De Valera Escapes Lincoln Jail

3 Feb 1919: Eamon De Valera and key figures of Sinn Fein were still languishing in Lincoln Jail but an escape plan was about to be set in motion.

  

Arrested in May 1918 for conspiring with Germany, he been imprisoned without trial ever since. He attended mass consistently in prison and even volunteered as an alter boy. Ever observant, De Valera noticed that the priest was a tad careless with his keys, leaving them unattended for brief periods of time.

 

This wasn't De Valera's first stay at Lincoln. He was familiar with all aspects of the building, all the routines as well as prison guard patrol patterns. He was also convinced there was a major security flaw at Lincoln. It seemed that a master key opened all if not most of the locks at Lincoln.

With this in mind, Dev waited for an opportune moment, grabbed the priest's unattended key and made an impression of it in wax he'd gathered the prison chapel's candles.

The above card was designed Seán Milroy in the hopes that the serious nature of the message it contained would be masked by the comic scene depicted. It worked, the card passed through prison censors, before being posted to the wife of Seán McGarry with the rest of the prion’s holiday mail.

Mrs. McGarry recognised it as no ordinary Christmas card and brought it to her husband's superiors on the outside.

Once in the right hands, the message was deciphered - the key wielded by the cartoonish drunkard matched the dimensions of Lincoln Jail’s master key. A matching key was then fashioned and smuggled into Lincoln inside a fruitcake.
This first key was too small. Several more attempts were made using the fruitcake method but none of the keys were the exact dimensions required. They must try a new way.

The final fruitcake delivery contained blank keys and files. With these Peter de Loughrey, a locksmith by trade, who was imprisoned with De Valera went to work - crafting his own master key to the jail.

On the evening of 3 February 1919, the plan was set in motion. De Valera with fellow prisoners Seán McGarry and Seán Milroy left their cells, their hand crafted key working flawlessly until they reached final door.

 

On the other side stood Michael Collins and Harry Boland who had boldly made the trip themselves to assist their comrades. With them they carries their own duplicate key. But in an effort to speed up the escape, Collins attempted to open the final exterior door from the outside, only fornit to break off off inside the lock.

 

This mistake could have foiled their escape, but Dev was able to gently push Collins' broken key out of the lock and open the door.

DeValera, McGarry and Milroy darted out into the night, a series of pre-arranged taxis would whisk them away from the jail, with Dev headed to Manchester where he would lay low until the news of his escape died down and the unsuccessful man-hunt came to a conclusion. Eventually, De Valera would be smuggled aboard a steamer at Liverpool, arriving triumphantly at the port of Dublin around 1am 3 February 1919. The daring escape was a publicity coup for De Valera, his supporters and the nation.