There have been well-known and notorious inmates, but our jail absconder correspondent Angus Young finds out if anyone actually made it over the wall.
Hull Prison was built in 1870 and it took another 119 years before one of its inmates managed to break out. The prisoner in question was David McAllister, who was inside serving a 19-year sentence for armed robbery, arson and other firearms offences.
What made his escape all the more extraordinary was the fact that, at the time, he was among a handful of prisoners being held in a special secure unit. In effect, the unit was a prison inside a prison and was home to some of the disruptive men in the UK prison system. They were brought together in the unit to monitor their behaviour together under a slightly more informal regime instead of simply being on a traditional prison wing where they could influence others.
A BBC film crew was invited into the unit to film a documentary and its footage included a clash between McAllister and another inmate over a female teacher. Three weeks after the episode aired, McAllister escaped from the prison with the help of another female teacher, mother-of-two Pauline Hardy. Having smuggled a gun and a change of clothing for McAllister into the prison, the couple brazenly walked through ten security gates without being challenged before stepping outside.
Then, in a pre-planned distraction ploy, Hardy drove her car to Sainsbury’s supermarket near Hessle and staged a bomb hoax, claiming in a phone call to the police that she had been kidnapped and was now tied up with a device strapped to her body. The ‘bomb’ turned out to be made from tubes of Smarties, compost, masking tape and a calculator but the three-hour police operation it triggered gave McAllister plenty of time to flee Hull.
He was captured five days later in an armed raid at a house in Surrey. After his arrest he was returned to Hull but after smashing up a cell in the prison hospital he was transferred to another high-security jail.
The couple subsequently appeared at Grimsby Court Court where it was revealed that Hardy previously had affairs with three prison officers during her time at the jail before starting a relationship with McAllister which began in the prison chapel. McAllister had eight years added to his sentence after pleading guilty to carrying a gun with criminal intent and planning a bomb hoax. Hardy was jailed for five years. Passing sentence, Judge Michael Barker said: “The escape was carried out with great ease due to appalling lax security.”
McAllister spent most of the rest of life behind bars. He died in 2013 at HM Prison The Mount in Dorset after suffering from long-term liver disease.