The Prison
The prison, initially designed for a population in the hundreds, was an old brick building enclosed by one wall 15 feet high, another of 30 feet, a 10 foot high wall topped with electrified wire, followed by a wall of barbed wire. In addition, some of the sixty soldiers on guard duty manned six machine-gun armed guard’s towers twenty-four hours a day. Due to the number of cells available, an empty cell was left between the prisoners' cells, to avoid the possibility of prisoners' communicating in Morse Code. Other remaining cells in the wing were designated for other purposes, with one being used for the prison library and another for a chapel. The cells were approximately 3 metres long by 2.7 metres wide and 4 metres high.
Read more about this topic: Spandau Prison
Famous quotes containing the word prison:
“Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce great poetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“No remorse, huh? No pity. Just an animal.”
—Guy Trosper, U.S. screenwriter, and John Frankenheimer. Shoemaker, the prison warden (Karl Malden)