One Way Out
On the morning of Monday, 29 September 1941, an Army officer was walking up a narrow footpath opposite the top end of the Peveril Camp. He was close to the guardroom when he stopped. He had suddenly felt his foot sink slightly, as though the ground he had trodden on was hollow underneath. He prodded and discovered that a sod of tangled grass about 1½ feet square had been cut and replaced. It covered a hole about four feet deep with a short ladder running up from its base to the ground-level. The grass was held in place by a light trapdoor.
At once the search was on. It was soon established that there was a tunnel about twenty-five yards long. It led from house No. 13 inside the compound, on the main Peel to Kirk Michael coast road, which formed the camp’s inland boundary. Its address is now 17 Peveril Road, known years ago as Ballarat Road. On raising the linoleum on the floor of the small front room, searchers discovered that three of the floorboards had been cut across. When these were lifted, they found a shaft about ten feet deep and four feet across, with a home-made ladder in position going down to the base. There a tunnel headed eastwards, passing out from under the house. It then ran under the perimeter wire and the Peveril Road, sloping upwards and then rose vertically to surface in the middle of a narrow path running between the barbed wire around the outside guardroom on the opposite side of the road, and the hedge of a bungalow owned by R. B. Kelly.
In its report the Mona’s Herald paid grudging tribute to the tunnel’s architects. The line, it said, must have been calculated with the greatest accuracy. An error to the right would have meant surfacing inside the wire round the guardroom, while a foot to the left would have meant coming out in Mr Kelly’s garden. The builders must have known they took a great risk in coming up so close to the guardroom. In view of the distance they probably had no alternative.
The tunnel itself was mainly a little over three feet in height. A man could just get along it in the greatest discomfort but without having to crawl snake-like on his belly. It mostly ran through a subsoil of sand and clay, and to prevent its collapsing, the sides and roof had been timbered at intervals. An electric light had been installed roughly half-way along the tunnel. The mains had been tapped in the house, and wires had been run out down the shaft and along to the light point.
From the start the builders had a major problem: the disposal of the clay as they dug it out. They solved this simply but laboriously. The garden of the house in which the tunnel started had been largely made over to growing vegetables. The tunnellers carried off everything they dug, took it through the house to the garden and added it to the vegetable area; the subsoil was later found mixed with the loam, raising the allotment over the level of the surrounding ground. The operation must have taken months, with several men involved.
The Manx police were quickly at work. It was simple to find out from whence the tunnel had been leading. The house was photographed on very simple equipment and was examined in every detail by a team led by the late Inspector Kneen, the men who had taken the escapees from the RN patrol boat which had picked them up little more than a week earlier. The officers even examined the soil on the allotment. They had found the hole below the ground floor with no trouble.
Suspicion was directed at three men who had been living in the house, and they were cross-examined at length. No charges were made; in a camp where everyone had a good reason to want to break out, there were more than 650 potential collaborators in an escape plot. One point was never heavily emphasized and has been disputed, but it is believed by many: the three men who had escaped from Peveril and were later picked up at sea had lived in the house where the operation started.
The tunnel did not last long. It became waterlogged; perhaps it had never been used for the purpose for which it was built; perhaps it had. It was being ruined by seepage even as it was discovered, yet it achieved a wide notoriety as the first tunnel to freedom to be built so painstakingly in a camp in Britain.
The present owners of the house, Gordon Keith and his wife, rediscovered the entrance to the tunnel some years ago when they were stripping out and preparing to relay the flooring and virtually rebuilding the inside of the property. The joists were found to have been cut near the window, and a cover fitted over them. The vertical shaft down to the tunnel could be examined by torchlight, and an attempt was made to get down and along it. The tunnel had, of course, caved in with the years, but at the base of the shaft Mr Keith found a clay pipe, some naval buttons and a spirit level. He started making inquiries, and Peel veterans assured him that they had heard of the tunnel back in 1941, and alleged that among the detainees was an Italian opera singer who ‘sang his heart out’ to cover the noise of the digging going on below street level. Maybe; maybe not.
The house has been considerably altered, but stone gateposts are still in position, and the irons on which the original gates were hung remain. The garden has also been changed around but it still contains one remarkable link with the past. In the thin soil that raises the level of a turf-topped bank can still be seen pieces of clay tunnelled out from the escape route. Even after forty years it still refuses to mix fully with the flinty earth of the topsoil, and its colour is distinct.
The events of that late September were a welcome diversion to the media. Peel became large in the national news. Reporters were not reluctant to get the Isle of Man assignment. It was a pleasant break, and they made the most of it. Each new occurrence made its headlines; the comings and goings of men such as the Chief Constable were eagerly reported. Manx officials were pursued for interviews. Views were sought on anything about internment camps.
The camp administration came in for some heavy flak, aimed more at the higher authority for its allegedly lenient policy than at the men on the spot. The handling of the riot situation on the Saturday night, when a member of the British Government narrowly escaped rough treatment from Fascists and later accepted deputations from the spokesmen for the miscreants, was strongly criticized.
The Daily Mail suddenly felt inspired by Kipling’s ‘It’ and excelled itself with some verse entitled How to Treat A Fascist. The war was on; the bombs were falling; it was right and proper to overlook its very different attitude to the British Fascist movement during a campaign in the pre-war years:
How to Treat a Fascist
If you can hate your land while others love it,
We’ll send you to a camp beside the sea,
No hostile bombers ever roar above it,
You’ll get your rations just the same as we.
If you can fill a rather boring minute
By throwing bricks and bottles at the guard,
Though we’ve a cell we will not put you in it—
We would not dream of treating you too hard.
If others slave, if others die for freedom,
Why should you care, since you are freedom’s foe,
Voice your complaints, dear boys, and we will heed them,
Your comfort is our only thought, you know.
If you’ll stay here, where there is none to hurt you,
Till we achieve our aim and war is done
We shall not fail to recognise such virtue
And you shall share what better men have won.
On the Monday when the tunnel was discovered, a secondary story also emerged from the Peveril Camp. All the men’s camps on the island had a system of token paper money, which had value in the camp only and which was issued to inmates against their accounts in the camp books. These notes were printed locally and were in various modest denominations. Then, on the morning when Sam Ogden was flying back to London with his report in his mind and when unknown to him the hole in the ground was about to be discovered, an auditor reported that unauthorized notes were circulating at Peel. There were examples of a note for a halfpenny having the ‘½d.’ rubbed out and a useful ‘5s.’ substituted; not the easiest thing to do with anything approaching a realistic result, one would imagine.
One printed report suggested that hundreds of pounds were involved. Fact subsequently revealed that the amount of the swindle amounted to about £3. But it was a good story while it lasted.
The next sitting of Tynwald embarked on a hearty condemnation of the whole administration and conduct of the military in charge of the camps. At times it was not so much a debate as a vigorous slanging match, reflecting the Manx concern. The point generally seized on was the food served inside the barbed wire. Members of the venerable House of Keys took the emphatic view that the internees and detainees should do no better than the man in the street.
Immediately after the Peel riot one privilege was abruptly stopped. Visits by wives were suspended for a month, and only one parcel was allowed weekly; its value was not to exceed 10s. (50p.), and a sales chit giving the amount had to accompany the parcel.
Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, the Cockney whose quiff was made famous in the cartoons of David Low, gave significant news to the House of Commons a few days after the riot. He assured Members that, after the Manx courts had disposed of the charges against the three men who had escaped and been recaptured, he proposed to transfer them to a mainland prison where they would be held under close supervision. In reply to a further question asking if it was true that many thousands of bottles of beer were allowed into the camp and whether detainees could drink as much as they wanted, he answered: ‘No. They don’t get as much beer as they please. I don’t think anyone does these days.’
No doubt he was technically right. But the quantity consumed was very high, as the Manx police could doubtless have told him.
With Ogden’s return to London events moved rapidly. The day after his visit to the island it was known that widespread changes were to be made in the administration at Peel. On the last day of September the Mona’s Herald announced that fifty picked Metropolitan policemen would be coming over the following day to act as wardens at the camp. Billets in the town were already being found for them.
What the newspaper did not say was that Ogden, promoted from Chief Inspector to Superintendent for the heavy responsibility, was in overall charge. Over from London on the Saturday; work all week-end; back to headquarters on the Monday; decisions taken, and back again with a police party under his command on the Wednesday. It was fast going.
Even before the police arrived, the Isle of Man Government had commandeered the Creg Malin, the gauint pub-cum-hotel next door to the coiled wire of the camp. Huts were quickly put up along a narrow lane behind it and were used for stores or for interview rooms for visitors.
Once more Herbert Morrison was able to tell the House of Commons what was going on. The accounts of the disorder, he maintained, had been exaggerated, and he reminded the House that ‘these men were detained for preventative, not punitive, purposes’. But it was necessary to restore discipline in the camp so he had decided to reinforce the military with a detachment of the Metropolitan Police which had been specially picked for the work.
While the Home Secretary was making his statement in London, eighteen men who were considered the ringleaders of the trouble had been taken from Peveril to the main prison in Douglas. The following morning they were driven off in a military lorry and placed on the Liverpool steamer. They were guarded by an escort of Metropolitan PCs. Their destination was Walton Gaol, where they arrived that afternoon. They left behind them in the Douglas gaol the three men awaiting their trial by the Manx courts.
The arrival of the men from the Met was welcomed by the Manx. These men knew the Fascists and the terrorists from the streets of London. There would be no more nonsense. The Manx newspapers insisted that there was now a real prospect of the Fascist detainees being kept in their proper place, ‘and the inhabitants of the town and island have been given security for their lives and property’. The new Superintendent was described as an unassuming man who in his young days had been no mean boxer. The Manx public were treated to the news that when he found time he was partial to a round of golf. He seems to have had a quiet sense of humour, and certainly a sense of occasion.
It had been arranged with the landlord that the police would formally occupy the Creg Malin from Saturday night and would take over their duties at the camp at noon on Monday. Proprietor Ostick had been ordered to get out along with his guests by closing time on Saturday. The catering and general supervision of the place were to go to John Kelly, of Douglas, an ex-chief steward of the Steam Packet line. Accordingly, at the normal closing time on Saturday night, Sam Ogden went behind the bar in the main lounge of the Creg Malin and called a one-word order of command: ‘Time.’
At noon on Monday the Metropolitan Police duly took over the main duties of the camp, with the military acting as perimeter guards. The line of responsibility was clearly laid down. Ogden was the man in charge, with Divisional Inspector Frank Mulvey as his deputy. The people of Peel were well pleased.
A few days later they read how the Home Secretary had announced that, as a punishment, the detainees in the Peel camp had been barred from going to the cinema for a month. There was only one cinema in Peel. Its owner, Ostick, had very pronounced views about detainees, who with their womenfolk constituted a nuisance to him. He disliked them heartily and would not allow them into his cinema until much later in the war.
At the end of October the wives of the Peel detainees were once again allowed supervised visits to their husbands; a reception hut had been put aside for the purpose behind the Creg Malin, a yard or two from the camp.
In the early days a liberal number of visits had been allowed; there was one woman who lived in the West Country on the mainland and who made the tortuous journey to London, to Liverpool and then to Douglas, to see her man every fortnight. There were even four wives who had taken up lodgings in Peel, to save themselves the journey.
Steadily the rules were tightened. The number of permitted visits was cut down. Late in November Peel was declared a Protected Area under the Defence Regulations. This meant that only residents and authorized people had an automatic right to be there; anyone with Home Office permission to visit the camp could remain only for the stipulated period of the visit and if staying overnight could not lodge in the small town; British subjects, other than residents and those connected with the camp, could enter only when allowed by the Chief Constable. No barriers were erected on the approaches to the town, but spot checks were made from time to time, and the wise man carried his identity card.
Only a few days before the new restrictions started at Peel, the three escapees made their final appearance before the Manx court, answering the charge of stealing a fishing-boat and two sets of oars. One of them was additionally charged with unlawfully altering an entry on his identity card.
The cases permitted of little argument. Perhaps the most significant remark was made by the Attorney General in his opening speech for the prosecution. Describing the chain of events, he referred to the way the men, on being landed from the naval craft, were taken back to Peveril—‘this ill-judged action’, as he called it. This senior member of the Manx Bar was puzzled why authority ordered that such men should be returned to camp instead of putting them straight into police custody; It was a decision whose consequences earned some hard criticism.
The case itself was soon disposed of. The trio received sentences varying from six months to one year. By then there had been yet another attempted escape from another Manx camp, this one more spectacular.