The Jailbreak That Almost Toppled the Penitentiary
A clever prisoner uses his talent for locksmithing to craft duplicate keys, nearly sparking a mass escape at the Walla Walla prison.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Walla Walla, Aug. 23 — Warden Eglin yesterday thwarted a plot among the convicts in the penitentiary which, if successful, would have let out every convict confined there. For two weeks, the warden had noticed suspicious actions of the convicts and warned the guards to be constantly alert. Yesterday, a convict named Charles Mason, working in the shoe shop, failed to come in when the noon bell rang, and was found hiding in the shop after lunch. On his return to work, the shop warden was called in, and seeing him working at some filing, had him searched and arrested. A key was found which fitted the outside door of the shop perfectly. A further search was made in his cell, and three other keys found, one of the main shop and the other two fitting the cells in the new wing. Only one more key was required, that which withdraws the bolts from the cells in each corridor. A search was made in all the other cells, but nothing further was unearthed. If the full set of four keys had been obtained, a trustee could have opened the cells in the new wing, and the convicts could have overpowered or murdered the guards and let the remainder of their number loose. The duplicate keys were perfectly made and opened the doors as well as the warden’s keys. Where the model was from which to make them was a mystery. Mason was sentenced from Tacoma for forgery; he is a born mechanic and able to make anything.
“He is a born mechanic and able to make anything.”
Long before modern security systems, the security of Washington's oldest state penitentiary relied heavily on the vigilance of guards against inmate ingenuity. This account serves as an early example of the perennial cat-and-mouse game between prison administration and the persistent human drive for freedom.
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