The Tower of London
The Tower of London is England’s’ most famous fortress. Over the years, its multitude of prisoners have left behind souvenirs of their stay, scratched into the floors and walls of their cells. This graffiti was served a multitude of purposes, recording the prisoners’ presence, or helping them stay sane while they waited to be released- or die.
Some of the graffiti consisted of nothing more than the prisoners’ name. Others used graffiti to mark the passage of their time in custody and help release the tension of their imprisonment. “Close prisoner, 32 weeks, 224 days 5376 hours,” wrote a T Salmon in his cell, just underneath a sketch of his coat of arms. Other prisoners were more verbose. “The more affliction we endure for Christ in this world, the more glory we shall get with Christ in the world to come,” Stated the philosophical Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel, who carved these words into the chimney breast of his room in Beauchamp Tower.
Howard was imprisoned for his Catholicism and died in the tower. However much he may have felt he was suffering during his incarceration, it was nothing compared to Jesuit priest Henry Walpole who was manacled 14 times during his stay in Beauchamp tower in 1594. Walpole however, also managed to leave his mark, carving his name and those of saints’ Peter, Paul, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory, possibly as a way of using his faith as a focus to survive.
Other graffiti tells prisoners’ stories. In the Bell Tower, Elizabethan Irish rebel Thomas Miagh inscribed how: “By torture strange my trouth was tried yet of my libertie denied, therefore, reson hath me perswadyd pasyens must be ymb rasyd thogh hard fortune chasyth me wyth smart yet paseyns shall prevail.” Around twenty years before, in 1560 Hew Draper, a Bristol innkeeper was charged and imprisoned for sorcery in Salt Tower. Draper pleaded not guilty- but contradicted this by scratching a horoscope for himself on the wall of his cell. Perhaps Draper, who was sick at the time, felt he had little to lose and needed a little hope.
Finally, there is graffiti linked to royalty who have lived and died in the tower. In Beauchamp tower, a poignant comment on the fall of Queen Anne Boleyn was carved- possibly by one of the men imprisoned with her. The hasty carving, made in the floor of a first-floor cell shows the Queens’ falcon badge- minus its crown and scepter.
The tower of London, however, wasn’t the first famous world monument to have been graffitied.