Escapes

From the thousands of prisoners who were locked up in Inveraray Jail during the 69 years it was a prison, only twelve ever managed to escape and few of these stayed at liberty for long. Sited on a promontory jutting out into Loch Fyne and surrounded by open countryside, the Jail was not the easiest of places to escape from.

Three men broke out in 1820, just after the Old Prison had been completed and while it was still very insecure.

Twenty years later two prisoners walked away in the middle of the night. The lock on their door was faulty and failed to shut. While the warder in the adjoining cell was asleep, they left the prison and escaped through an opening in the boundary wall. This was guarded by a bulldog, also apparently asleep.

In 1857 James McLachlan, aged 15, escaped from the New Prison in the middle of the afternoon. He managed to fool the warder into thinking he was in his cell when he was actually in the WC. As soon as the warder left, James went out through a skylight on the third floor.

The warder realised something was wrong when he saw a rope hanging down outside his window, James was recaptured the next day.

The most meticulously planned escape was that of three housebreakers from Dunoon, William Dickson, John Campbell and John Duncan, They escaped during the night of August 12th 1874 leaving their cell doors locked.

Their escape remained a mystery until John Duncan was recaptured, when it emerged that they had made replica keys from lead they had collected.

Escaping from their cells they found their own clothes in an upper floor cell, as well as a rope! They opened a skylight, went down the rope and were soon out over the boundary wall.

During your visit to Inveraray Jail you will soon appreciate how hard it was to escape, and given its remote location, how futile escape attempts actually were.