When the tunnel intersected with 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:43.919 a sewer pipe under the prison, they built a connection 0:05:43.960 --> 0:05:46.760 to the pipe so they could dispose of their waste 0:05:47.320 --> 0:05:52.400 through a sewer. This was a complex engineering feat handled 0:05:52.440 --> 0:05:55.919 with whatever they could cobble together. It's pretty ingenious. On 0:05:56.000 --> 0:06:01.000 April third, nine, twelve men escaped through this tune going 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:03.640 to sell sixty eight while everyone else was on the 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:06.560 way to breakfast. At the end of the tunnel, they 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:09.400 broke through the last few feet of earth and scattered 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.599 in different directions as they came out of it. Most 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.919 of them, though, we're back in the prison within a day, 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:18.320 and all of them had been caught within a few months. 0:06:19.160 --> 0:06:23.560 Notorious bank robber Willie Sutton, who would later totally take 0:06:23.600 --> 0:06:26.919 credit for this escape and his autobiography, he was caught 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:29.919 almost immediately. He basically came out of the hall and 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:34.000 they grabbed him right there. Clarence kleindenced was in custody 0:06:34.160 --> 0:06:37.720 after about three hours. One group tried to make their 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:40.840 getaway in a milk truck that they stole, and they 0:06:40.839 --> 0:06:43.680 were caught after police rammed the truck with a police car. 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.080 One man, who was twenty four year old, James Grace, 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:51.840 turned himself in eight days after the escape. William Russell 0:06:51.960 --> 0:06:54.479 and one other man were both shot during the escape 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:58.440 attempt and they were brought back to the prison infirmary. Otherwise, 0:06:58.480 --> 0:07:01.039 the men who tried to escape were punished. Some of 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:05.200 them were placed into these tiny windowless underground cells known 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.400 as klondikes. These were too small to even stand up in. 0:07:09.040 --> 0:07:13.320 Of course, this whole escape was enormously embarrassing for the prison. 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.200 It was not at all the first escape attempt or 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:20.040 even the first successful escape attempt from the Eastern State 0:07:20.040 --> 0:07:23.960 Penitentiary that had happened all the way back in eighty two, 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:28.880 but it was a colossal security breach. Months of digging 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:32.200 had gone unnoticed and more than one inspection of Cell 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:36.600 sixty eight had failed to spot that tunnel entrance. Prison 0:07:36.640 --> 0:07:40.360 authorities investigated and mapped the tunnel, and then they filled 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:43.480 it in and covered up the entrance with cement. Then 0:07:43.600 --> 0:07:46.960 later in two thousand five, Eastern State Penitentiary embarked on 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:51.240 an archaeological study to find and map the tunnel. This 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:55.760 effort included ground penetrating radar work cameras, and a small 0:07:56.120 --> 0:07:59.120 robotic rover that was kind of remote controlled and went 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:02.240 down the tunnel. They had to use a jackhammer to 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:06.720 get through the tunnels covered over entrance. As we said earlier, 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:10.280 Eastern State Penitentiary is now a historic site and as 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:14.080 of seventeen, its mission is to interpret the legacy of 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:17.520 American criminal justice reform. Okay, we'll talk about that a 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.560 little bit more in the behind the scenes on Friday. 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:26.800 Moving on, for about eighty years, starting in people convicted 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:30.160 of crimes in the UK could be transported to Australia 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:34.000 as punishment other colonies as well, but Australia is the 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:38.360 focus here. Often this was for a period of seven years, 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.360 but a lot of people sent to Australia never returned 0:08:41.440 --> 0:08:44.080 to Britain again. They either couldn't afford to make the 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:46.920 trip or they didn't want to after having made a 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:51.040 life for themselves in Australia. And only a small number 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:54.400 of people who were sentenced to transportation had been convicted 0:08:54.440 --> 0:08:57.559 of a violent crime. A lot of them had been 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.559 convicted of offenses that most people would think of as 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.720 pretty petty today. Women in particular, tended to have been 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:09.320 convicted of things like stealing handkerchiefs or cloth, or pickpocketing. 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:12.800 Our next prison break was a group of women who 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:16.920 were being held at Limerick Jail in Ireland awaiting transportation 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:20.080 to Australia. They were supposed to be transferred to a 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:24.120 prison in Cork on May thirty, which is where they 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:26.520 would embark on this ship that was going to take 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:30.000 them to Australia. But the night before that transfer to 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:34.440 a Cork nine women and a baby escape from Limerick Jail. 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:39.960 The women were Mary King, Mary Hurley, Mary Devon, Ellen Hurley, 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:45.960 Margaret Shaughnessy, Margaret Clancy, Bridget Shelton, Mary Hickey, and Katherine Welsh, 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:50.280 and the baby was Mary Devon's eleven month old daughter. 0:09:51.320 --> 0:09:54.560 As escapes go, this one is maybe less dramatic than 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:56.520 some of the others that we're talking about today, but 0:09:56.600 --> 0:10:00.360 it does still involve some ingenuity leading a to their 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.319 transfer date. These women made a habit of singing and 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:08.439 quote noisy vociferations after dark, so it had been established 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:12.360 that they were just loud. Someone had provided them with 0:10:12.400 --> 0:10:16.880 a file, some nitric acid also called aquafortis, and other 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:20.480 tools to help them get out of their cells. Then, 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:23.439 on the twenty three, two men used a ladder that 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:26.600 workers had left behind while making repairs to get into 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:30.680 the women's ward. The men started helping the women get 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:33.880 their cells open, while the women got to their nightly 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:37.760 singing to cover up the noise, and the words of 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:41.840 the monmouthster Merlin quote this amusement they enjoyed with more 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:46.000 than ordinary spirit on this occasion, and without exciting any 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:50.920 particular notice. Meantime, the iron fastenings were assailed by the 0:10:51.000 --> 0:10:55.720 burglars with extraordinary success. That continued knocking was heard in 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.920 the adjacent ward, but the sound of their operations was 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:02.840 so drowned and the melody of the accompanying voices as 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:05.520 not to reach the ears of the jail governor or 0:11:05.559 --> 0:11:09.560 his assistance. The locks gave way before repeated efforts, and 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:14.480 nine females with an infant were extricated from Durance Vile. 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:17.800 Once they were out of their cells, the women and 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.240 their accomplices climbed back down the ladder and used it 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:25.520 to get over the outer walls unnoticed. But these women 0:11:25.559 --> 0:11:28.880 did not stay at large for long. Mary Hickey was 0:11:28.920 --> 0:11:31.880 caught the night of the escape, and newspapers reported on 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.280 the capture of other women in the following days, including 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:38.400 Catherine Welsh, who asked to be taken back to the 0:11:38.440 --> 0:11:42.160 Limerick jail after being caught shoplifting. Yeah, they were going 0:11:42.200 --> 0:11:43.800 to take her to a different jail and she was like, 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:45.720 can I just go back to Limerick because that's where 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:51.839 I escaped from. It appears that, with one possible exception, 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:54.720 all of the women involved in this prison break did 0:11:54.760 --> 0:11:58.640 wind up being transported to Australia. Two of them are 0:11:58.679 --> 0:12:01.560 mentioned in an article about a ship that departed for 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:05.320 Australia on January twenty nine of eighteen thirty one, and 0:12:05.360 --> 0:12:07.400 then all but one of the rest of them are 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:12.079 listed on ships actual registers of the people being transported. 0:12:12.120 --> 0:12:14.360 So there were five on a ship that departed on 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:18.520 September eighteen thirty one, and then one on a ship 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:22.000 that left on March nine of eighteen thirty three, so 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.360 that leaves only one of the women unaccounted for. We 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:28.160 are going to take a sponsor break, uh and after 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:41.760 that will come back to more escape stories. Next up, 0:12:42.080 --> 0:12:45.840 we have the escape from Alcatraz in nineteen sixty two, 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.760 and way back in two thousand eight, prior hosts of 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.880 the show, Candice and Josh did an episode title Did 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:57.400 Someone Really Escape from Alcatraz? Number one? That is fourever Ago. 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:00.840 It was an entirely different show with the different format 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:04.280 at that point, and most of that ten minute episode 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:07.319 is focused more on the general history of Alcatraz as 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.800 a prison and not on the escape itself. If you're 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:13.839 interested in the more general history of Alcatraz, we talk 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:16.160 about that a bit in our two parter on the 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:19.880 Occupation of Alcatraz. Those episodes came out in twenty nineteen. 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.160 So Alcatraz is an island in San Francisco Bay. It 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:27.679 has a steep rocky shoreline, and it is surrounded by 0:13:27.720 --> 0:13:32.120 treacherous waters. Although this may have discouraged people from trying 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:36.280 to escape, there were still fourteen different escape attempts during 0:13:36.320 --> 0:13:40.440 Alcatraz's time as a federal prison that was from four 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:44.840 to nineteen sixty three. Nearly all of the thirty six 0:13:44.840 --> 0:13:48.320 men involved in these attempts were captured or killed, but 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:52.360 five of them are classified as missing and presumed drowned. 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:56.480 Two of them were Theodore Cole and Ralph Row, who 0:13:56.520 --> 0:13:58.760 filed through the bars of a window in the mat 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:02.640 shop and tried to escape during a storm in ninety seven. 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:07.120 The other three were involved in the nineteen sixty two escape. 0:14:07.880 --> 0:14:12.160 There were actually four men involved in this attempt, Frank Morris, 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:16.960 John Anglin, John's brother Clarence, and Allan West. They had 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:21.040 all been convicted of various burglaries, robberies, and thefts, and 0:14:21.080 --> 0:14:24.120 they'd all been incarcerated together before, and they all knew 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:28.160 each other. They had been transferred to Alcatraz after having 0:14:28.160 --> 0:14:31.920 tried to escape from other prisons. They started planning to 0:14:32.080 --> 0:14:36.080 escape from Alcatraz in December of nineteen sixty one. Morrison 0:14:36.160 --> 0:14:39.240 the Englands had been assigned cells that were adjacent to 0:14:39.280 --> 0:14:42.160 one another, and one of them found some old saw 0:14:42.240 --> 0:14:46.640 blades they thought they could use. These men improvised so 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:50.680 much for this escape attempt. They improvised tools to dig 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:53.680 and break through walls, including making a drill from a 0:14:53.800 --> 0:14:56.760 vacuum cleaner motor, although that turned out to be too 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:00.960 noisy for them to really use. Scrap wood became basic paddles, 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:03.880 and a concertina that is a musical instrument that's sort 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.520 of like an accordion became a pump to inflate their raft, 0:15:08.880 --> 0:15:13.960 and that raft, apparently using instructions they found in popular mechanics, 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:16.840 they made a six ft by fourteen foot raft out 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.480 of about fifty raincoats. They may have taken some of 0:15:20.480 --> 0:15:23.320 these raincoats from other men by force, but there was 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:27.440 also a rumor that if anybody successfully escaped from Alcatraz, 0:15:27.520 --> 0:15:30.840 the government would shut the prison down, So it seems 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.080 like some of the men were happy to kind of 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.120 wear their raincoats out to the exercise yard and then 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:39.440 leave them there to be picked up, kind of donating 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:42.320 them to this effort to get the prison shut down. 0:15:43.160 --> 0:15:47.160 The escaping men then used contact cement they had stolen 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.840 from various workshops around the prison and heat from the 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:54.960 steam pipes to vulcanize the seams of the raft. They 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:59.640 used this same method to also make life preservers. Each 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:02.160 of their cells had an air vent, and they used 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:05.040 various tools to make a series of holes around these 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:08.280 vents so that the whole thing in each cell could 0:16:08.280 --> 0:16:11.200 be pulled out from the wall. This got them into 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:14.160 a utility corridor, where they made and hid what they 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:18.240 would need to escape. Yet another improvised tool with all 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:21.720 this was a periscope, which they used to watch for 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:24.720 guards while they were working. They also worked out a 0:16:24.760 --> 0:16:27.760 way to get from the corridor and onto the prison roof. 0:16:28.680 --> 0:16:32.160 Similarly to how Clarence Kleinen and William Russell had used 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:34.560 a mask they made to make it look like one 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:36.240 of them was in bed while the other one was 0:16:36.280 --> 0:16:40.000 digging a tunnel, these four men made heads out of 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:44.000 homemade plaster and painted them topped them with human hair 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:46.120 so that it would make it look like they were 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:51.640 asleep in their beds. Um these heads, I think they're 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:55.360 actually pretty good, better than I could do, I think. 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:01.760 On June, Frank Risks and the England Brothers went out 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.400 through their removed ventilation grates, covering the hole behind them 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:09.359 with whatever they could. Alan West had tried to reinforce 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:12.879 the concrete around his grate and had accidentally cemented it 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:15.240 in place, and by the time he was able to 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:20.000 get it free, his accomplices had already left. From up 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:23.000 on the roof Morris and the Englands climbed down a 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:26.320 smokestack and then over a fence, cutting through the barbed 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:28.679 wire at the top of the fence, and then they 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:31.639 seemed to have launched their raft from the northeast corner 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:34.399 of the island. But then what happened to them after 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.920 that is a mystery. During bed check on the morning 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:41.040 of June twelve, a guard at first thought that the 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:43.920 three men were still asleep in their beds, but then 0:17:43.960 --> 0:17:46.879 realized they weren't in their cells after touching one of 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:50.000 the fake heads through the bars, and a man hunt began. 0:17:50.760 --> 0:17:54.960 Authorities recovered a package of letters sealed in rubber paddles 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.199 and life vests, either in the water or washed up 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:02.240 at various points around the San France Ascope Bay. Sailors 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:05.280 from a Norwegian freighter reportedly saw a body in the 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:09.680 water on July seventeenth, but did not report that until October. 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.640 Although there have been some simulations that suggests that the 0:18:13.680 --> 0:18:18.280 three men could have made it to shore was theoretically possible. 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:21.439 At this point, they are presumed to have drowned in 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:25.240 their escape attempt. The FBI closed the case on December 0:18:25.320 --> 0:18:30.080 thirty one of nineteen seventy nine. Although Alcatraz did close 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:32.720 less than a year after this escape, it was because 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:36.919 the prison needed a multimillion dollar restoration project, and on 0:18:37.040 --> 0:18:39.879 top of that, it was expensive to operate because of 0:18:39.960 --> 0:18:43.720 its island location. The federal government decided that it would 0:18:43.720 --> 0:18:45.959 be cheaper to just build a whole new prison than 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:50.880 to try to restore and keep running Alcatraz. Next up, 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.800 Libby Prison was originally a food warehouse and then later 0:18:55.840 --> 0:18:59.440 it became home to a grocery and ship provisioning business. 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:03.200 Was in Richmond, Virginia, and during the US Civil War, 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:06.520 the Confederate government ticket over and turned it into a 0:19:06.680 --> 0:19:12.920 prison to house US prisoners of war, particularly US military officers, 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:17.639 and conditions there were really just appalling. Obviously, it was 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:20.119 not built to be a prison, and beyond that, it 0:19:20.200 --> 0:19:23.479 was situated on a canal that routinely flooded the building. 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:27.320 Cellar in wet weather and the rising waters drove rats 0:19:27.400 --> 0:19:29.840 out of the cellar and into the rest of the structure. 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:34.200 The windows were open spaces covered in bars, and they 0:19:34.280 --> 0:19:37.560 let in little fresh air, but not much light, and 0:19:37.600 --> 0:19:41.320 they didn't offer much protection from storms or extreme temperatures. 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:44.920 The upper two floors where the prisoners were housed, were 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:48.720 very sparsely furnished. There weren't even enough bunks for everyone. 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:53.120 This was an immensely overcrowded facility, with as many as 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:57.360 one thousand people packed into just six rooms, without enough 0:19:57.400 --> 0:20:04.240 food or supplies. Un Surprisingly, disease was rampant. Colonel Thomas E. 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:10.480 Rose of the Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry started planning an escape 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:13.800 almost as soon as he arrived at Libby Prison. He 0:20:13.840 --> 0:20:16.200 thought it might be possible to dig a tunnel from 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:20.280 that rat filled cellar to a nearby tobacco shed where 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:24.200 they could get out without being seen by guards. Because 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:28.440 all of the rats and the ongoing flooding problems made 0:20:28.440 --> 0:20:32.240 the seller smell terrible, so bad that it was nicknamed 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:36.399 rat Hell. That also meant the Confederate guards mostly stayed 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:38.840 out of it, so this was one place they could 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:43.520 work on. A tunnel mostly undetected. Construction of an escape 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.560 tunnel started with removing bricks from behind a stove in 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:49.760 the kitchen, which was the only room the imprisoned men 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:53.800 were allowed free access to. This made an entry into 0:20:53.840 --> 0:20:57.439 the cellar, and from there Rose and his accomplices started 0:20:57.440 --> 0:21:01.400 digging with makeshift tools, putting the into an old spatoon 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.640 to take it away. It was hard to tell how 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:06.760 far they had gotten, though, and at one point they 0:21:06.800 --> 0:21:09.760 broke through the surface and realized that they still had 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:13.399 several feet left to go. They managed to fill that 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:18.240 accidental opening in before they were noticed. Robert Knox Needen 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:21.800 was a cartographer who was being held at a neighboring prison, 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:25.000 and he wrote this account of the escape, which happened 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:28.919 on February nine, eight sixty four. Quote. Everyone wanted to 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.840 be first. In order to get down the chimney as 0:21:31.840 --> 0:21:35.119 well as the long tunnel. It was necessary to strip naked, 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:37.719 wrap the clothes in a bundle and push this on 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.520 before them. As soon as it was seen that only 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:43.919 a few men could possibly get out for daylight, all 0:21:44.000 --> 0:21:46.920 rushed for the mouth of the tunnel who could, each 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:50.440 man being determined to get out first. The room was 0:21:50.520 --> 0:21:54.040 now crowded to suffocation, all struggling to get in the hole. 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.720 The strongest men forced their way to the front, while 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:01.000 the weak ones were more roughly brushed side and jammed 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:04.560 up against the walls. Sneeton also made a map of 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:08.320 the prison in watercolor, showing the prison, the tunnel route, 0:22:08.600 --> 0:22:11.879 nearby streets and other buildings, and the James River and 0:22:11.920 --> 0:22:15.240 its adjacent canal. That map is now in the collection 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:19.040 of the Virginia Historical Society, and one account of this 0:22:19.320 --> 0:22:22.480 escape During the roll call the next day, a Confederate 0:22:22.520 --> 0:22:26.840 official said, where are they all? And somebody answered, they 0:22:26.880 --> 0:22:31.359 fell out the window, which cracks me up a whole 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:35.159 lot of window drops. One hundred nine men managed to 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.040 escape through that tunnel, with more than half of them 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:42.119 successfully making it to Union territory. Some of the ones 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:45.280 who managed to evade capture had helped from Unions by 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:48.840 Elizabeth van Lew who was mentioned in our prior episode 0:22:48.880 --> 0:22:51.840 on Mary Elizabeth Bowser, which was a Saturday classic not 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:55.840 too long ago. Forty eight of the men were recaptured 0:22:56.080 --> 0:22:59.840 and too drowned while trying to cross a river. Colonel Rose, 0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:02.199 who had started the whole escape plan, was one of 0:23:02.240 --> 0:23:05.280 the Ones recaptured, and he was held at Libby until 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:09.120 April eighteen sixty four, when he was released as part 0:23:09.160 --> 0:23:13.040 of a prisoner exchange. A few weeks after this escape, 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:17.719 h Judson Kilpatrick and Ulric Dollgren tried to liberate the prison, 0:23:17.800 --> 0:23:22.199 but they were discovered. Dolgren was killed, and papers he 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.000 was carrying with him suggested that there was a plan 0:23:25.119 --> 0:23:28.280 in the works to burn down Richmond and kill Confederate 0:23:28.320 --> 0:23:34.320 President Jefferson Davis. After this, Richmond's proest Marshal John H. Winder, 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:38.560 authorized Major Thomas Pratt Turner, who was commandant of the prison, 0:23:39.040 --> 0:23:42.720 to dig a pit under the prison, fill it with gunpowder, 0:23:42.880 --> 0:23:45.240 and blow the whole thing up if there were any 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:49.680 further escape attempts. That threat was never carried out. Soon 0:23:49.720 --> 0:23:53.199 the Confederate Army started transferring men out of Libby to 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:57.000 other prisons. After the war was over, the entire thing 0:23:57.080 --> 0:24:00.119 was dismantled and moved to Chicago, where it operated is 0:24:00.119 --> 0:24:05.679 the Libby Prison War Museum from eighty nine to I 0:24:05.760 --> 0:24:08.680 have many questions about that, but I did not look 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:11.439 into answering them because it was outside the scope of 0:24:11.440 --> 0:24:14.760 this podcast. We're going to take a quick sponsor break 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:27.320 and then get to two more escapes. Next up we 0:24:27.400 --> 0:24:31.760 have Shira Torre Oshier, who successfully escaped from four different 0:24:31.880 --> 0:24:36.560 prisons in Japan in the thirties and forties. English language 0:24:36.560 --> 0:24:40.520 accounts of these escapes have some contradictions. This was also 0:24:40.600 --> 0:24:43.280 true of Japanese accounts that I found and ran through 0:24:43.280 --> 0:24:46.600 Google Translate, but still the basics and the places where 0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:51.159