INSIDE DARTMOOR

Hardback. Dartmoor has a reputation unique in the annals of prison history. Its occupants have been murderers, robbers, burlars, tricksters, fire-raisers and anarchists. They have fought, gone on hunger-strike, mutinied, made murderous assaults on each other and killed in cold blood. And they have escaped in the most cunning fashion, getting away from a jail considered so escape-proof that on one occasion when a section of the perimater wall broke down the authorities were unconcerned. For it was the Moor iteslf which made escape difficult - the miles and miles of rough terrain, outcrops of rock, bogs and fog which forced many a man to give up after a few hours, hopelessly lost. The author tells the story of Dartmoor's chequered history since its inception in 1807 as a war prison to the 'present' day when it houses Britain's most notorious criminal. Among its inmates have been Irish patriots Eamon de Valera and Michael Davitt, Charles Wells, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, and escape specialists "Rubberbones" Webb and Stanley Hilton Thurston. Illus., Index. 207pp. 8vo. V. lightly browned edges, tiny sticker to ffep o/w Vg+ in Vg+ pcdw. A tad musty.