Book review: True tales of the great escapes

James Durney shows inmates’ ingenuity in breaking free from incarceration.

• Jailbreak: Great Irish Republician Escapes, 1865–1983 
• James Durney 
• Merrion Press, €18.99

There is always something romantic about a jailbreak; this is probably because every escape involves the oppressed getting away from the oppressor, often against great odds. 

There is always a reason as to why the oppressed ended up in confinement. However, once a prisoner is inside the prison, he becomes the underdog, and it is human nature to shout for that underdog.

Ireland has had its fair share of jailbreaks over the centuries and a new book Jailbreak: Great Irish Republican Escapes, 1865 to 1983 by James Durney tells the tale of many of the republican escapes since the founding of the Irish Republican Brotherhood.

Durney works in the Kildare County Archive and Local Studies and is no stranger to the subject of republican activities. 

Some of his previous works include, A Civil War in Kildare, Political Unrest in Kildare 1913 – 1994, and The Curragh Internment Camps in the War of Independence. 

He has drawn on these, and many more sources, for the background to each of the prison escapes in Jailbreak.

While each escape is different, there are some remarkable similarities between all of them. 

There had to be an ‘Escape Planning Committee’ which organised the planning of the escape.  This committee had to be meticulous with timing. 

There also had to be a group working on the outside and a secure means of communication between inside and outside. This communication was usually supplied by visitors or friendly warders. 

Up to the 1920s, the visitors often brought cakes with files or weapon parts hidden inside.

Where a high wall had to be surmounted, the preferred methods of escape involved a rope ladder thrown over the wall from the outside or knotted bedsheets thrown over the wall from the inside. 

In the absence of a high wall, as in the various camps in Co Kildare, makeshift shovels and other digging implements were vital. 

But even here bedlinen played a part. Pillow-slips were used to carry the earth from underground to overground. 

Once the earth was taken out, the tricky business of disposing of it to avoid detection by the prison authorities, had to be accomplished. 

In one escape from Newbridge in 1922, the earth was so well hidden in an outhouse that it was not discovered until 1964.

There is also often great ‘derring-do’ about the escapees. The springing of six IRB members from Freemantle Jail, Australia, in 1876 has to rank as one of the best. 

While the tunnelling and escape plan of 43 prisoners out of Kilkenny Jail in 1921 was nothing short of amazing.

Many of the escapees were famous names like James Stephens, Éamon de Valera from Lincoln Prison, Earnie O’Malley, Frank Aiken, and in more recent times Ruairi Ó Brádaigh.

The further thread that runs through this book is Durney’s descriptions of the complacency of the jailors. 

From the escape of James Stephens in 1865 to the escape from the Maze Prison in 1983, each and every prison could be said to have taken its ‘eye-off-the-ball’.

For the jailors, the moral of their story could read: if you are going to do the same thing at the same time every day, the man who has nothing better to do than sit and watch you, will eventually find a way to put that information to use of his cause.

Jailbreak is a book of great stories of defiance of authority and dedication to escaping. Some of the stories are complicated. 

The inclusion of maps or drawings, showing the distances from the cell blocks to the walls or fences, would have been of enormous benefit to the reader.

It has been a while since there was a daring jailbreak on this island. 

This begs the question if this is because the dedication of previous generations has dissipated with the passing of time, or if new technology, which has put an end to the hack-saw in the fruit cake, finally given the jailors the upper hand?

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