The prisoners walked into the city, away from the jail, and quickly mingledwith the crowds. They carried onup Lindum Hill and intothe Adam and Eve pub, right beside Lincoln’s great cathedral.
This is Lincoln Jail. The castellated walls and gateway create an image of state authority but once theyproved powerless.
Or just the persistence of those involved?
The year was 1919. The prisoner, a revolutionary, was a devout Catholic. Heattended Mass eachSunday, and actedas a server. He lit the candles on the altar, helped the priest into his vestments, assisted with the familiar rituals and joined in the Latin responses.
The prisoner also noticed that, when the priest arrived to prepare for Mass, heleft some items, including the key to rear gate, onthe same place on a desk, collectingthem up afterwards.
From then on, drop by drop, scrap by scrap, the man collected up melted candle-wax until he had enough gathered to form intoa small block. When he got the chance, he secretly tookthe prison key, pressedit quickly and firmly into the soft wax block he hadkept warm against his body, and then returnedit to its usual place.
As the Mass ended, the priest gathered up the items and key, put them back in his pocket and left. The devout server returnedto his cell, taking the image of the key to the rear gate with him.
The prisonerstudied the mould and measured the key’s imprint carefully. Then, even though the prison staff examined all outgoing and incoming mail, he sent the information out to his contactsin almost clear view. On one postcard, he drew a jokey, cartoon showing a drunken man fumbling with an enormous key and, as if in a speech bubble, the words“I can’t get in!”That comically largekey had beendrawn to show the exact dimensions and pattern marked inthe mould.
Before long, a cake arrived at Lincoln Jail, addressed to the prisoner, with a duplicate key hidden away inside. The guards did not detect the key but theattempt failed. The prisoner soon discovered why. As the block cooled and hardened, the candle-wax hadshrunk and distorted. The measurements for the replica key were not quite accurate enough. The prisoner studied his original drawings, allowed for the warping, and sent out another postcard.
This one wasadrawingof a prisoner and“The Key To Freedom”, a large,ornate key of Celtic design which secretly replicated the key to the prison back-gate. Written across the card were the words “I can’t get out”.After a while, a secondcake was delivered,concealinganother key. This, too, was faulty.
After a while, anotherparcel arrived, containing a slab of fruit cake, togetherwith a layer of white plaster, as was often used to replicate wedding-cake icing during the sugar-rationing then in force.The guards poked the slabwith a skewer, but the essential ingredientswere not detected.
This time, when the prisoner opened up the cake, he found no key. The plan had moved on. This time the cake held a suitably-sized iron bar - an uncut key - and a small metal file: materials and tools to make an exact key there within Lincoln Jail itself, with the help ofa fellow-prisoner trained as a master-locksmith.
Meanwhile, guards and prisoners heard the sounds of singingfrom outside, where men worked the allotments on the open ground then around Lincoln Jail. They might have noticed thesongs were often in someforeign tongue. Within, the prisoner and his two friends had noticed and were listening carefully. The songs were inGaelic, and the words brought themdetails of the escape plans.
Finally, on February 3rd1919, at an arranged hour, the prisoner unlocked the back gate of Lincoln Jail with the replica key and escaped with his two friends. Once outside, the man shut the gate, slid thekey back into the lock andturned it. Then he snapped the key off inside the lock, fixingthe gate shut.
The three men walked across the rough open groundand met up with three others. On the way, theystrolled past some soldiers stationed there on sentry duty. The soldiers, drinking and enjoying the company ofa group of friendlyIrish girls, ignored their passing. They entered the city and mingled with the crowds as they made their way up Lindum Hill to the Adam and Eve pub, close by Lincoln's great cathedral.
From there, the prisoner escaped in a series of cars, travelling from Lincoln to Worksop, on to Sheffield andnorth to Manchester, arriving atLiverpool. From there, dressed as a priest, the man sailed back to Ireland and the cause he believed in.
The prisoner’sname was Eamon de Valera. Eventually hebecame The Taoiseach - the Irish Prime Minister - and then the President of the Republic of Ireland.
A quick timeline:
In 1882, de Valera was born in New York to an Irish mother and Cuban father, giving him American nationality.
In 1885, aged two,his mother brought him to Ireland after his father’s death.
In 1916, he wasone of the leadersin the failed anti-British Easter Rising in Dublin. Arrested, hisdeath sentence was commuted to life imprisonment because of his nationality. He was laterreleased under a generalamnesty.
In 1917, he won an election, becoming MP for East Clare on a single ticket “One Ireland”, in defiance of Asquith’s Home Rule amendment on behalf of the Protestant counties in the north. He was also elected president of the revolutionary Sinn Fein party.
In 1918, during the post-Armistice General Election, his party won a large majority of the parliamentary seats in Ireland. The country was still ruled from Westminster by the Westminster parliamentarians, who often acted as if Ireland was a colony of little importance.
In 1918, on a trip to England, he was accused of a “German” plot, and imprisoned on a Defence of the Realm charge withinLincoln Jail.
In 1919, Eamon de Valera, along with McGilroy and McGarry, escaped. Outside to meet them wasMichael Collins, the revolutionary strategist. . . .
And so it was that in 1919, Ireland convened its first Parliament: the Dail Eireann.
This revolutionary, one-chamber parliament was created by the 73 Sinn Fein MP’s who refused to recognise the British Parliament inWestminster and demanded independence for Ireland.
The response,between 1919 and 1921, was war - the War of Irish Independence - during which the British Army combined withthe Royal Irish Constabulary and its paramilitary forces: the Auxiliaries and Ulster Special Constabulary against the Irish Republican Army. In 1921, the first Parliament failed, and a border was established between the North and South: the Irish Partition.
Thereare two Irish centenaries in the air, one now and one soon to come.
During this year, 2019, Ireland is celebrating thatfirst Parliament. Thenin 1921, in two years time, will come the centenary of the Partition.
Right now, independence is still a very living issue, and it is certainly a time whenpeople in power should know – or be better informed - about the long shadow of history.
To end this post, I’ll add that, in 1950 - thirty years after his escape - Eamon de Valera returned to Lincoln Jail as a guest, to speak ata campaign to re-unify Ireland by peaceful, democratic means.
The abolition of the Irish Partition would, he said, “combine good principles and good business.” A point of view rather relevant at the moment, I fear.
Have a good Saint Patrick’s Day!
Penny Dolan
nb. This story came from various easy-to-discover sources, but I would like to mentionthe author Jane Stanford for herarticle, which I discovered in theIrish Post of 20thAugust 2013. Thank you!