| Great Escapes |
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Left: In 1951, Joseph “Tunnel
Joe” Holmes made a sensational escape from the penitentiary by digging
through the floor of his cell and under the prison wall, to emerge near
Eager Street.
Right: “Tunnel Joe’s” escape gave both newspapers and the public an opportunity to chide and satirize city politics. A cartoonist’s interpretation of the escape was published in the February 22, 1951 edition of the Baltimore Sun. |
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“Everyone found the first reports almost beyond belief. Working alone evenings for an estimated two years, the thirty-nine-year-old Holmes (also known as ‘The Dinner Time Burglar’) began by cutting through two inches of slate flooring. He then drilled through ten inches of concrete base and tunneled his way seventy feet—removing eight or nine tons of earth in the process—under the penitentiary’s massive wall and moat, to surface in the grassy plot running alongside Eager Street . . . ” |
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