The Sunday Ishmael: 18/10/2026

 

It seemed a good idea at the time. I had a prison visit scheduled to Dartmoor, first time for me, as my usual prisons were in the Midlands and a bit north. I could do it in a day - a long drive, but do-able, and mr ishmael, who also worked with offenders at that time,  had someone he needed to visit in Dartmoor, to do his pre release planning. So we thought it would be an educational experience to bring along the ishmaelings - both young teenagers at the time. Day out, penal history, criminal justice, most notorious prison in Britain. The youngest ishmaeling, now all grown up, relates the story over dinner tables as another shock  horror instance of my eccentric parenting. "Dartmoor," she shudders, "middle of nowhere. Miles of moor, violent criminals, 

the inscription on the prison gates reads: Parcere Subiectis (Trans: Spare the Vanquished) from Virgil's Aeneid.

left outside in the car, with only my brother, not even a packet of crisps and a bottle of pop. What if one of the murderers had escaped and hijacked the car with us in it?"
"You did so have a packet of crisps and a bottle of pop", I feebly retort, "and mr ishmael and I took it in turns to go into the prison."

"That's not how I remember it", she answered, darkly.

Dartmoor back then was a dreadful place. I remember stone corridors with water oozing down the walls, pervading cold and cables looping along the ceilings. The prison officer escorting me told me that it was built by Napoleonic prisoners of war and hadn't changed much since.

Well, it has. As you can see. The housing around it is for prison officers and is called Princetown, notable back then for the number of caravans and boats on trailers parked outside the houses. 

It was actually built by local labour to house Napoleonic prisoners of war, who were transferred there on completion of the prison in 1809, from terrible conditions on prison hulks.

The next cohort of prisoners were American sailors from the War of 1812. From the spring of 1813 until March 1815, about 6,500 were imprisoned at Dartmoor. These were either naval prisoners or impressed American seamen discharged from British vessels.  After all the American and French prisoners had been released, Dartmoor was left unused for 35 years until 1850, when the prison was recommissioned for civilian convicts. It reopened in 1851. The POW remains that had been originally buried on the moor were exhumed and re-interred in two cemeteries behind the prison when the prison farm was established in about 1852. During the First World War in 1917, criminals were removed from Dartmoor when it was converted to house Conscientious Objectors. The cells were left unlocked, inmates wore their own clothes and could go outside to visit Princetown. In 1920, the prison population again became offenders. It would develop a reputation for housing some of Britain's most serious offenders -  including murderers, gangsters, thieves, spies, and robbers such as Jack “the Hat” McVitie, Jack “Spot” Comer, John George Haigh, and Frank Mitchell. Prisoners constantly attempted to escape onto the moors, leading to massive manhunts by the police and prison service. 

Glory days. It is closed, now.

Dartmoor Prison has been closed since summer 2024 after high levels of radon gas were discovered.  All prisoners and most staff were relocated, and no reopening date has been announced.

Dartmoor can accommodate 650 prisoners. Around the same number who were released early as part of Labour's special measures release scheme this October, to free up prison places for newly sentenced offenders. Just saying.

Prince William owns Dartmoor Prison. Sort out the Radon Gas, Sir. 

I used to live in a radon gas area. Many, many people do, in Britain. The guidelines for dissipating gas in buildings include installation of vents and fans.

The  Duchy of Cornwall signed a £37m agreement in 2022 to lease the prison to the Ministry of Justice, generating rental income of £1.5m a year over 25 years. That was just two years before the prison became unusable, with the knock-on effect of  Princetown, the sole purpose of which is the support and staffing of the prison, facing ruin and unemployment. All those caravans and boats parked on prison officers' drives a thing of the distant past. Has Prince William generously excused the Ministry of Justice from paying £1.5 million a year in rent? No. Did he use the £1.5 million a year to sort out the Radon Gas? No. Has he got any plans to do so? No. Would sorting out the Radon Gas and re-opening the prison help deal with the short fall in prison beds? Yes.

So our future King has trousered £3 million in rent since Dartmoor became unusable. He regards the Radon Gas issue as the Ministry of Justice's problem, despite the Ministry being a part of his Dad's Government.

What he is planning to do was announced by Prince William's private secretary, Ian Patrick, who said: "Prince William knows that for many people in Princetown, the prison has long been part of the fabric of the community. Its closure has created genuine uncertainty, not just about jobs and businesses, but about the future of the town itself.  The duke felt strongly that, while those questions remain unanswered, the benefit of this income should remain in the community, helping local people shape that future."

So he is going to take the Ministry of Justice's money (that is, tax payers' money; that is, my money) and give it to 

the Princetown Community Fund.  And not keep a penny for himself. He will make at least £250,000 available to locally led social, economic and environmental projects. The difference between the earmarked £0.25 million and the £1.5 million will not personally benefit the Prince, nor will it be used to sort the fucking Radon Gas out.

Wonder what Prince Harry has to say about his older brother's largesse?

Obituary Corner: Speak nothing but ill of the Dead (continued)

All this prison talk loops me back around to the subject of last week's obituary, Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (15 April 1940 – 5 October 2026).

Sir Martin James Narey DL is a largely retired Civil Servant, Charity CEO and advisor to the British Government. He served as Director General of the Prison Service of England and Wales between 1998 and 2003, and chief executive of the National Offender Management Service from 2003 to 2005. Writing in The Spectator, he shared a few anecdotes about Baron Archer's prison days. Too good not to be shared, particularly in the light of  the sentencing judge, Mr Justice Caulfield's remarks to the jury: "Remember Mary Archer in the witness-box. Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance?....Is he (Archer) in need of cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel round about quarter to one on a Tuesday morning after an evening at the Caprice?"
Martin Narey, then Director General of the Prison Service,  received an indignant letter from a publican whose pub was near to North Sea Camp Prison, where Archer was held, pleading with Narey to persuade Archer to pay for the room he occasionally used on his return from day release and where – it was alleged – he met certain young women. By that time, Narey had already moved Archer back to a fully secure prison.

Narey's other anecdote relates to a lunch organised by Archer (when a serving prisoner) at a restaurant in Lincoln "to which he persuaded a senior prison officer – against all the rules – to attend. In his diaries, ludicrously and deceitfully, Archer insisted the purpose of the lunch was to discuss the drug culture in prisons. When a Sun photographer mysteriously appeared to capture the impropriety of such a scene, Archer knew that it would fuel interest in the first volume of his prison diaries which were to be published a few days later. He may have been a liar, but he was not a fool, and he will have known that the prison officer would pay for the lapse with his job. And he did, being forced to resign days later."

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In more current matters, Zack Polanski has doubled down on his party's controversial policy. "The two-state solution is for the birds", he informed Laura Kuensberg this morning. "No, I am not sorry."

He told Laura that she is "a-historical" regarding the right of Israel to exist as a state and spent some time telling us about the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November 1917. The Declaration was a British government statement, issued by Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, expressing support for establishing “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. More than a hundred years ago.  Since then, of course, the modern Jewish state of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv by David Ben-Gurion, who became the first Prime Minister of Israel, marking the first Jewish state in nearly 2,000 years, establishing Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people, guaranteeing equality and freedom for all its inhabitants regardless of religion, race, or sex. On  May 11th 1949, Israel was admitted as a full member of the United Nations.  Zack, of course, has form for failing to recognise facts - something about the efficacy of breast enlargement through hypnotherapy? 

Fortunately, our Zack does not have a Parliamentary seat, and a substantial section of his own party hate him, so a defenestration is probably on the cards. Zack is a Jew, brought up in what he describes as a "Zionist" household. What could possibly have shaped his thinking?

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Across the Channel, our hereditary enemy, France, appears to have declared war on itself.

For god's sake, Andy Burn'em must be prevented from "creating closer ties" with these mad bastards.

I fear censorship is coming to our Blog and to the published anthologies.If you have not yet purchased your set of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster, now might be a good time to secure your copies. Here's how to buy them from Amazon or Lulu. 

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps 

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.

With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.