The Mammoth Book of Prison Breaks

by Paul Simpson

  Ó Brádaigh was even more senior. He had joined Sinn Féin in 1950, aged eighteen, and was appointed to the Military Council of the IRA four years later. He led a raid on a British Army barracks in Berkshire in August 1955 which obtained huge quantities of firearms and ammunitions for the IRA, and when the border campaign began, he was in charge of training one of the four “columns” (the armed units carrying out the IRA strikes), and, like Ó Conaill, had raided RUC barracks. While serving a six-month sentence in Mountjoy, he was elected as a Teachta Dála (member of the Irish Parliament) for Sinn Féin, although like his fellow TDs, he refused to sit in anything other than an all-Ireland parliament. Once his sentence was over, he too was rearrested and dispatched to the Curragh.

  The plan was moderately simple: during a football match, a blanket was smuggled out and placed on the ground near the perimeter fencing. The spectators then kicked pieces of grass over it to disguise it, and the two escapees crawled underneath it. They had previously prepared dummies which were put in their beds, so the guards’ headcount would be correct. As an extra precaution, to make sure that the guards who were checking the perimeter fencing for any signs of disturbance were distracted, a very nice cap was left on the ground. Ó Conaill and Ó Brádaigh waited until nightfall, then cut their way out of the camp. When the prison guards started enquiring about the ownership of the cap, rather than setting off all the alarms, the other IRA men knew that their comrades had succeeded. Ó Brádaigh became the first TD to go on the run since the 1920s. The following month, he was elected as Chief of Staff, a position he would hold twice in his career; he later became leader of Republican Sinn Féin, from which he retired in 2009. Ó Conaill became IRA Director of Operations but was shot and captured in 1959; he shared Ó Brádaigh’s view of the struggles against the British, and joined Republican Sinn Féin when it was founded in 1986, five years before his death.

  Although there were some in the camp who believed that internment wouldn’t continue for much longer, Joe O’Hagan and the younger IRA members were determined to get out to become part of the fight once more. It was clear that the movement was suffering because increasingly inexperienced, if still enthusiastic, youngsters were having to carry the burden. He and others decided that they would take the risk that the Army soldiers guarding them would open fire if they tried a mass breakout.

  Despite not receiving official sanction from the camp escape committee, O’Hagan and over thirty of his fellow internees made a break for it on the afternoon of 3 December 1958. They dealt with the guards in the yard and cut through the wire fence. As they had hoped, the ordinary soldiers didn’t open fire on them, but the sergeant in charge did, using his hand gun to try to disable the escapees by shooting them in the legs. The soldiers also had no compunction about using less lethal force: ammonia grenades were chucked at the escaping prisoners, and Joe O’Hagan, who had gone back to help one of his friends who had got caught up in the barbed wire, fell victim to the gas. In the end, though, sixteen men were able to get away from the Curragh.

  Those counselling patience were right; internment was lifted in March 1959, and O’Hagan and his compatriots were free to continue the campaign.

  Sources:

  Robert W. White, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh: The Life and Politics of an Irish Revolutionary, (Indiana University Press, 2006)

  Paddy Hayes, Break Out! Famous Prison Escapes (O’Brien Press, 2004)

  An Phoblacht, 3 May 2001: “Unassuming and mighty man laid to rest”

  An Phoblacht, 29 April 2001: “JB O’Hagan dies”

  The Real-Life Fugitive?

  Over two decades, audiences watched the adventures of Dr Richard Kimble – firstly, on television in the 1960s, with David Janssen playing the man who had been framed for his wife’s murder, and then thirty years later when Harrison Ford took on the role, pursued by the implacable Tommy Lee Jones. The Fugitive was popular because viewers identified with the wrongfully imprisoned doctor who took desperate measures to prove his innocence. As the TV series ran, a real-life fugitive kept breaking out of prison for pretty much the same reason: Alfred George Hinds was keen to prove that he wasn’t guilty of the jewellery robbery for which he received a twelve-year sentence in 1953. And although Alfie Hinds’ escapes weren’t as spectacular as the train wreck featured in the movie version of The Fugitive, they baffled prison officers for some considerable time.

  Alfie Hinds was a crook; that, he never denied. His father was a thief who had died while receiving ten lashes of the cat o’nine tails for his part in an armed robbery, and young Alfie was brought up in a children’s home, from which he ran away aged seven after receiving harsh treatment at the hands of those in charge of him. He drifted into a life of petty theft, and was sent to Borstal in the 1930s; he was drafted into the Army during the Second World War, but he deserted.

  The crime for which Hinds was arrested and convicted in December 1953 was to make him a household name over the next dozen years. According to the police, Hinds committed the robbery alongside William Frederick Nicholls. At the trial, the Lord Chief Justice described Nicholls as the principal offender in the robbery at the Maples department store in London, and the jury refused to believe Hinds’ protestations of innocence. That left Hinds facing a twelve-year stretch in Nottingham prison. (Nicholls eventually admitted that Hinds wasn’t involved, leading to questions regarding his evidence in the House of Commons in June 1961.)

  Hinds tried all the normal routes: he appealed, but it was turned down; he made a petition to the Home Office, but it was dismissed. As far as he could see, the only way in which he could make his story known, and thus achieve justice, was to be on the outside. But how to get out without compounding his problems?

  Hinds wrote an account of his various escapes, which was published as Contempt of Court in 1966, and became the accepted version of his escapades, at least until his co-escaper in the Nottingham incident spoke with writer Paul Buck in 2008. The prison in which he found himself had been built in 1912, replacing the original city jail, and presented the usual obstacles: high interior walls, barbed wire and an outer barrier. According to Hinds, he reasoned that if all he did was escape from lawful custody, then he wasn’t committing a criminal offence, just breaking prison rules. He didn’t want to face separate criminal charges which would be much harder to deny while trying to prove his innocence of the offence for which he had been sent down. He therefore believed that if he didn’t discuss the plan with anyone, he wouldn’t be liable for a conspiracy charge; if he didn’t do any technical action, such as creating a key, or opening a lock, then he couldn’t be responsible for the breakout – all he was doing was taking advantage of an opportunity that presented itself. Of course, there was no question of any violence during the flight: that would be the fastest way to ensure that no one was thinking about his part in the jewellery robbery, but only his escape. And if someone else did all of the technical parts of an escape, and Hinds happened to come along at exactly the right moment and decided to go along, then who could blame him – at least, technically?

  Hinds therefore latched on to an escape attempt already being prepared by Patsy Fleming, another robber. Fleming had already made a key for a grille that, once opened, would allow him access to the coal cellar. From inside the cellar, he could open the flap on the coal chute, and crawl up into a small well that was covered by a grating. When he undid the padlock on that, he would be in the prison yard.

  The first time that Fleming tried out the route, on the night of 25 November 1955, it was a failure; although he was unable to get as far as the grating, the key, which someone else had made for him, didn’t fit. Fleming had to give up and return to the cells, covered in coal dust, which he hastily showered off. The man responsible for the ill-fitting key denied there was a problem, but when Fleming tried again on 28 November, he sensibly took a hacksaw blade with him, just in case! It added ten minutes on to the escape, but was worth it.

  Fleming went over to the prison workshop, where he trie
d to use a clamp to widen the bars on a window so he could get in, but when he realized that it was insufficiently strong, he broke in through a wire-meshed fanlight. Inside were two door frames that Alfie Hinds had made, which fitted together to form a makeshift ladder. Fleming took them out through the workshop door, leaned them against the interior prison wall, and used them to get over. He then ripped his way through a barbed-wire fence, and then climbed over the eight-foot-high outer wall, arriving in a private garden nearby.

  He wasn’t overly happy to find he had a companion. When he reached the garden, he heard Alfie Hinds calling out to him. Hinds had followed him through the coal cellar, and over the walls, simply taking advantage of the available route. Fleming didn’t argue and allowed Hinds to tag along. They were collected by one of Fleming’s friends, and managed to get through a roadblock that had been put up after the escape had been discovered by hiding in orange boxes. They were then driven down to London, where they parted company. Fleming was caught three months later in the East End.

  Fleming’s version of events is rather different. Hinds’ account paints Fleming as the instigator of the escape, and Hinds as simply someone who came along for the ride. However in 2008, the elderly robber insisted that Hinds had been in charge, and that he had been alongside Fleming the whole way through the escape, creating the key for the padlock as they were in the coal cellar. Fleming was insistent that Hinds could make any key, and that he had also created one to get them into the prison workshop. He also claimed that it was one of Hinds’ contacts who had collected them and driven them to London.

  Whichever way the escape happened, Hinds was able to get out of the country and head to Dublin, where he believed that he was safe. He made numerous pleas for publicity for his case – his recorded comments which were broadcast on the new commercial television station (ITV only began broadcasting in September 1955) led to questions in the House of Commons, and the wonderful question from Sheffield MP John Burns Hynd: “Will the Minister not consider extending similar facilities through the Press, radio and television to other criminals who have loyally remained in prison, so that they make an appeal for public sympathy?” Nicknamed “Houdini Hinds” by the press, he supported himself by working as a painter/decorator for 248 days before being arrested at gun point. He had even spent part of that eight months attending law lectures at Trinity College, Dublin.

  As far as Hinds was concerned, his arrest was illegal: he hadn’t actually escaped from prison, and therefore, without any hesitation, he brought legal proceedings against the police for false imprisonment. However, it became clear to him that he wasn’t going to succeed with this action, so he decided to escape, with a view to starting proceedings in the Irish Court. He wasn’t going to cease his current action, though: it was providing him with the method of escape, from the very heart of the seat of justice, the Law Courts in the Strand in London.

  Hinds’ second period of freedom lasted considerably less time than his first, and just over a month after his escape on 24 June 1957, he found himself in court giving evidence in the case that was being brought against his brother Albert and a friend of his, John Maffia, for unlawfully aiding his escape. Flanked by three prison officers, rather than the usual single guard, Hinds explained that on a previous visit to the Law Courts, he had spotted that a lavatory door was locked; if he could somehow lock his escort inside the toilet, then he would be able to make his getaway unimpeded. He therefore had a chat with a prisoner at Pentonville who was shortly to be released; this man, who Hinds refused to name, but told the court was “quite a notorious locksmith”, duly arranged to leave a key for the lavatory underneath a table in the staff canteen at the Courts.

  On 24 June, Hinds was escorted to the Law Courts by Prison Officers Martin and Hadley, who hadn’t been there before. He therefore led the way to the canteen, and went to the designated table. However, when he reached underneath to find the key, he had a bit of a shock, since there was no key waiting for him. Instead there was a small parcel, which seemed to be wrapped up in paper and secured to the table with adhesive plaster. Hinds pulled off the plaster, screwed it up and put the package in his pocket. When the two prison officers became engrossed in a conversation with one of Martin’s former colleagues, Hinds was able to open the parcel. Inside there was a small padlock, but no key. He realized that something must have changed, and he had been given an alternate way of dealing with the situation – although he clearly was going to have to think on his feet.

  When the three men left the canteen, they went upstairs and came to the lavatory, and when he saw two new “eyes” fitted to the door and the frame, Hinds understood exactly what was going on. They were so new – glaring like searchlights, he later said – that he realized that he had to act immediately, or someone would get suspicious and wonder why they were there. He only had one shilling in his pocket, but he would worry about that once he got away from the guards.

  Hinds went to the lavatory door, with a packet of legal papers held in his left hand, and his mackintosh in his right, covering the padlock. He pushed the door open, and Martin went straight in, and down to the end. Hadley seemed to be suspicious of Hinds, and stayed a couple of yards from him, expecting to follow Hinds in and close the door behind them. Swiftly, Hinds turned, and pushed Hadley through the door, slamming it shut, and fastening the padlock between the two eyes to keep it shut. It was clear to the veteran thief that the lock wouldn’t hold two angry prison officers for very long, so he ran as fast as he could down the corridor, and skidded into the first opening on the right, hearing pounding on the door and shouting from behind him.

  Slowing down, Hinds passed through groups of solicitors’ clerks who were milling around the law courts, and out of the building. Although the shouting must surely have attracted attention by then, no alarm had been raised in the vicinity of the courts, so he made for Temple underground station.

  As he went through the barrier, he heard someone call out “Alf”. Hinds turned to see his younger brother there, shocked at finding him suddenly free. Hinds had asked Albert to come to the courtroom that day when his brother had visited him the previous Saturday, but, so Hinds told the court, his brother had not been expecting his escape, and, likewise, he didn’t expect to run into his brother in the middle of a Tube station. He had intended to head to a hide-out in London until he could get out of the country. Albert told the court that he had heard a shout that “Hinds had escaped”, and he himself had been chased by one of the prison officers. After he had shaken off the man, Albert spotted his brother in the Strand and followed him down to the Tube station.

  According to Hinds’ testimony, Albert had previously arranged with John Maffia to go to Bristol, and he then suggested that it would be a good idea if Alfie went with them. With hindsight, Hinds regretted taking up the offer, as it led directly to his re-arrest. He claimed that they didn’t tell Maffia that he had escaped, but spun a tale that he had been acquitted on the appeal. Instead of going straight to Bristol, though, they went to Heathrow Airport, where Hinds just missed a flight to Dublin. They therefore carried on down the Great West Road, arriving at Bristol Airport in time for a flight. Albert went to buy the ticket, but he was so nervous that he made the girl behind the ticket counter very suspicious. Thinking that he might be connected to a local murder enquiry, she contacted the police – who were delighted to apprehend Alfie Hinds once more. He had been free for less than five hours.

  Hinds was sent to Chelmsford Prison, and became one of the few ever to abscond from the place – his escape makes him one of its most famous inmates, according to a local website. To get an idea of what Chelmsford looked like at that stage, watch the feature-film version of the prison sitcom Porridge, which was filmed on location within its walls.

  Again, if you believe Hinds’ own account, he wasn’t necessarily the instigator of the plan, but was happy to go along with it. Fellow prisoner Georgie Walkington had worked out a way to get out, and Hinds was simply a helpful assistant
on Sunday 1 June 1958 when the two men went over the wall with keys that Walkington had been able to obtain.

  Walkington was meant to be cleaning his cell while many of the other prisoners attended the church service. When he went down to the ground-floor landing to collect a bucket of water, he made his way into the linen store. From there, he went through a hatch and along a passageway. At the end of this was a set of double doors, for which Walkington had a key, which led to the prison yard. Separating the yard from the compound was a wall with a pair of big gates; Walkington had keys for these too.

  Hinds caught up with Walkington as the latter reached the double doors; he had persuaded Walkington’s friend, who was bolting up the hatch behind him, that he was part of the escape. Unfortunately, when they reached the gates, the key didn’t fit, so Hinds suggested balancing two of the wheelbarrows used for carrying coal around the prison one on top of the other, and they could then climb over the gate. Rather than see the barbed wire on top of the gate as an obstacle, Hinds fastened his jacket to it, and the pair of them were able to haul themselves up, even though Hinds fell at one point and broke his glasses.

  The two men went along the top of the wall, until they found a suitable point to jump the twenty-five feet to the ground. Hinds injured his leg in the jump, so Walkington pressed ahead through the graveyard that adjoined the prison until he reached a car that was waiting for them. Despite his injuries, Hinds drove them through Essex back roads, through the Blackwall Tunnel into Kent, to a friend of Walkington’s, who was appeased by a suitably large payment to put up with the risk of harbouring Hinds.