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Wall tiles and Free Parking:
by Debbie Hall |
Prisoners' press
While Waddington and the War Office were plotting to get maps into the POW camps, the prisoners themselves demonstrated astonishing resourcefulness. The BL Map Library has acquired some maps that the prisoners themselves printed on a home-made printing press virtually under the noses of their German guards, as well as accounts of the process by two of the prisoners involved, Philip Evans and Wallis Heath. These were acquired owing to the generosity of Wallis Heath and of the heirs of Philip Evans. From 1944 until the end of the war both men were held at a POW camp in Querum, just outside Braunschweig (Brunswick). Evans was a printer by trade and was most heavily involved in the printing project. A few maps smuggled into the camp would be of little use to the three thousand men inside, and some method of reproducing more was highly desirable. |
![]() Brunswick Map Printers, drawn by Philip Radcliffe Evans. © British Library Board Inside the camps the prisoners had a well-organised (and completely secret) structure for planning escape and general insurrection, and subversive activities were carried on under its authority. Evans presented his idea to this initially sceptical group, who soon realised its potential value and helped by providing him with a guarded room and various assistants. A camp of such a size contained someone who knew something about almost anything, including cartographers, carpenters and chemists, although Evans described one of the most useful men as a "fixer", a natural entrepreneur who could obtain almost anything by bribery. The technical problems of improvising printing plates, pens, ink and a press, in secret and out of very limited materials, were considerable. All the information on the maps had to be drawn on by hand, in "mirror writing" of course, using home made wooden pens and melted margarine. The plates were treated with jelly from Red Cross parcels, and the printing press itself was made of oak floorboards covered with leather. A roller was fashioned from a window bar, and ink was made from pitch scraped from between the flagstones of the pavement, boiled to separate out the dirt and mixed with margarine and pigment. After much trial and error, a satisfactory method was developed and efficient teams of four worked together on map production. |
Further reading:
Baldwin, R.E., 'Silk escape maps: where are they now?'. Mercator's World Jan/Feb 1998, 50-51 Bond, Barbara, 'Silk maps: the story of MI9's excursion into the world of cartography 1939-45'. The Cartographic Journal 21 (1984) 141-144 (Maps 160.e.4) Bond, Barbara, 'Maps printed on silk'. The Map Collector 22 (1983) 10-13 (Maps Ref. D.3(2)) Clayton-Hutton, Christopher Official secret: the remarkable story of escape aids, their invention, production and the sequel. London: Max Parrish, 1960 (9196. L.22) Evans, Michael, 'PoW tells of escape maps printed on secret press' The Times, 23rd June 1997. Stanley, Albert A., 'Cloth maps and charts'. The Military Engineer (1 947) 126 Wallis, Helen and Robinson, Arthur, Cartographical innovations. Tring: Map Collector Publications, 1987 (Maps Ref. B.3b. (24))
Debbie Hall, organiser of the exhibition, is a cataloguer in the British Library's Map Library. The display is in the foyer of the Maps Reading Room, in the new British Library building (96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB), and will remain open until mid-July. If anyone would like more information or a copy of the accompanying leaflet then please contact Debbie Hall by mail or email at the Map Library. Debbie Hall
All photographs © British Library Board |