A Daring Double Escape
“Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage: an incredible escape from Newcastle Gaol.”
Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury 14 April 1860
Researching the inmates of Newcastle’s Gaol reveals some fascinating characters, but one of the most interesting must be the man who – remarkably - was to escape from the gaol not once but twice. This story of his second escape shows him to have been a man of unusual daring, ingenuity and courage.
At ten minutes past seven on the morning of Sunday 20th April 1860 a prisoner on remand, one Walter Scott Douglas, suspected of involvement in several jewellery robberies in Newcastle, was let out from his sleeping cell in the House of Correction within the walls of Newcastle Gaol. He was escorted into the day-room, which contained a wooden table, about four feet long, and three forms of the same length. The door of this room opened into an exercise yard, the entrance to which, from the governor's house, was by an iron gate, through railings topped with spikes. In the day-room Douglas ate breakfast. A padlock on the outside of the day-room door was left unfastened (subsequent enquiries revealed that it was usually left that way during the day). While the officers and other prisoners were at Sunday service in the Chapel, Douglas was left alone in the day-room, and he seized his chance. His escape displayed daring, ingenuity and courage, but also experience: this was Douglas’s second escape from Newcastle Gaol.
He forced back the single bolt of the door of the prison, using two pieces of metal found discarded in the day-room after the escape, most likely part of the handle of a bucket. Once the door was open, he was in the prison yard, but this was seemingly secure: barred at the north end by a gate, iron railings and a wall not less than 15 feet high, with the walls of the prison on the other two sides. At the south end of the yard, however, Douglas was in luck. About a meter and a half from the wall, was a water-closet, a small square slate-roofed building about half the height of the wall. Once he realised it was impossible to climb over the wall from the top of the water closet without having something to cover the space between, Douglas returned to the day-room and dragged out the table and forms. His luck held: incredibly, no one saw this undoubtedly suspicious manoeuvre.
Placing one of the forms on top of the table he managed, by ‘extraordinary exertions’, according to the Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury, to fix the table with one end on top of the water-closet, and the feet at the other end on the side of the wall, within reach of the top. By crawling up to the end of the table, Douglas could reach the top of the wall, and drop down into the outer courtyard beneath. Usually this would have been an intimidating drop of about 15 feet; but once again, Douglas struck lucky. At the bottom of the wall lay a pile of chiselled stones, used by masons building the new wing to the prison, and that reduced the height of the drop. (Indeed newspapers reported an alternative option was also available to the fleeing Douglas: further along the wall was a small shed, about half the height of the wall, from the top of which he could have dropped to the ground quite easily. Which surely raises some questions about the level of security at the gaol.)
But even then, lying ahead was what the Newcastle Guardian and Tyne Mercury regarded as ‘by far the most insurmountable obstacle to the prisoner's escape’: the outer wall of the prison, about 30 feet high. To scale this would seem to be practically impossible; but Douglas seems to have been extraordinarily resourceful, or lucky, or both. He found a pole of sufficient length, which had been used by the masons, and fixed it firmly against the wall opposite the Church Jubilee School, facing the quiet lane at the rear of the Gaol. Of course, the problem then was how to get down into that back lane. The newspapers reported it ‘appeared certain’ that Douglas used a rope, long enough to reach from the top of the wall to within a few feet of the ground. Again, this appears to be an extraordinary oversight by the prison authorities, but in fact it is further evidence – if any more were needed – of Douglas’s ingenuity. The rope had been made of his cell hammock, lengthened by the addition of his neckerchief. (Such incidents might help to explain why the hard bed, consisting of three wooden planks, was introduced after the 1865 Prisons Act.)
Looping the strongest end of the rope around a raised corner on the wall, he slid down the rope, to freedom. And he was gone…again.
