FACTORALY - E75 PRISONS

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Prison isn't fun. but we thought it worthy of a Factoraly Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Bruce. Hi Simon. How are you today? I'm free as a bird thank you how are you? Yeah I'm all right thank you how are you um yeah i'm all right thank you welcome to factorally everybody hello hello factorally you say what's that when it's at home oh i don't know ah it must be something it's somebody's spelled the word factorially wrong yes um at a complete guess i'd suggest that Fact Orally is an interesting and entertaining weekly podcast in which two lovely, beautiful, silky-voiced British voiceover artists get together and talk about facts. That's right, Simon. And then this guy shows up. Just at a guess.

That's what I think it probably is. So every week we take a subject which is normally dull. This week we've taken a subject which isn't dull. In fact, it's rather depressing and horrible. Yes, yes, depressing rather than dull. Not entirely sure how to make this one cheerful and entertaining, but we'll do our darndest. I think what we'll have to do is we'll have to intermingle

the stuff that isn't entertaining with entertaining stuff. Just every now and then we'll throw in a little amusing comedic interlude yes just a bit of light relief yes exactly yes yes so what are we talking about on this week's episode bruce everybody knows that we are talking about prisons well what fun yes have you been locked up? No, I haven't. Have you? Hmm. I'm not saying.

All right. We'll take that as a yes then. Now we all want to know what you did. I've never been to prison. Really? Yes. I don't know. You seem the type.

No. No. I have been locked up, but I've never been to prison. Oh, well. Okay. Well, that's one to talk about later then. Yeah, different day. The closest I've got to going to prison

is the fact that I grew up just around the corner from Wandsworth Prison. Ah, okay. So you went to the prison as you were going home on the bus. Exactly, yes. We went past it on the way to, just visiting in Monopoly terms. Yes. I mean, there's Hollow prison um around here as well yes that's true and there's that there's the very big one of course pentonville yes that's right also a monopoly spot yes it's holloway

holloway started off as a sort of a man's prison okay i mean oscar wilde was held there where was he then it was switched to being a woman's prison. Right. And it was a woman's prison right up until it was sold. Ah. Because they wanted the money for the land, because the land's quite valuable. Oh, okay. Right. And what is it now? I'm assuming it's some sort of upmarket housing estate. I've no idea.

Fine. Okay. Oscar Wilde was held at Wandsworth briefly on his way from somewhere else to Reading Prison, I think. Yes, Reading Jail. Yes. He seems to have got around a bit. Yeah. As we just happened to have mentioned both the words prison and jail in the same breath, let's have a little chat about the terminology. Go on, then. words prison and jail in the same breath let's have a little chat about the terminology go on the word prison comes from an old french word prison which comes from latin presencio which

means to lay hold of okay and that word is the same as um apprehend in fact it also gives rise to comprehend because you've laid hold of understanding and knowledge. The word jail, I'm not going to go into because it confuses me. There was an old French word, jail, spelled G-A-O-L, but it was pronounced with a hard G. And somehow that's related to a Latin word which looks and sounds and is spelt nothing like that word. Right. So I don't know how that comes into it, but that Latin word meant cage.

Fair enough. So there you go. But I've always pondered about the words prison and jail. You sort of think of an American cop movie, cartoon, whatever it might be. Everyone seems to go to jail. Yes. That seems to be an American thing, that you go to jail.

That's true. And basically, there's actually a distinction between prison and jail or at least there was i don't know if there still is but historically a jail in american terms meant sort of a local facility at a police station or whatever it might be yeah like a lock where a lock up yeah you're sort of held there temporarily whilst you're waiting sentencing and then you get sent to the prison for the long term. But the prison is also nicknamed jail. So the two seem to be quite interchangeable.

Okay. Then you have penitentiary, which is another word for prison. The pen, the state pen. Yes. That comes from the Latin penitentia, which derives penitence and repentance. Yes. So that's the place where you go to to do your penitence. Okay.

So, do you know how long the idea of a prison has been around? I would imagine since the first person broke a rule. You're quite probably right, yes. Specifically, you know how these things are always either the Greeks or the Egyptians or the Romans? Yes. Or the Chinese. Or the Chinese. This one's the Mesopotamians. Oh, for heaven's sake. I mean, you know Around 1000 BC, there's evidence of a prison, again, just as a temporary holding place whilst you're being sentenced.

And then the ancient Greeks really latched onto the idea. The Romans did really latch onto the idea. There was a prison under the streets of Rome within the sewage system, which is rather disgusting. This was called the Mamertine Prison. It was established in 640 BC. And prisoners were just held in little dungeons in the sewage system underneath Rome and were therefore surrounded by all the stuff that you would expect to find in the sewage system under Rome.

Right. all the stuff that you would expect to find in the sewage system under Rome. And people were sort of chained together and forced to do labour and that sort of thing. That's sort of the first evidence of the chain gang system that you hear about in American culture. And then over time, they started using castles, but they always sort of used buildings that were already there in one form or another. They trapped people in the basements of public buildings or just put them in a cage or whatever it was until they were… I guess they would be more sort of jails. Exactly, yeah, short-term, temporary things. The idea of an actual permanent purpose-built building didn't come around until much later on, sort of in the 12th century-ish.

Okay. In my research, I've come across quite a lot of prisons. There are quite a few around, aren't there? There are a lot. I mean, there's quite a famous one in London. Right. Like a big one, but there's a bridge next to it that goes up and down. Oh, the Tower. Yes.

So the Tower of London, built in 1066. Yes. And it was not only a royal palace, it was also a prison. And it was a prison from 1066 to 1952. No way. Yeah, the last prisoner left in 1952. Wow. Because that was where you went if you committed treason.

Yes, of course. You'd get locked up in the tower and await your comeuppance. Yes. Although it was quite a nice place, apparently, if you were a royal prisoner there. Was I? Like Mary, Queen of Scots. You had your retinue in and you had all your own furniture and stuff. Okay, so

a fairly homely prison. Yes. Right. Okay. I mean, some some of it was some of it wasn't i mean there's always the impending doom of being garrotted yes at some point so it's probably not particularly luxurious no still in fact the uh the last people to um be held prisoner in the tower were the cray twins no way really yeah ronnie and Reggie. And in fact, they were stationed there during the war. Okay. They were basically imprisoned for a few days in 1952 for failing to report for national service. Oh, okay.

Oh, that set them on the slippery slope. I mean, and everybody knows that's where the two wives of Henry VIII who were beheaded. Yes, of course. Were beheaded there. And the last person to be executed was in 1941 at the Tower of London. Gosh, really? Yeah. That recently? A guy called Joseph Jacobs, who was a Nazi spy.

Oh, okay. So, yeah, it's got a fairly bloody history. Yes. It's probably the second most popular visited prison in the world after after the rock oh the rock alcatraz yes yes of course because you can stay there can't you you can have a an overnight experience there why you would want i've visited i have been to alcatraz have you and why on earth you would want to stay overnight it's odd isn't it odd, isn't it? It's odd. I have no idea. I think you get a

set of orange prison clothes, don't you? It's very odd. I've stayed at the Oxford Malmaison, which is the old Oxford prison, which is very nice. Okay. And the Bodmin Jail Hotel, which is also very nice. But they're jails that have been turned into luxury hotels. Yes, that's slightly different.

As opposed to being jails that have basically just give you the experience of being banged up. In jail, yeah. But there were some interesting inmates at Alcatraz. Yes. Probably the most well-known was Robert Stroud. Okay. The bird man of Alcatraz. Oh, yes, of course.

Who actually never kept birds at Alcatraz. Oh, come on. So he developed a liking for canaries when he was actually in prison in Leavenworth. Right. And he was in prison for 54 years. I mean, he was not a nice person. Yeah. I mean, he got into prison for killing people and he killed people while he was in prison.

Oh, really? Yeah. Really not nice. So he was already the bird man before he oh really yeah really not nice so he was already the bird man before he went to basically alcatraz was where you sent people who you couldn't keep anywhere else a bit like sort of cold it's yeah yeah so you've got all the sort of like notorious people that you want to keep in one place yeah i mean in cold it's this was where you put all the skps which was a really stupid idea i well i suppose alcatraz has the benefit of being completely and utterly surrounded by water nobody

ever well depends on how you define escaped but technically nobody ever escaped alcatraz right i think somebody somebody got out but they didn't sort of attain their freedom personally so there were a few people who got out the most famous one was uh frank lee morris right escape from alcatraz was based on on him okay the film uh but they never found it basically he they had a they had a raft it was a very clever idea they basically made um like papier-mâché heads, which they put in the beds and then escaped. And so nobody noticed that they'd escaped. And they got on some rafts. But they found the wreckage of the rafts and nobody ever turned up.

So they were pretty sure that nobody ever made it to the mainland or to the local island, which is where they were headed for. So they escaped, but they didn't make it. No, exactly. I mean, there were people there who died of natural causes while they were there, like Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, all these 1930s type criminals. There's a guy called Alvin Karpis, who was there, who was the very first public enemy number one. Oh, really? What an accolade to have. I know.

Where else in the world are there interesting prisons, Simon? Well, I had a look around London, being the London file that I am. And I had a look at the old, some of the old prisons that we had in London that sort of went on for years and years. I had a look at Newgate Prison, which was, it's the site of the Old Bailey now. Newgate Prison was built in the 1100s and it remained in use until 1902. Oh, wow.

It was rebuilt and remodeled a few times, actually burnt down in the Great Fire and was completely rebuilt. But it was just a gruesome, horrible place. It was very much a deterrent. You know, filthy conditions, poor sanitisation, men and women all mixed in together, and children as well, actually, all just sort of mixed in together, and children as well, actually,

or just sort of mixed in together in the same cells. Okay. Well, they used to be allowed sort of like families in cells and stuff as well, especially if it was a debtor's prison or something like that. Yes, that's right. Yeah, debtor's prisons, I've always found an interesting thing because debtor's prisons were a place where you were thrown into if you couldn't pay your debts. And I always thought, well, what's the point in that? Because if you're in prison, you can't work in order to earn money in order to pay your debts. But you actually worked in the prison.

So the prison was a private-run entity, and you sort of performed labor in order to work off part of your debt. Or you got friends and family outside of the prison to try and raise funds to pay off your debt and then you could be released. Problem was, because they were private entities, they charged you for staying there. You actually amassed prison fees. So if you were on the poorer end of the debtors, you basically had no hope of getting out because you had your original debt and then you had to pay the fees as well. So a lot of poorer people just sadly ended up starving there. If you were on the slightly wealthier side of debt, there was a bar, there was a restaurant,

there were shops, you were allowed day release from the prison so you could go about your work and earn money in order to pay off your debt. So very different experience depending on who you were in society. Wow. But back then, prisons weren't there for long term correction or punishment. They were just holding places whilst you waited your sentence, which back then, you know, often meant execution or flogging or whatever it meant. They weren't sort of there to correct you or whatever. Until Bridewell Prison came along. Bridewell Prison near Fleet Street in London was built

out of an old palace, Bridewell Palace. And it was hailed to be a correctional centre, a house of correction. And it was there to sort of teach you the area of your ways and turn you around and all that sort of stuff. It also held homeless children and they were sort of made apprentices

and they learned a trade there. Problem is it didn't really work. The prisoners just became rougher and hardier and more corrupt and they in turn corrupted the poor young children who were learning their trades so it actually just bred more criminals yeah um and then in the 1700s the the prison reform movement came along and they said no this just isn't working we actually need to have structure we need to have the prisons owned by the state rather than being private run racketeers. We need to improve conditions and we need to sort of make it

a proper long-term thing that will act as a deterrent. So it's been a slow process to get to what we know as prisons today. And of course, the other famous London prison was the Clink. Yes, of course. And when you're in Clink, the Clink was actually a prison. It was a debtor's prison, but it also had heretics and drunks and harlots, all sorts of people in there. And that's in sort of Southwark. That's right the clink got its name well two theories either from the sound

of clinking chains on the prisoners or um when you actually went to the prison and had your your chains first put on they had a blacksmith who actually hammered the chain around your wrist so that there was no chance of you ever getting it off. And that clink sound kind of signified the fact, you know, there's a new inmate. And that was there from 1144. It was ancient, wasn't it? Yeah, 600 years it was there for. Yeah. And just around the corner from that was the Marshallsea debtors prison, also in Southwark,

that ran from the 1300s till 1842. We have had quite a lot of prisons, haven't we? Charles Dickens' father had a short term at Marshallsea debtors prison for non-payment of debt. He owed £40 to a baker, which in modern money is an awful lot of money to owe a baker. Yeah. I don't know how many loaves of bread he didn't pay for over his time, but there you go. So Charles Dickens as a kid, he saw his father in debtor's prison, which he drew on those experiences and wrote about debtor's prisons in some of his work.

Wow. I mean, I don't like to talk about the French. But they've got some quite cool prisons as well. And they're generally fictional, although some of them are based on reality. Okay. So let's talk about the real one first. And then we can lighten the mood with a bit of fiction. Okay, fun.

So the real horrible one was Devil's Island, which was a French prison. Not heard of that one. And that shut in 1953. Right. And it was a terrible place. It was full of disease and virtually nobody made it out of Devil's Island alive.

About 80,000 people were imprisoned there and none of them made it off the island. So that was one. But to lighten it a little bit with the French, we also have the very famous Chateau D'If with the Count of Monte Cristo. Yes. Which is a Dumas story. Yeah. Alexandre Dumas.

He of musketeer fame. Musketeers. And also all about the man in the iron mask. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah. A chap called Eustache Doge. Okay. In fact, that wasn't his actual name.

That's just the name that they made up for him. Right. And there was stories about this chap at the Bastille who wore a, it wasn't an iron mask, it was a black velvet cloth. Well, that's totally different. And he only wore that between when he was being transferred from prison to prison. Oh, right. Okay. And he was imprisoned from 1669 to 1703. Right. So he wasn't in an iron mask, even though Alexandre Dumas said he was. A little bit of poetic license, perhaps. I know. And then, of course, there's the Bastille. Storming the Bastille.

Yes, of course. What do you know about the Bastille? The only thing I know about it is that the Marquis de Sade was in there. Okay. And that days before the revolution, they moved him to another prison. Right. And all of the work that he'd done, all of the notes and the writings that he'd done were left in the prison cell in the Bastille.

Oh. When they moved him to the other prison. So when the revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, they burned all of the work he'd been doing. Oh, no. So A, he would have been released, and B, he would have had all his work with him, but they just released him a couple of days before the revolution.

You've talked a lot about working in prisons and rehabilitation and everything. Yes. There is a prison system where there's an awful lot of work goes on. Okay. It's the American prison system. Yes. There are 7 million Americans in prison.

How many? 7 million. Wow. And they want more. OK. You know, you'd think that a civilised country would want to actually reduce the number of people in prison. Yeah.

But the officials who run the prisons want the workforce. Oh. A lot of the work is done for a company called Unicor. Okay. And they have factories in prisons all over America, wholly owned by the American government. Wow. I mean, they make about 11 billion pounds worth of goods and services. Crikey. They have about 800,000 Cracky. Sheesh. I mean, the figures are just staggering. They make clothing, they make jeans and jackets and t-shirts. They make furniture for the office and parks. They even make art. They do paintings and drawings and greetings cards. They even make guns for the military. No way. And jackets and helmets. They do data entry.

They do telephone reservations for TWA. Well, they used to. And car repairs. So there's an awful lot of work that goes on. And this is all presumably in the name of rehabilitation and getting people fit for life outside the prison. If you look at Unicor's website, it's all about rehabilitation and training people for jobs in the outside world.

Yeah. Which is bunk. But in the meantime, you're getting an awful lot of stuff made for a very, very small amount of remuneration. Peanuts. I mean, you know, 13 cents an hour. I mean, we're not technically using the word slave labour here.

Slave labour. No, no, we are. We are absolutely using the word slave labour because that's pretty much what it is. Crikey. Well, that's cheery. I mean, the Americans do like their prisons, though. They do. They're an absolute staple of American culture, aren't they?

How many novels, TV series tv series crime shows movies involve someone sort of being sent to a big menacing american prison and then having all sorts of adventures and possibly escaping well yes i mean cool hand luke one of my favorite films yep very good film paul newman eating eggs uh shawshank redemption oh. Oh, we both went there. Excellent. Got that in sync. Papillon. Yes. About Devil's Island. Yeah.

The Birdman of Alcatraz we've mentioned. Of course. Burt Lancaster. Yeah. The Green Mile. Yes. We mentioned last week on our episode on buses briefly, The Italian Job.

Yes. The prison where Noel Coward plays Mr Bridger, who orchestrates the entire heist from inside the prison. That's actually in Dublin. It's called Kilmainham Jail in Dublin. And I've been there. You can have a little tour around the place. It's a public museum now.

Gosh. And then, of course, you've got the other famous films about things like The Great Escape. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, Prisoners of War. Prisoners of War. Yeah. I mentioned Colditz. It was called an offlag, which is a camp for officers.

Okay. And there were quite a few prisoners there, but 300 of them escaped. Wow. God. 31 made it home. I mean, some of them were recaptured or killed. Right. But yeah, 31 people from Golditz made it back. Car.

Well done them. But they weren't the only place that had prisoners. I mean, Americans took a load of Axis prisoners. There were half a million prisoners of war, German and Italian and Japanese in the USA. Mostly in sort of Arkansas. And they were doing things like, the Germans were fixing cars apparently, or fixing machinery,

and everybody else was picking cotton. Right. They had like 155 prisoner of war camps. Gosh. Prisons are featured on TV as well, most famously with Ronnie Barker as Norman Stanley Fletcher. Yes, Porridge. Yes. Good old Porridge.

I loved Porridge. It was beautifully written by Dick Clement and Ian Lafrennais. Yes. Yeah, that was a cracking show, wasn't it? So Norman Stanley Fletcher was imprisoned at Slade, which is a made-up prison. Yes. And do you know where Slade is?

No, I don't. It's in St. Albans. Oh, is it? Okay. I was always, this just goes to show how long you can believe something that's completely and utterly false. I could have sworn as a kid, I remember hearing that the external scenes of Slade Prison in Porridge were filmed at Wandsworth.

And I was really proud that that was just, you know, that was my local. Yeah, sadly wrong. It was actually filmed at the Old St. Albans Prison, which is now a registry office. Oh, is it? Wonderful. What a turnaround. So, Simon, what does Guinness have to say about prisons? Yeah, there are some Guinness World Records about prisons. It strikes me as a slightly depressing thing to have a record about, because most records are sort of, wow, look what I can do, and I'm going to have the officials come around and watch me do it in order to verify it. But this doesn't quite have that same ring to it.

But there are a few records about prisons there's the longest prison sentence ever served um by a gentleman called francis clifford smith who served 70 years and 30 days in a u.s prison that's a really long time isn't it that's life isn't it yeah um there is a record for the world's smallest prison which is on the island of sark in the uk which has a maximum capacity of two two so that's quite quite a small prison um the longest single sentence i don't understand things like this a man in alabama was sentenced for murder in 1981 and he received a sentence of 10,000 years. I don't quite understand the logic behind that.

It's punitive, isn't it? It's basically just saying it was really, really bad. Yeah. And the single largest prison is called the Silivri Prison in Istanbul. This place is 437,000 square meters. It was originally built in 2008 to have a capacity of 11,000. In 2019, an investigation found that the prison population had risen to 22,500 people. Wow. Double its original capacity. That is very big. Well, look, this is all a bit depressing. Shall we have something that's a bit more positive?

Oh, go on. Because there are prisons in the world which are actually there to help people. Sure. They are mostly in Scandinavia. Okay. So the Norwegian, Swedish and the Finnish prison system have prisons which, to all intents and purposes, look a bit luxurious. Prisoners have their own rooms with a bathroom and sometimes they have their own property with a kitchen and everything. Right. But the idea is that it's about rehabilitation, not about punishment. Yes. And I'll put some links in the show notes, which we haven't yet mentioned. We haven't, no. So on factorily.com.

Factorily.com. If you go to the blog, you will find links to some very nice looking prisons, which are there to actually instruct people, help people and make people feel as though they can reenter society. Now, isn't that just a jolly good idea? If you have to go to prison, go to prison in Norway. Yeah. I've done the research. And that's the place.

It is actually the place where I was locked up. But not in prison. Not in prison? No. Oh, I'm going to have to probe you about this. You are. Offline. I'll probe you offline.

Wow. Yeah, so there are prisons. There's another prison in the Philippines, which is famous, because the inmates have to learn a routine every week. Right. And they put it on the internet. A routine as in a song and dance number? Yeah.

Really? So you might well have seen lots of people dressed in red in a prison yard. Right. Doing a dance routine. Oh, wow. And that's in the Philippines. And that is kind of that's also helping to make people feel better. There are some prisons where they redecorate the prison every so many years.

OK. So that the long term inmates don't get tired of the same old thing. They don't get sort of institutionalized. Right. I mean, there are people who are doing good things. Good. OK. Well, that's a positive note to end thingsized. Right. I mean, there are people who are doing good things. Good. Okay. Well, that's a positive note to end things on.

Yes. Well, I'm all out of prison related facts. Yes, I'm completely locked up. Yep. I've served my sentence. You've done your time. In fact, we've both done our time, so it's time to finish. There we go. Perfect.

Thank you ever so much for listening. If you have enjoyed this episode and indeed all the previous episodes, which I'm sure you've gone back and listened to. Oh, please do. Please give us a like and give us a review. Some lovely shiny stars would be very much appreciated. Five, ideally. Yeah, five is a good number.

I mean, six if it's possible. And you will have nerdy friends. We know you will. I mean, you might even have friends who have been to prison. You never know. You never know. We're not going to ask. But whatever the state of your nerdy friends,

please tell them about this show so that they can join in the fun. Absolutely. And we look forward to seeing you again next time on Fact orally. Cheerio. Au revoir.