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the years on the train itself, probably because the passengers were tightly herded into the compartments and closely watched by the guards. But out in the quarry it was a different matter, as the gangs of men were able to roam around the site getting on with their work. There was more opportunity for a sudden attack here. On this occasion a convict had leapt at a guard when he was distracted and tried to “throttle” him. But the prison staff were not pushovers and the attacked officer was able to push off his assailant and then whack him so hard with his baton that he broke his arm. The con was taken to the prison hospital, a busy place at times, and his arm was set. His impulsive reckless act earned him some more prison time. This was just one attack of many on the warders at this time. Desperate men would resort to desperate actions.
    The quarry at this time was a dangerous place in other ways, as the death of convict Henry Hanley, a twenty-five-year-old Glaswegian, demonstrates. It took a fatal accident inquiry to show that at least Major Dodd, the first governor, who was ultimately in charge of the safety, was not allowing extra risks to be taken in the Admiralty quarry just because the labourers were convicted criminals. Hanley lost his life in an accident that could equally have happened in a civilian quarry. The procedures the accident inquiry found were much as those used in commercial quarries. The modus operandi was that experienced civilian foremen and shot firers worked with the cons. The quarry staff did not direct the cons themselves but got the warders to pass on instruction, but that did not cause the accident. Blasting the night before had left a twelve-ton lump of rock perched on the side of a steep slope. Attempts to move it with a “seam” shot placed by the expert shot firer had failed. Smaller stones wedged under the boulder were preventing it moving. To resolve the problem these stones needed to be removed.
    Hanley and another con called Murray were set to the task. The young Glaswegian had a rope round his waist so that he could be pulled to safety by his colleagues if anything went wrong. At least, that was the idea. The stone moved and an attempt to haul Hanley to safety by the men holding the rope ends was made. However, the rope slipped up from Hanley’s waist to his chest and he was left dangling over a fifty-foot drop. Murray was luckier and witnesses told of seeing him leaping to safety from rock to rock as the huge boulder thundered down on him.
    There was much wrangling at the inquiry about the type of knot used on Hanley’s rope. Some said it was a running knot, others a sailor’s knot. No matter, it ended up “round the victim’s chest and a medical examination showed that his breast bone was broken in three places. The second, third and fourth ribs on the right side were broken into fragments and the left leg broken in several places.” This it was said, in a matter-of-fact fashion, would have been enough to kill Hanley. It was a painful death. A single crushing blow from that twelve-ton boulder might have been a kinder fate than to be left dangling on a rope in bizarre fashion high over the quarry with the life being squeezed out of him agonisingly minute by minute. But at least the inquiry made clear that the death of the convict could have happened in the same way to any quarry worker in “any part of the kingdom.” Not much consolation though to Hanley or his relatives.

4
A POLITICAL PRISONER, HUNGER STRIKES AND WAR ON WAR
    Peterhead has from time to time been called “Scotland’s gulag,” though to most of its inmates down the years, who had little interest in or knowledge of politics, such a description may be a tad on the esoteric side. The concerns of those removed from society and held for long years in that cold, hard fortress, seldom deviated from a desire to be free again to knife a gangland rival or rob a bank or two. They were not revolutionaries, just