We live next to UK’s creepiest prison that housed sick ‘Acid Bath Killer’ & Krays’ evil hitman…it’s now a crumbling ruin
IT was once the world’s most famous prison – now Dartmoor is an empty shell.
Murderers, serial killers, gangsters, spies – and even the president of Ireland – have done time there.
But the jail closed last summer after a health scare and its future now hangs in the balance.
Which could mean a multi-million headache for Prince William.
The sprawling stone complex which holds 650 inmates is owned by the prince’s Duchy of Cornwall estate, and the Home Office now looks likely to cancel its lease and hand the keys back to William.
As heir to the throne, William is owner of 135,000 acres of land and property which provide him with a whopping income – accounts for 2023-4 show he trousered £23.6 million from the estate.
But Dartmoor – immortalised in the Sherlock Holmes mystery The Hound of the Baskervilles – is a whopping white elephant.
Nobody wants it.
Back in 2019, the government announced plans to close Dartmoor in 2023. It was considered old, ramshackle and colossally expensive to run.
But as jails across the country continued to be full to bursting, the decision was reversed.
However, last year high levels of radon, a radioactive gas, were discovered in the rocks surrounding the prison. Over 600 inmates were quickly shipped out to other locations.
Ironically, breaking up those same Dartmoor rocks was part of the ‘hard labour’ punishment handed down by judges up till 1948, when the practice – along with flogging – was abolished.
No doubt the few lags and lifers who’ve been detained in the Moor at the sovereign’s pleasure would be surprised that nitpicky health rules should shut down the toughest slammer in Britain.
The Ministry of Justice signed a new 25-year lease on the prison in 2023 but will now be regretting that decision – health and safety requirements meaning that, according to one local, “it’d be cheaper to build a new jail than fix this one.”
Dartmoor was built in 1809 to house French prisoners in the Napoleonic wars. Soon they were replaced by troops captured during America’s war with Britain which kicked off in 1812.
At one stage the massive stone prison blocks, surrounded a by high circular wall, were crammed with up to 6,500 detainees. Inevitably some managed to escape.
But the terrain outside – miles and miles of exposed moorland with no shelter – meant few got away. Locals were offered a bounty of a guinea per head for every absconder they collared.
Violent convicts
One who did get away in the 20th century was notorious gangster Frank Mitchell, known as The Mad Axeman.
With a reputation for violent robbery, Mitchell claimed there wasn’t a lock he couldn’t pick – he escaped several times from prisons and psychiatric wards.
So strong he could lift a grand piano unaided, his party trick was to pick two grown men up by the scruff of the neck – one in each hand.
In an earlier escape he’d held a couple hostage, threatening them with an axe – hence his nickname. He became known as Britain’s most violent convict.
Mitchell escaped from a Dartmoor work-party in 1966 in a plot engineered by the Kray brothers, who had him whisked away to London in a getaway car.
While the bleak winter moorland was being combed by 200 police officers, 100 Royal Marines, and an RAF helicopter, Mitchell was happily feasting on his dinner in East London.
Confined for his own safety to a Kray safe house, he became argumentative and violent. So the Krays had him shot, the Axeman taking 12 bullets before he finally died.
His body was never found.
Local retired teacher Carolyn Cullum says: “I remember when the Mad Axeman escaped. Sirens were blaring and we were all told to stay indoors and lock our doors.”
He was one of the rare ones that got away – most of the escapees would get lost or give up through cold and exposure.
Sometimes they would go and hide in the woods nearby, not realising that the authorities had placed sensors in there to detect human movement.
“The best thing to do if you were banged up in Dartmoor was – do your porridge, keep your nose clean, speak nicely to the warders and you’ll be out in no time,” one local commented.
Acid bath murderer John Haigh did time in Dartmoor before being released to kill six (he claimed nine) innocent people.
The accountant battered to death or shot his victims, and disposed of their bodies using sulphuric acid. He then went on to forge their signatures so he could sell their possessions and collect the money.
Before slaughtering his first victim, a wealthy rent collector, Haigh experimented with field-mice and discovered that it took only 30 minutes for their bodies to dissolve.
It actually took two days for the body of William McSwan to evaporate in a 40-gallon drum – but so encouraged was he by the results that Haigh then moved on to McSwan’s parents before picking off more victims.
After his 1949 arrest, police discovered 28lb of human body fat, part of a human foot, gallstones and some false teeth outside his workshop.
Haigh’s big mistake was to believe he could not be found guilty of murder if the bodies could not be found.
Former Dartmoor inmate Jack McVitie, known as Jack The Hat, was a notorious enforcer and hitman during the reign of the Kray Brothers in the 1950s and 60s.
But having fallen out with the twins, he made the crucial error of going round London pubs saying he was going to kill them.
Their response was to invite him to a party with the idea of shooting him as he entered the room.
Reggie would pull the trigger. But Reggie’s gun jammed, so instead he knifed McVitie in the face, chest and stomach.
“Jack got silly,” recalled his friend Joey Pyle later. “He knew he was going to get it. I can’t blame the twins for what they did – if someone goes around saying they’re going to kill you, you don’t have a lot of choice – you have to do them first.
“But Jack should never have gone the way he did. He died like a ****ing rat.”
Less lurid, but possibly the most high-profile prisoner Dartmoor ever had was Eamon de Valera, later to become President of Ireland.
The politician was a prisoner in Dartmoor for a short time before being released in 1917. He’d been a leader of the Easter Rising in 1916 and was originally sentenced to death.
But his time in Dartmoor convinced him that prison was not for him, and when he was re-arrested and sent to Lincoln jail he was determined to escape.
He did – by getting friends in Dublin to send him lock-picking materials baked in a cake. You couldn’t make it up.
UK prison crisis
LAST year, the government introduced Operation Early Dawn to tackle the growing prison crisis.
It is an emergency measure aimed at managing overcrowding in prisons.
Under this plan, if someone is arrested and might need to be held in custody, they won’t be taken to court until a space in prison is confirmed for them.
Instead, they will be kept in a police cell.
This operation helps prevent overcrowded conditions in prisons by delaying court appearances until there’s a confirmed prison space available.
The measure was recently triggered due to a sudden increase in the prison population, especially after the sentencing of individuals involved in recent riots.
But the operation may cause delays in court proceedings, as cases can be postponed until a prison cell is ready.
But the days of the hard men of Dartmoor are long gone. Most recently the place has been designated Category C, a training and resettlement establishment only one step away from an open prison.
Now, the once-notorious Dartmoor stands empty. And unless the cash-strapped Starmer administration can find the millions to refurbish the place – this week the Prison Service stated that a decision will be taken later in the year – its 216-year run as the world’s most famous jail will be over.
And as Duke of Cornwall, Prince William will be left with a multi-million pound headache.
What do you do with a prison nobody wants?
Various ideas have been floated locally, including converting the old stone buildings into a hotel – as happened successfully in Oxford in 2006.
But that might cost William’s Duchy much more than the site is actually worth, since it’s too remote to be turned into housing and, stuck right in the middle of Dartmoor’s 50,000 acres, there are few other options left.
Mark Renders, who owns Princetown’s post office and shop, and is a local councillor and member of the Dartmoor National Park Authority says: “Closure has been hanging over us since the 1960s. Re-opening the prison will depend on whether the government will spend money on it when they review their finances later in the year.
“But it would be a tragedy to see such an iconic building closed and left to fall down.
“Princetown is the highest village in the country and we get around 30,000 visitors a year and that will have an effect on the locals if the closure is permanent.
“The Duchy are playing their cards very close to their chest so we don’t know what their plans are when the prison closes. A lot of people locally feel the Duchy is using the Radon scare as an excuse to mothball the place, and that the problem is not as bad as all that.
“We live on a huge block of granite here and though I’ve lived here for 13 years, I’ve never heard of anyone dropping dead from Radon.”
“But if the closure’s permanent, Princetown will take it on the chin.”
Maybe it’s time for William to pay his first visit – unlock a cell door, sit down with a bowl of porridge and work out what’s to be done next.