“When I assumed the charge of the Gibraltar convict prison, its population was about five hundred; all “long-term” convicts as they were called, offenders, that is to say, who were expiating serious crimes in sentences of considerable length. These men were the chiefs and leaders of their nefarious profession ; they had either graduated through every stage till they had gained the heaviest penalty, or they had achieved immediate pre-eminence by one great and atrocious misdeed. A very short examination of the prison archives convinced me of this, and will explain the increasing interest I took in my charges. I soon found myself comparing the crime with the criminal, curiously observing faces and characteristics in the endeavour to read upon the outward mask some indication of the evil propensities within which had culminated in crime. My opportunities of effective observation were few; the great or habitual criminal is generally a consummate actor, and if he knows the eye of authority is on him, his face and outward demeanour are cleverly made up to mislead. But I sometimes saw my convicts unawares: from the window of my private office when they stood upon parade beneath ; from behind the crimson curtains of my pew in chapel, when with hypocritical devotion they fervently intoned the Gregorian chants which our chaplain delighted in, or when they listened respectfully but with obvious inattention to his really excellent discourse.
After a week or two, in spite of the difficulties presented by a general dull uniformity of aspect, the confusing monotony of garb and coiffure, the same clothes, the same close-cropped hair and beard; notwithstanding the one hopeless, unhappy, apathetic look which prisoners always wear, and which is due to the boredom of prolonged incarceration — in spite of all this, I began to know something, as I thought, of the more noticeable characters. I could separate them into classes, could recognize types, distinguish between individuals, and understand their peculiar traits. The rather jaunty, well-built fellow, who wore his ugly clothes with a dandified air, who had greased his sparse locks with fat skimmed off his short allowance of soup, was a notable “ cracksman,’' who had done a dozen “ big jobs,” and. was “ wanted ” still. That hale old man with the silver hair, and skin as dark as a mulatto’s, and who was so thoroughly at home with his surroundings, was a “colonial convict,” a veteran survivor of the days of transportation to the Antipodes, who had been twice “across the pond,” first to Botany Bay, and then to Port Arthur. The square-jowled man, with the eye of a vicious horse, who stood erect and defiant in constant protest against discipline, was an intractable soldier who had twice struck a superior officer ; his next neighbour, a fawning, cringing, broken creature, had once held the Queen’s commission, had lost all through gambling and self-indulgence, and was a convict for the third time for forgery and fraud.
But there was one man among them who soon especially attracted my attention; partly by his dress, which told its own story ; still more by his demeanour, which was so different from what might have been expected that I was fairly puzzled. He was in a suit of “ canaries ” — the prison name for the parti-coloured dress of alternate drab and yellow, which is one of the penalties for attempted escape — and he wore the “ leg-irons,” or hanging chains, which are often imposed as an additional punishment for misconduct deemed most heinous by prison officials. What struck me most was the unconscious, unconcerned way in which he carried these glaring and irksome badges of disgrace.
I liked the man’s face, moreover. It was honest- looking. Vice had left no trace on it. It was as open and engaging as though he had never transgressed — could never have been guilty indeed of a breach of the law. He had none of the outward features of the instinctive animal — the anthropologists would have made nothing out of him. He had twinkling, almost merry, blue eyes, in a small-featured, rather rounded face; his hair, though cut close, was obviously curly, and a brilliant red ; he did not stoop or slouch, like so many of his fellows, but stood up brisk and alert, with no sullenness in his eye, no discontented frown upon his unclouded brow.
What had brought this seemingly good-tempered, respectable-looking man into penal servitude? Yet more. What had landed him in the grievous scrape of chains and parti-coloured dress?
He interested me so much that I inquired further — found out his name and the particulars of his prison history. He was called Reallf, and his was a life sentence, inflicted for casting away a ship of which he was the master. The official records were meagre, but I found that Realff had been fairly tried and properly convicted. He himself, the captain, had gone down into the hold, scuttled his ship, and was the first to desert her. The fraud upon the underwriters had been fully proved, and the sentence justly earned.
As regards prison conduct, Realff had behaved in the most exemplary fashion until he was carried away by that unquenchable craving for freedom which animates every sentient being when in durance. He had combined with several others in an attempt to escape with the comptroller’s (or governor’s) gig. But here, I must confess, I thought that there was some excuse for the fugitives. Temptation had dropped straight into their mouths. Kealff was the coxswain of the gig. It was worse than imprudence to give a “lifer” employment which permitted him to come and go in a state of semi-freedom ; but he was a smart, sailor-like little fellow, and had com- mended himself at once to my predecessor, who took immense pride in his gig. It was a very smart and ship-shape wherry, manned by six expert oarsmen — all convicts, of course, but wearing neat suits of white duck and straw hats, bearing the prison badge — their only mark, indeed, of servitude. The old comptroller used his gig on every possible occasion, and it made as good a show as any man-of-war’s boat upon the station.
Although it was a pleasant walk into the town, along the Line Wall or under the perennial greenery of the Alameda Gardens, the comptroller, whenever business took him to head-quarters, was invariably rowed as far as Ragged Staff. He visited the parties working in the Rosia Quarries or beyond towards Europa, seated in the stern-sheets of his gig, accompanied and protected by an armed warder at his side. This was his answer if any one hinted that there was possible danger in thus utilizing convicts. Besides, he knew his men, he said. They were a good lot; lie had especially selected them ; and he was certain he could trust them, more particularly Kealff. He would answer for KealfF whatever might happen.
Nothing, probably, would have happened had thegig and its crew been limited to inshore service of the kind already described ; but more was asked of them on an extraordinary occasion, and it was obviously too much. It was just before I became comptroller, and the occurrence made some stir in the garrison.
A party of convicts at work on the New Mole had, by some stratagem, gained possession unobserved of a ship’s cutter, and had made off across the bay to the Spanish town of Algeciras on the other side. Here they would be free men, as in those days there was no treaty of extradition with Spain. The fugitives had already a fair start before the warning gun from the signal-station and the white flag upon the lower yard gave the usual notice to the garrison.
There was, of course, intense excitement within the prison. The working parties were formed up and marched in ; messengers were despatched to seek help from the naval authorities ; and the comptroller promptly, but very foolishly, ordered out his gig. It was always in readiness, and soon answered the summons. He could not well absent himself from the prison at such a moment; but the boat was at once despatched in pursuit, with a warder in charge, the convict crew laying well to their oars, and making the light weary skiff over the water at such a pace it seemed certain the gig would overhaul the other boat, although so far ahead. But the spectators, who by this time were numerous, both at the end of the New Mole and along the Line Wall, and were beginning to bet upon the exciting race, soon saw that the convicts in the pursuing boat had business of their own to transact, very different from that of recapturing their comrades. Through glasses, the crew of the gig were seen to rise upon the warder in the stern-sheets, overpower him, and bundle him into the bottom of the boat. Then they again bent their backs to their oars, and plainly showed that they too meant to escape.
This they would certainly have accomplished ; but, unhappily for them, the little gunboat permanently upon the Gibraltar station, just then steamed round Europa Point. She was returning from some mission down the coast, and, taking in the situation, at once gave chase, gained quickly upon the gig, and recovered possession of it and its crew. The first boat, however, had already reached Spanish water, and was beyond pursuit.
For this daring, but not unintelligible, attempt to break prison the whole of the gig’s crew had been sentenced to wear the cross-irons and parti-coloured dress.
A few days after I had first noticed Eealff, I found him among the applicants for an interview with me in my office. Had he guessed, with that extra-ordinary, almost intuitive, quickness so often charac-teristic of the convict class, that I was well-disposed towards him? Had lie detected me, caught my eyes upon him once or twice, and presumed therefrom the interest he aroused?
“It is about my case,” he said directly he was brought in, speaking without cringing, and with a kind of sturdy, self-possessed independence, yet with- out the slightest presumption or effrontery. “ I have not been punished justly.”
“Your sentence is unjust — is that what you mean ? So you wish me to believe that you are innocent ? ”
“No, sir; not all. Most of them here say they are innocent, as perhaps you have already found out, sir.”
We exchanged smiles, the convict and I, over this hackneyed prison joke, which was more or less new to me then. Everybody in prison has been wrong-fully convicted, if the prisoners’ own assurances are to be believed.
“No, sir, I was guilty ; and I pleaded guilty of the offence they sent me here for. It’s about these clothes,” and he pointed to his drab-and-yellow dress.
“No, sir; I did not. I was the victim; I was carried away by the others ; I could not help myself.”
“Why, the evidence against you was perfectly clear. I have read it. You were the ringleader — that was proved. It was you who seized the officer from behind ; as coxswain you could easily do so. You first abstracted his revolver from his belt, then shouted to the others, ‘Brain him, boys, if he makes a move ! I’ve got his barker!’ That was sworn to by the officer, Warder Allkirk.”
‘‘That was his story, sir,” he said. “I took no revolver from him ; he hadn’t it with him. We came away in too great a hurry for him to put on his belt. There was no belt found in the boat.”
“Warder Allkirk says you threw it overboard. Besides,” I went on, answering him good-humouredly, for the man’s persistency amused me, “when the gunboat overtook you, and all the others surrendered, you alone jumped into the water, dived, and tried again to escape.”
“I fell out of the gig, sir — that’s how it was. It was purely accidental, sir, I can assure you. I missed my footing trying to get up the ship’s side.”
“You — a first-class seaman, and as active as a cat! No, no; I can’t quite believe that. However, I have no power to relieve you of your punishment. You were punished by the Visitors, and you must apply to them.”
“Won’t you recommend me to the Visitors, sir? I give you my word, sir, I had no desire, no wish to escape.”
He pleaded now with tears of earnestness in his eyes.
“Why, if I had been the ringleader, the others wouldn’t swear, as they do now, that I had ‘put them away’” (betrayed them). “They call me a 'nose,’ sir; they throw it in my teeth that I never helped them; that I helped the ^ screw ’ ” (warder) ; ''that I steered the mast so as to cross the gunboat’s course. It’s very hard, sir, to bear the same punishment, and yet be accused by one’s comrades of foul play. Either I was on one side or the other; I could not be on both. If you can’t take off the ' slangs ’ ” (irons), " sir, at least you can separate me from the other chaps — they lead me a dog’s life.”
"What do you want — change of party or change of work? Where would you like to go?”
"Anywhere, so long as I’m by myself I’m handy, sir, with all kinds of tools — we sailors mostly are. I’m not a bad carpenter, and I can do a bit of fitting. I could make ships’ fenders or sails, or any kind of patching or mending — anything you please, sir.”
“I’ll see about it,” I said at last ; and would hear no more.
Later on — a month or more — when his chains and distinctive dress were removed, I yielded to his solicitations, and permitted him to be employed as “rough” carpenter alone. He mended the pick- handles and wheelbarrows in the Rosia Quarry, occupying for the purpose a little shed or lean-to built against a hollow in the cliff. Once or twice I asked after him, and had a good report. He was quiet and well-behaved — not too industrious, perhaps ; but in that he had only learnt the prison lesson, and did no more work than he could help, except when the eye of authority was upon him.
This could not be the case invariably, as the small workshop stood a little removed from the bulk of the working parties, and Realff was only visited from time to time when they took him broken implements or brought away those he had repaired. The senior officers, when inspecting the works — myself among the number — also looked in on him now and again, just to see that he was all right and properly employed. We were all of us to blame in not watching him more closely.
One afternoon, at the time of the interviews, a convict came to me with the unusual preamble that he wished to speak to me privately and alone.
“You will be sorry, sir, if you refuse,” insisted the man when I objected, saying there could be nothing he had to communicate which the officials with me — my chief warder and head clerk — might not hear.
“I shan’t speak, sir, except to you alone.”
I yielded, curious to hear his great secret.
“It’s just this, sir,” he whispered, stooping over towards me and shading his mouth with his hand; “the Captain’s going to make his 'guy’ — to escape. Don’t you understand?”
“The Captain?” — not yet accustomed to this recognition of outside rank which is very general among convicts when speaking of one another.
“Yes, sir; Captain Realff — him as you put to work in the shanty shop.”
“And how does he propose to escape?” I inquired next, but carelessly, disbelieving the story, and, in fact, rather turning against the informer.
“Tain’t for me to say how; but he’s a-going, I can swear. I’ve caught him at — Well, I can’t tell that; but, if you don’t watch him, he’ll mighty soon give you leg-bail — see if he don’t. Take him out of that ’ere shop, I say — ”
“And put you in it? Is that what you’re driving at, eh ? ” I said, thinking I had at last reached the motive for this treachery. “ If that’s all you have to say, you can go.”
I thought nothing of this cock-and-bull story, and, summoning my officers, the man was marched away.
Yet within twenty-four hours Realff had disappeared.
He was missing when the working parties formed up next afternoon to return to the prison. It was customary for an officer to go to the shed, unlock Realff, and bring him back to be marched home with the main body. But this afternoon there was no Realff. He had been seen, only half-an-hour before, through the little window of the shed when visited by the chief warder, and had answered to his name as he stood planing at his bench in a dark recess. Now he was gone — how, when, or where, not a soul could understand. Several officers remained to make a thorough search of the shed and its surroundings; and, when I heard the news, I also went out to Rosia.
Holding a short inquiry on the spot, I obtained such facts as were available. I was assured the shed had been found locked on the outside. It was pretty plain that no one from within could have tampered with the lock; the key-hole did not go through into the shed, and it was too far from the window to be reached by even the longest arm from inside. The door could not have been the way of exit, from which I deduced the obvious inference that Realff had found some other road out or was still inside.
The first alternative I dealt with by examining the exterior of the shed minutely ; but there was no trace of interference with its sides or roof. We must look inside, therefore. But the interior of the shanty had been ransacked from end to end without result; there was no hiding-place for a full-grown man in or amongst the contents — nothing that could have concealed him. Could he have discovered and utilized some hidden recess; a cavern in the walls; some subterranean hole or passage ? I knew that the great rock was honeycombed with open spaces, like the holes in Gruyere cheese.
I sent for a lantern and examined every nook and cranny of the cliff against which the shed was built, tapping the sides with hammer and crowbar to detect any hollow within. Nothing came of this examination; and I next tried the floor, which was of the surface rock, levelled and fairly smooth, although here and there covered with loose, shingly stones. I remembered something I had read in a French detective story, and ordered a number of buckets full of water to be brought, with which I inundated the floor. The water ran away entirely; it could not be absorbed, for the floor was not porous, and must therefore have found some channel below. The process was repeated, the course of the flowing I water closely watched and followed, till it led us to a distant corner, where it finally disappeared.
This was the clue we needed; and more minute investigation showed that a large fragment or slab of the rocky floor was removable. It was lifted easily, and revealed a dark gulf, or pit, below. Suspecting that our man was there, I approached the mouth and shouted once or twice — ‘‘Now, Realff, it’s no use — you’d better come up !”
There was no reply, and the chief warder, having by my order tested the depth of the hole, presently jumped down with two others. They carried the lantern and were armed.
For a long time we waited breathlessly — anxiously. At last a faint, distant shout travelled back to us, followed by the sounds of a scuffle. By and by the searchers returned with Realff, securely handcuffed and in rather a battered condition. But nothing could quench the merry light in his twinkling eyes. It was quite plain that he faced his disappointment like a man.
His failure must have been all the more grievous in that he had been so near success. His patience and ingenuity had been extraordinary. The discovery of the hollow space beneath his feet he must have made soon after he first came into the shed; and he had not only enlarged it, but extended it in a lateral direction, hoping, perhaps, for escape through a subterranean passage to the edge of the sea. To leave the shed was only the first stage in his evasion. He had provided himself with means for going much further, and had actually built himself a boat out of the nondescript materials to his hand — scraps of canvas, old bags, and small fragments of timber. In this he had, no doubt, intended to embark as soon as he reached the water.
The boat was a marvel of constructive skill. I cannot quite say whether the now well-known Berthon collapsible canvas boat had been invented at that date, but Realff — whether a copy or original — had made a boat of this kind. We found it in the underground passage ; it was in three compartments for convenience of transport, all of which were easily and firmly united into one single, tiny dingy or coracle, just enough to keep a man afloat. Realff, of course, trusted to be picked up soon by some passing craft in the ever-crowded Straits of Gibraltar; but he was prepared to be some time at sea, and had laid by a store of food — biscuit and salt pork — saved from his allowances, and carried out daily bit by bit from the prison in such small quantities as to elude the search made — somewhat superficially, it is to be feared — at every parade.
It was this abstraction of his daily rations that had been discovered by one of his comrades, and, arousing suspicion, had led to the warning I received. Reallf himself feared that he had been, or soon would be, betrayed, and he had in consequence been compelled to risk premature departure.
For this fresh attempt to escape, Realff was sentenced again to the leg-irons and parti-coloured dress, and he was still wearing them when I left Gibraltar. I believe that even this punishment could not deter from further efforts to get free; but all must have been fruitless, for he was among the ‘‘ lifers ’’ sent home for conditional release when the Gibraltar convict prison was finally closed.
The ingenuity displayed by the imprisoned was perhaps shown in its highest form by the convict Realff. In his case the impulse was strong; the craving for freedom was a sharp whip to endeavour, under which all the inventive and constructive faculties lent the fullest effort to accomplishment. Other intending; fugitives have exhibited the same qualities. Numerous instances can be adduced of the successful fabrication of false keys which have opened the most intricate locks. I have one by me made of the simplest materials; ordinary wire removed from the outer rim of a water-can, and bound round with carefully- twisted strands of oakum.
So ready are prisoners to misuse the hours of labour, that it is an axiom in the best prison administration, that where prisoners are employed with tools, and having access to old or new material, scraps of iron, rusty nails, rubbish of any kind, they should be constantly under supervision. Neglect of this precaution emboldened one prisoner, a plumber and gas-fitter by trade, and an excellent workman, to make a key for himself, in short snatches when uncontrolled, which passed him through three different doors, and eventually through an outer gate beyond which he was at barge. The skilful manipulation in these cases is not more surprising than the cleverness with which the most unpromising materials are turned to account. Thus in the days when hoops were the fashion, any piece of crinoline wire was eagerly appropriated; it made the very best kind of file or steel saw. The iron bands or stiffening of a woman’s stays served the same purpose. Half a pair of scissors made a most dangerous weapon. So did the end of the handle of the hard- wood spoon. Any bit of metal could be converted into a razor, sharp enough for shaving convicts, whose chins are now merely rasped short, and who have a strong desire to be properly shaved, and will make razors for themselves out of broken bits of mat-knives, shoemakers’-knives, even the dinner-knives. I have several of these in my possession. Each has its own neat 'Case made of “beverteen,” or any other morsel of cloth used in the prison dress.
What convict workmen can do with tools if allowed full scope, I once saw, myself, displayed in rather 'an amusing way. I was leaving the prison enclosure one day when in charge of the new works at Wormwood Scrubs, and on handing over my keys to the gatekeeper for consignment to the prison safe, he through some mischance hampered the safe lock, and could not open the safe. I waited some time impatiently, as I was expected elsewhere, but to no purpose. The safe could not be opened, and until it was, not only must remain on the spot, but so must every other official. It is a strict rule that no one can leave prison until the keys are collected and safely put away. At last, in despair, I turned to the chief warder and asked, “Have we any especially good cracksman in custody?”
“There is K , sir,” he replied promptly, “ one' of the most noted housebreakers in London ; doing fifteen years. He is employed at this moment in the carpenter’s shop.”
‘‘Send for him,” I said; and presently K appeared under escort, carrying his bag of tools like any British workman arrives to execute repairs. He- was a tall, very dark-haired, rather good-looking man; clean, industrious, and an excellent prisoner.
“Can you open that safe, K?” I asked quietly, when he was marched into the lodge.
“Do you mean it, sir?” he replied, looking at me with an intelligent and irrepressible smile.
“Certainly I do. Examine the lock. If you can manage it — go ahead.”
K made only a short inspection, and then picked up a couple of tools.
“I think I can do it, sir; shall I try?”
I nodded assent, and in less than three minutes the safe-door swung open; the lock was completely conquered.
I will not risk mentioning the names of the makers of the safe, which indeed I do not remember. But it was a patent, and presumably a first-class safe, which thus succumbed so easily to the skilful house-breaker. Fortunately there was an inner smaller safe, which answered all our purposes for security until the outer could be properly repaired. As for K I thanked him, and the next time he came with a request for one of the small privileges so coveted by prisoners, I think it was not denied him.
What prisoners can accomplish for their own purposes, even when left a good deal to their own devices, savours almost of romance.”
- Arthur Griffiths, Secrets of the Prison House. Volume 1. London: Chapman & Hall, 1894. pp. 71-89.
