SYMHC Classics: Prison Breaks

This 2022 episode covers six highly ingenious and low-violence prison breaks from history. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Holly Frey?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  This is Danielle Fishel from Pod Meets World. Every purchase is a financial decision, so it's worth asking, what am I getting out of this? If you're using the Chase Freedom Flex Card, you can maximize your cash back on things you need. Groceries and gas, cash back. Dinner, cash back on that, too. More ways to earn, more ways to get rewarded. Sign up for the Chase Freedom Flex Card. Learn more at chase.com/getflex. This is a paid collaboration with Chase Freedom Flex. Cards issued by J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. Member, FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Offer subject to change. Terms apply.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  Hey, I'm Niall Rogers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Happy Saturday. A prison break was part of our episode on William J. Sharkey earlier this week, and we talked about some more prison breaks in our Friday Behind the Scenes. So today's classic episode is a set of six prison breaks, including one that we just mentioned in that discussion.

• 2:03Holly Frey?

  And this originally came out on May 11, 2022. Enjoy.

• 2:09Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:23Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  A few years ago, I was in Philadelphia and went to the Eastern State Penitentiary, which was a prison for about 150 years, and now it's a historic site. And one of the things I learned about while I was there was a dramatic escape from the prison in 1945. And I immediately put that into my little notes app on my phone where I jot things down when I'm on vacation. It was one of those things, though, that I couldn't quite figure out how to make it work as an episode, and I kept circling back to it periodically. It finally dawned on me that it might work as a set of six impossible episodes because there are some common themes among a lot of the prison break stories. Like, there's

• 3:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  often a lot of tunneling.

• 3:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  So a couple of times a year, I pull together six episodes that are grouped together in some way. And so now we're going to have six prison breaks. And just to level set here, I would not at all call this a representative sample of history's prison escape attempts because, number one, the vast majority of information we have for this episode is from places where English is the predominant language. And that's just a matter of what's available to us. Number two, I was really focused on escapes that seemed particularly ingenious in how they were planned and carried out, not on ones that were violent. So there

• 3:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  is a little violence in this episode, but it is not one where the, you know, a prison break happened in the middle of a violent uprising where a lot of people got killed. I was really looking at the ones that are kind of offbeat a little bit in some ways.

• 4:13Holly Frey?

  Right. This is more Shawshank Redemption than horrible riot situation.

• 4:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, several of them seem like clear inspirations for some of the Shawshank escape. So.

• 4:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Know that going in.

• 4:27Holly Frey?

  All right, so we're gonna start with the prison break that inspired this episode. The Eastern State Penitentiary opened in 1829, and it was built in an era when reformers were trying to change the way prisons and the criminal justice system worked. In Philadelphia, this effort was led by the Philadelphia Society for alleviating the miseries of public prisons, whose members were predominantly Quakers. The prison was called a penitentiary because its purpose was to inspire penitence among the people housed there by keeping them in a state of isolated, silent contemplation. Hundreds of prisons that followed this theory were built around the world in the 19th century.

• 5:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Although these reformers were trying to move away from things like public floggings and executions for relatively minor crimes, and also to make incarceration more humane, this system that they devised was innately cruel. It came to be known as the Pennsylvania system, and it was basically perpetual solitary confinement. People were totally alone in these single occupancy cells that had attached, small, walled-in exercise yards. They were forced to wear hoods when they were in common areas, so they couldn't see or talk to anybody else.

• 5:44Holly Frey?

  And over time, the prison moved away from this practice, and the Pennsylvania system was officially abandoned by 1913. By that point, more people had recognized that endless solitary confinement was, in fact, cruel. But the system that replaced it was cruel, just in a different way. Overcrowding became a major issue, with new cell blocks built between the existing ones until a prison that had originally housed 250 people instead housed 1,700. A series of riots and uprisings took place in the 1930s in response to poor conditions at the prison and to low pay at the onsite workshops and factories where they were forced to work.

• 6:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  In 1944, a plasterer and stonemason named Clarence Kleindest, who was known as Kleine, was housed in Cell 68 of Cell Block 7. And this was at the far end of one of those cell blocks that had been planned as part of the prison's initial design as a penitentiary. And it's possible that he moved into the cell with the intention of tunneling out of it from the beginning. It had been used for storage, and he had offered to repair it so that he could live in it.

• 6:54Holly Frey?

  Once he was housed in Cell 68, he and his cellmate, William Russell, started digging a tunnel in secret, one that went through the cell wall, then down 12 feet, requiring a ladder to get to the bottom. From there, the tunnel leveled out and stretched about 100 feet, running under the exercise yard and the wall that encircled the prison, and then up again to the street outside. They made a plaster mask so it would look like one of them was in bed. That one would dig while the other kept watch. And they'd put the dirt they dug up in their pockets and then scatter it in the exercise yard.

• 7:31Tracy V. Wilson?

  Kleindest hid the entrance to this tunnel with a panel that he made to roughly match the intact walls of the cell, and then put a metal trash can in front of it. And in the tunnel, he shored it up with wood and installed lights and ventilation fans. When the tunnel intersected with a sewer pipe under the prison, they built a connection to the pipe so they could dispose of their waste through a sewer. This was a complex engineering feat, handled with whatever they could cobble together.

• 8:02Holly Frey?

  It's pretty ingenious. On April 3, 1945, 12 men escaped through this tunnel, going to Cell 68 while everyone else was on the way to breakfast. At the end of the tunnel, they broke through the last few feet of earth and scattered in different directions as they came out of it.

• 8:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  Most of them, though, were back in the prison within a day, and all of them had been caught within a few months. Notorious bank robber Willie Sutton, who would later totally take credit for this escape in his autobiography, he was caught almost immediately. He basically came out of the hole and they grabbed him right there. Clarence Klindins was in custody after about three hours. One group tried to make their getaway in a milk truck that they stole, and they were caught after police rammed the truck with a police car. One man, who was 24-year-old James Grace, turned himself in eight days after the escape. William Russell and one other man were both shot during the escape attempt, and they were brought back to the prison infirmary.

• 9:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Otherwise, the men who tried to escape were punished. Some of them were placed into these tiny, windowless underground cells known as Klondikes. These were too small to even stand up in.

• 9:17Holly Frey?

  Of course, this whole escape was enormously embarrassing for the prison. It was not at all the first escape attempt, or even the first successful escape attempt, from the Eastern State Penitentiary. That had happened all the way back in 1832. But it was a colossal security breach. Months of digging had gone unnoticed, and more than one inspection of Cell 68 had failed to spot that tunnel entrance.

• 9:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Prison authorities investigated and mapped the tunnel, and then they filled it in and covered up the entrance with cement. Then later in 2005, Eastern State Penitentiary embarked on an archaeological study to find and map the tunnel. This effort included ground-penetrating radar work, cameras, and a small robotic rover that was kind of remote-controlled and went down the tunnel. They had to use a jackhammer to get through the tunnel's covered-over entrance.

• 10:14Holly Frey?

  As we said earlier, Eastern State Penitentiary is now a historic site, and as of 2017, its mission is to interpret the legacy of American criminal justice reform.

• 10:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, we'll talk about that a little bit more in the Behind the Scenes on Friday. Moving on. For about 80 years, starting in 1788, people convicted of crimes in the UK could be transported to Australia as punishment. Other colonies as well, but Australia is the focus here. Often, this was for a period of seven years, but a lot of people sentenced to Australia never returned to Britain again. They either couldn't afford to make the trip, or they didn't want to after having made a life for themselves in Australia. And only a small number of people who were sentenced to transportation had been convicted of a violent crime. A lot of them had been convicted of offenses that most people would

• 11:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  think of as pretty petty today. Women in particular tended to have been convicted of things like stealing handkerchiefs, or cloth, or pickpocketing.

• 11:18Holly Frey?

  Our next prison break was a group of women who were being held at Limerick Jail in Ireland, awaiting transportation to Australia. They were supposed to be transferred to a prison in Cork on May 23, 1830, which is where they would embark on this ship that was going to take them to Australia.

• 11:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  But the night before that transfer to Cork, nine women and a baby escaped from Limerick Jail. The women were Mary King, Mary Hurley, Mary Devon, Ellen Hurley, Margaret Shaughnessy, Margaret Clancy, Bridget Shelton, Mary Hickey, and Catherine Welsh. And the baby was Mary Devon's 11-month-old daughter.

• 11:59Holly Frey?

  As escapes go, this one is maybe less dramatic than some of the others that we're talking about today, but it does still involve some ingenuity. Leading up to their transfer date, these women made a habit of singing and, quote, "noisy vociferations after dark", so it had been established that they were just loud. Someone had provided them with a phial, some nitric acid, also called aqua fortis, and other tools to help them get out of their cells. Then, on the 23rd, two men used a ladder that workers had left behind while making repairs to get into the women's ward.

• 12:36Tracy V. Wilson?

  The men started helping the women get their cells open while the women got to their nightly singing to cover up the noise. In the words of the Monmouthshire Merlin, quote, "This amusement they enjoyed with more than ordinary spirit on this occasion and without exciting any particular notice. Meantime, the iron fastenings were assailed by the burglars with extraordinary success. The continued knocking was heard in the adjacent ward, but the sound of their operations was so drowned in the melody of the accompanying voices as not to reach the ears of the jail governor or his assistants. The locks gave way before repeated efforts and nine females with an infant were extricated

• 13:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  from Durant's vial."

• 13:23Holly Frey?

  Once they were out of their cells, the women and their accomplices climbed back down the ladder and used it to get over the outer walls unnoticed. But these women did not stay at large for long. Mary Hickey was caught the night of the escape and newspapers reported on the capture of other women in the following days, including Catherine Welsh, who asked to be taken back to the Limerick jail after being caught shoplifting.

• 13:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, they were going to take her to a different jail and she was like, can I just go back to Limerick because that's where I escaped from? It appears that with one possible exception, all of the women involved in this prison break did wind up being transported to Australia. Two of them are mentioned in an article about a ship that departed for Australia on January 29th of 1831. And then all but one of the rest of them are listed on ships' actual registers of the people being transported. So there were five on a ship that departed on September 27th, 1831, and then one on a ship that left on March 9th of 1833. So that leaves only one of the women unaccounted for.

• 14:33Holly Frey?

  We are going to take a sponsor break and after that we'll come back to more escape stories.

• 14:43Speaker 04

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 14:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hey, everybody. It's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.

• 15:06Speaker 04

  It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.

• 15:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.

• 15:20Speaker 05

  Through what Alan's whole crew designed, we connected the event visitors to the world.

• 15:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.

• 15:34Speaker 04

  What the fans experience is incredible. It gave me a lot of pride.

• 15:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T. So you're considering getting a home security system, but you want something that fits your space. Well, with ADT Blue, it's easy to customize a system that's right for you and set it up yourself. Just pick the kit and monitoring plan that makes sense for your home. Let's say you're worried about package theft. The ADT Plus app can walk you through setting up a new doorbell camera kit. Once it's installed, ADT Pros can help you keep tabs on it 24/7, or you can manage it yourself from the ADT Plus app. There are no long-term contracts, so you can change your monitoring plan whenever you want. The flexibility doesn't end there.

• 16:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  You can add to your system as you need to with things like extra cameras or motion sensors. Some life decisions are hard, but thanks to ADT Blue, you can DIY trusted ADT home security in a snap. Head to ADT.com/BLU to build your system today. And to hear more about home protection and other grown-up topics, check out new episodes of Grown Up Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 16:50Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other?

• 17:35Holly Frey?

  Tune in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 17:45Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 18:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next up, we have the escape from Alcatraz in 1962. And way back in 2008, prior hosts of the show Candace and Josh did an episode titled Did Someone Really Escape From Alcatraz? Number one, that is forever ago. It was an entirely different show with a different format at that point. And most of that 10-minute episode is focused more on the general history of Alcatraz as a prison and not on the escape itself. If you're interested in the more general history of Alcatraz, we talk about that a bit in our two-parter on the occupation of Alcatraz. Those episodes came out in 2019.

• 19:00Holly Frey?

  So Alcatraz is an island in San Francisco Bay. It has a steep, rocky shoreline, and it is surrounded by treacherous waters. Although this may have discouraged people from trying to escape, there were still 14 different escape attempts during Alcatraz's time as a federal prison. That was from 1934 to 1963. Nearly all of the 36 men involved in these attempts were captured or killed, but five of them are classified as missing and presumed drowned. Two of them were Theodore Cole and Ralph Rowe, who filed through the bars of a window in the mat shop and tried to escape during a storm in 1937.

• 19:43Holly Frey?

  The other three were involved in the 1962 escape.

• 19:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  There were actually four men involved in this attempt. Frank Morris, John Anglin, John's brother Clarence, and Alan West. They had all been convicted of various burglaries, robberies, and thefts, and they'd all been incarcerated together before, and they all knew each other. They had been transferred to Alcatraz after having tried to escape from other prisons. They started planning to escape from Alcatraz in December of 1961. Morris and the Anglins had been assigned cells that were adjacent to one another, and one of them found some old saw blades they thought they could use.

• 20:25Holly Frey?

  These men improvised so much for this escape attempt. They improvised tools to dig and break through walls, including making a drill from a vacuum cleaner motor, although that turned out to be too noisy for them to really use. Scrap wood became basic paddles, and a concertina, that is a musical instrument that's sort of like an accordion, became a pump to inflate their raft.

• 20:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  And that raft, apparently using instructions they found in Popular Mechanics, they made a six-foot-by-14-foot raft out of about 50 raincoats. They may have taken some of these raincoats from other men by force, but there was also a rumor that if anybody successfully escaped from Alcatraz, the government would shut the prison down. So it seems like some of the men were happy to kind of wear their raincoats out to the exercise yard and then leave them there to be picked up, kind of donating them to this effort to get the prison shut down. The escaping men then used contact cement they had stolen from various workshops around the prison and heat from the steam pipes

• 21:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  to vulcanize the seams of the raft. They used this same method to also make life preservers.

• 21:39Holly Frey?

  Each of their cells had an air vent, and they used various tools to make a series of holes around these vents so that the whole thing in each cell could be pulled out from the wall. This got them into a utility corridor where they made and hid what they would need to escape. Yet another improvised tool with all this was a periscope, which they used to watch for guards while they were working. They also worked out a way to get from the corridor and onto the prison roof.

• 22:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Similarly to how Clarence Kleindust and William Russell had used a mask they made to make it look like one of them was in bed while the other one was digging a tunnel, these four men made heads out of homemade plaster and painted them, topped them with human hair so that it would make it look like they were asleep in their beds. These heads, I think they're actually pretty good. Better than I could do, I think.

• 22:37Holly Frey?

  On June 11, 1962, Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers went out through their removed ventilation grates, covering the hole behind them with whatever they could. Allen West had tried to reinforce the concrete around his grate and had accidentally cemented it in place. And by the time he was able to get it free, his accomplices had already left.

• 22:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  From up on the roof, Morris and the Anglins climbed down a smokestack and then over a fence, cutting through the barbed wire at the top of the fence. And then they seem to have launched their raft from the northeast corner of the island. But then what happened to them after that is a mystery.

• 23:16Holly Frey?

  During bed check on the morning of June 12th, a guard at first thought that the three men were still asleep in their beds, but then realized they weren't in their cells after touching one of the fake heads through the bars, and a manhunt began. Authorities recovered a package of letters sealed in rubber, paddles, and life vests either in the water or washed up at various points around the San Francisco Bay. Sailors from a Norwegian freighter reportedly saw a body in the water on July 17th, but did not report that until October.

• 23:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  Although there have been some simulations that suggest that the three men could have made it to shore, was theoretically possible, at this point, they are presumed to have drowned in their escape attempt. The FBI closed the case on December 31st of 1979.

• 24:08Holly Frey?

  Although Alcatraz did close less than a year after this escape, it was because the prison needed a multimillion dollar restoration project. And on top of that, it was expensive to operate because of its island location. The federal government decided that it would be cheaper to just build a whole new prison than to try to restore and keep running Alcatraz.

• 24:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next up, Libby Prison was originally a food warehouse, and then later it became home to a grocery and ship provisioning business. It was in Richmond, Virginia, and during the US Civil War, the Confederate government took it over and turned it into a prison to house US prisoners of war, particularly US military officers.

• 24:53Holly Frey?

  And conditions there were really just appalling. Obviously, it was not built to be a prison, and beyond that, it was situated on a canal that routinely flooded the building's cellar in wet weather, and the rising waters drove rats out of the cellar and into the rest of the structure. The windows were open spaces covered in bars and they let in little fresh air, but not much light. They didn't offer much protection from storms or extreme temperatures. The upper two floors where the prisoners were housed were very sparsely furnished. There weren't even enough bunks for everyone. This was an immensely overcrowded facility

• 25:32Holly Frey?

  with as many as 1,000 people packed into just six rooms without enough food or supplies. Unsurprisingly, disease was rampant.

• 25:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Colonel Thomas E. Rose of the 77th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry started planning an escape almost as soon as he arrived at Libby Prison. He thought it might be possible to dig a tunnel from that rat-filled cellar to a nearby tobacco shed where they could get out without being seen by guards. Because all of the rats and the ongoing flooding problems made the cellar smell terrible, so bad that it was nicknamed Rat Hell, that also meant the Confederate guards mostly stayed out of it. So this was one place they could work on a tunnel mostly undetected.

• 26:22Holly Frey?

  Construction of an escape tunnel started with removing bricks from behind a stove in the kitchen, which was the only room the imprisoned men were allowed free access to. This made it entry into the cellar. And from there, Rose and his accomplices started digging with makeshift tools, putting the dirt into an old spittoon to take it away. It was hard to tell how far they'd gotten though, and at one point they broke through the surface and realized that they still had several feet left to go. They managed to fill that accidental opening in before they were noticed.

• 26:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Robert Knox Needon was a cartographer who was being held at a neighboring prison. And he wrote this account of the escape, which happened on February 9, 1864. Quote, "Everyone wanted to be first. In order to get down the chimney, as well as the long tunnel, it was necessary to strip naked, wrap the clothes in a bundle, and push this on before them." As soon as it was seen that only a few men could possibly get out before daylight, all rushed for the mouth of the tunnel who could, each man being determined to get out first. The room was now crowded to suffocation, all struggling to get in the hole. The strongest men forced their way to the front while the weak ones were more roughly brushed aside and jammed up against the walls.

• 27:43Holly Frey?

  Sneeden also made a map of the prison in watercolor, showing the prison, the tunnel route, nearby streets and other buildings, and the James River and its adjacent canal. That map is now in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society.

• 27:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  In one account of this escape, during the roll call the next day, a Confederate official said, "Where are they all?" And somebody answered, "They fell out the window," which cracks me up.

• 28:11Holly Frey?

  Whole lot of window drops. 109 men managed to escape through that tunnel, with more than half of them successfully making it to Union territory. Some of the ones who managed to evade capture had help from Union spy Elizabeth Van Leeu, who was mentioned in our prior episode on Mary Elizabeth Bowser, which was a Saturday classic not too long ago. Forty-eight of the men were recaptured, and two drowned while trying to cross a river. Colonel Rose, who had started the whole escape plan, was one of the ones recaptured, and he was held at Libby until April 30, 1864, when he was released as part of a prisoner exchange.

• 28:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  A few weeks after this escape, H. Judson Kilpatrick and Ulrich Dahlgren tried to liberate the prison, but they were discovered. Dahlgren was killed, and papers he was carrying with him suggested that there was a plan in the works to burn down Richmond and kill Confederate President Jefferson Davis. After this, Richmond's prowest marshal John H. Winder authorized Major Thomas Pratt Turner, who was commandant of the prison, to dig a pit under the prison, fill it with gunpowder, and blow the whole thing up if there were any further escape attempts. That threat was never carried out. Soon, the Confederate Army started transferring men out of Libby to other prisons.

• 29:35Holly Frey?

  After the war was over, the entire thing was dismantled and moved to Chicago, where it operated as the Libby Prison War Museum from 1889 to 1899.

• 29:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  I have many questions about that, but I did not look into answering them because it was outside the scope of this podcast. We're going to take a quick sponsor break and then get to two more escapes.

• 30:01Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. Tune in for season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, a Ruby Studio production in partnership with Argenx. Hosted by public health and policy expert Dr. Martine Hackett, Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition pushes the conversation within the rare disease community forward. Featuring guests living with MG, CIDP, myositis, SMA, and other rare autoimmune conditions, each episode explores hope, progress, and connection. How does research create new opportunities? How do shared experiences help light the way forward? How do we best show up for each other? Tune

• 30:46Holly Frey?

  in to find out. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:56Speaker 06

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 31:25Speaker 07

  This is Maury Lopez from All Maury Lopez Daily Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features in tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready R4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at traded. So get a great deal today and great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 32:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  Next up, we have Shiratori Yoshie, who successfully escaped from four different prisons in Japan in the 1930s and 40s. English language accounts of these escapes have some contradictions. This was also true of Japanese accounts that I found and ran through Google Translate. But still, the basics and the places where they kind of intersect are just fascinating. He was initially imprisoned for burglary and murder, and a crime that had been committed by a group of men. And he maintained that he had not been involved in the murder. And there are some accounts of this that describe him as falsely accused.

• 32:45Holly Frey?

  His first escape was from Almori Prison, after he'd been incarcerated there for about three years. He had found a piece of wire in a wash tub, and he used that wire to pick the locks. He was caught just a few days later.

• 33:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Then in 1942, he was transferred to Akita Prison. His cell had been designed to deter escape attempts, but he noticed that the wood around a skylight in the ceiling was starting to rot. So he climbed up there night after night, loosening the rotten wood. Then he waited for a stormy night to disguise the sound of his moving along the prison roof. And then he climbed up through that skylight he removed, and then climbed out.

• 33:28Holly Frey?

  Shiratori maintained that the accusations against him were false and that his incarceration was unjust. And then he went to the home of a police officer who had previously been kind to him. He had hoped that the officer would be willing to help him, but instead, the officer turned him in. And Shiratori wound up at Abashiri Prison.

• 33:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was Japan's northernmost prison, and it was a place where some of the nation's most notorious people were housed. Even though the prison was supposed to be escape-proof, Shiratori was kept handcuffed there, except when he was bathing. For this escape, and this is the detail that made me put this on the list, Shiratori spit the miso soup from his meals onto his handcuffs and the meal slot in his door. Had miso soup, you know it's really salty. So he was wanting the salt in the soup to weaken the metal in his handcuffs and that meal slot.

• 34:24Holly Frey?

  This was during World War II and the prison had huge skylights in the roof, so it was kept in blackout conditions at night. On the night of August 26, 1944, Shiratori broke through his weakened handcuffs and meal slot, reportedly dislocating his shoulders to do so and escaped through the skylights under cover of darkness. Abashiri Prison is now a museum and has a model of Shiratori climbing to the windowed roof to escape in his underwear. Although details are fuzzy about how exactly he climbed up to the skylights if he had just dislocated his shoulders.

• 35:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, even if he had popped his own shoulders back into place, that seems like it would have been incredibly painful and difficult to try to do because it was, it's not a low ceiling. It's like a very high ceiling with big skylights up there. Regardless of the detail with that, though, Shiratori hid in an abandoned mine until after the end of World War II. And then a farmer caught him stealing food from the fields and Shiratori stabbed him. The farmer later died of his injuries and Shiratori maintained that the stabbing had been done in self-defense.

• 35:36Holly Frey?

  At this point, Shiratori had escaped from prison three times and he had been convicted of committing other crimes in addition to that first robbery and murder during his escape. So he was sentenced to death. He was housed at Sapporo Prison to await his execution. Two of his previous escapes had involved climbing up through ceilings and roofs. So that was apparently where the guards focused when they secured his cell. So in 1947, he went out through the floor instead. He pried up the floorboards and then used again the bowls from his meals, used them as shovels to shovel through the dirt underneath the floor. He was once again caught. That was about a year later.

• 36:19Holly Frey?

  But this time, rather than adding to his sentence again, a court ruled that Shiratori really had stabbed the farmer in self-defense after he had escaped from Abashiri Prison. His sentence was reduced to 20 years in prison and he was released in 1961. He lived free for quite some time. He died in 1979.

• 36:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, he, as I understand it, became kind of an anti-hero in, in, in Japan because of all of this. And now we have one last escapee who is another man, but his wife is the one who should really be credited with planning it and carrying it out. This was William Maxwell, the fifth Earl of Niddeale, who was probably born at Terrible's Castle in Scotland in 1676. His father had died when he was a child and he was raised mostly by his mother, who was a Catholic and then later a Jacobite. That is, a supporter of the Stuart claim to the British throne after the Stuarts were forced into exile during the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

• 37:22Holly Frey?

  When William became an adult, he married Lady Winifred Herbert. They met while William was in France to pledge his loyalty to the exiled James the Second and Seventh. And Winifred was visiting her father, who was one of the people who helped get James's wife and son out of England during the Glorious Revolution. Once they returned to Scotland, they tried to be discreet about their religion and their political views since most of their neighbors were Protestants. But they were still the targets of suspicion and on Christmas Eve, 1703, a mob broke down the castle gates and ransacked the property, looking for any Catholics they might be harboring.

• 38:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, their political views also would have been treason. So it was very important to keep that very quiet. William was cleared of any wrongdoing after this mob breaking down his door, but he was stripped of one of his titles and ordered to pay a bond to ensure that he would not plot against the throne. Authorities kept him under close watch and during all of this, he bequeathed most of his property to his eldest son. This might have been an attempt to protect that property from being confiscated if he were arrested again.

• 38:34Holly Frey?

  In 1715, William was part of the Jacobite Rising of 1715. We have covered the Jacobite Risings on the show before and briefly, this was one of a series of failed attempts to restore the Stuarts to the British throne. William commanded a group of gentlemen volunteers and after the Battle of Preston, he was one of almost 1,500 Jacobites taken prisoner. In January of 716, he pled guilty to treason and on February 9th, he was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. His execution was scheduled for February 21st.

• 39:11Tracy V. Wilson?

  Winifred was determined to get him released, so she traveled to London. This was wintertime when the snow became too deep for her carriage to get through. She finished the journey on horseback. She met with King George I, clinging to his robes when he refused to accept a petition on her husband's behalf. She refused to let go of those robes as he tried to walk away from her and so he dragged her across the room. And as word spread about that, that wound up earning her some popular support. People did not like the idea that the, uh, the king had dragged this distraught wife across the room.

• 39:50Holly Frey?

  She bribed the guards at the Tower of London where William was being held to allow him to receive visitors and gifts and she visited him repeatedly, often with the company of other women. On the night before he was to be executed, she arrived with her maid, Cecilia Evans, and her friends, Mrs. Morgan and Mrs. Mills. And she had brought women's clothes and makeup with her.

• 40:15Tracy V. Wilson?

  As Winifred got William dressed and made up, she had a loud conversation with her friends about where in the world Cecilia had disappeared to. She knew exactly where Cecilia was. This was all part of a ruse meant to be overheard by the guards. Winifred's companions then left the prison one by one and then they were followed by Winifred and William together as though William were her maid. He was hiding the lower part of his face behind a handkerchief because they did not have time to shave him for leading him out.

• 40:50Holly Frey?

  Oh, this is, I can think of so many comedy tropes. I would love to see recreate this. Uh, once William was outside, Winifred doubled back, went to his empty cell and had a pretend conversation with him, closing the door behind her when she left. On the way out, she told the guards he was at prayer and should not be disturbed. The guards didn't even realize William was gone until everyone involved in this ruse was safely away from the tower.

• 41:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, this whole thing really banked on causing the guards to be confused about exactly how many women had arrived with her and where precisely they were at any given moment. Uh, after getting out of the tower, William took refuge at the Venetian Embassy, and then he escaped to Dover while dressed as a Venetian ambassador. He went to Bruges by boat and then to Paris where he reconnected with his wife. The two of them became part of the Stuart Court in exile. In 1717, they moved to Rome, and that is where William died in 1744. William had a reputation for always living beyond his means, and he died

• 41:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  in debt. But Winifred became a popular heroine in Jacobite writing. She died in 1749.

• 42:04Holly Frey?

  All right. If you're thinking, hey, why wasn't the John Dillinger escape in here? That was pretty ingenious. Yes, that's true, but there is an episode on Dillinger already. That is going to be an upcoming Saturday classic.

• 42:16Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Seemed like a good thing to add in there since, um, they do talk about that escape in that prior episode.

• 42:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook URL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is [email protected]. You can find us all over social media at @MissedInHistory. And you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts.

• 43:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 43:16Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T: Connecting Changes Everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details.

• 44:20Speaker 06

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 44:50Speaker 08

  This is Shirley Strawberry from the Steve Harvey Morning Show. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla Sedan, with the latest features and tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you could get more at trade-in, get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.