Page 82 - All About History - Issue 56-17

Graffiti through the Ages

Diagram carved into the Tower of London
by ‘sorcerer’ Hugh Draper in 1571

Cell block scribbles from a 19th
century French penal colony

Detailed graffiti on the Religious inspired Graffiti from the prison
wall of a former prison prison graffiti of the Knights Templar
Grafiti behind bars

Graffiti might be described as a voice for the prisoners left graffiti testaments of conditions in freedom attract the practice. In the Museum of
voiceless. When you have no power, even over the Tower. “For God’s sake rid me of this dungeon, London is a cell from Wellclose Prison, preserved
your own life, then setting something in stone, for I lie sore pained with the stone, among newts as it was in the 1750s, and the oak walls are
something permanent, must seem very tempting. and spiders. I do all things in the place I lie.” covered floor to ceiling with graffiti.
No one is more powerless than a prisoner and it Despite her personal knowledge of the pains Most of the prisoners were debtors, but they
is unsurprising that we can find a considerable of forcible detention, Elizabeth would still send seem to have kept their spirits up by carving
amount of graffiti in cells. Given that detainees have others to the Tower as queen. Jesuit priests were sayings such as, “The Cubards [sic] Empty To
so much time on their hands, it tends to also be seen as treasonous and locked up when caught, Our Sorrow But Hope It Will Be Full Tomorrow”.
some of the most intricate graffiti. and there they left symbols of their faith. IHS Particularly poignant are the rudimentary sundials
Even the mightiest of subjects could turn to (the Latinised version of Jesus’ initials), crosses, a carved into the bricks of Victorian workhouses.
graffiti when faced with incarceration. We pierced heart, and the bleeding palms and feet of How they must have stared at them to check if
are told that the future queen Elizabeth I Christ were all scratched into the walls. The earl of time was passing at all.
wrote on a windowpane with a diamond Arundel, held for his Catholicism, wrote over the In the 20th century, some of the most terrible
while held at Woodstock in the 1550s: fireplace in his cell: “The more affliction we endure prison systems ever devised were created in the
for Christ in this world, the more glory we shall concentration camps and the gulags. Graffiti aimed
“Much suspected by me, obtain with Christ in the next.” at the thin-skinned dictators could be enough
Nothing proved can be, One of the most elaborate graffiti designs in the to find yourself in one of these hellish places
Quoth Elizabeth prisoner.” Tower was left by Hew Draper, a man arrested on from which return was nearly impossible. Facing
suspicion of sorcery and held for 14 months. While obliteration, many sought the cold remembrance
Others around Elizabeth would be there he carved the zodiac, with the planetary of graffiti to bear witness to their existence by
captured, too. Her Italian tutor, Giovanni influences over the days of the week. One has to writing their name on bricks and metal plates.
Battista Castiglione, was held in the Tower of wonder how a court would have interpreted this Others held onto their rage at the situation. In the
London for passing letters to the princess. He when trying him for witchcraft. Vilna Ghetto, a Nazi Germany concentration camp
left an E enclosed in a heart carved on his cell While the graffiti in the Tower of London is in modern-day Lithuania, a Yiddish inscription
wall, showing his devotion was unbroken. Other particularly elaborate, all places where people lack simply reads “Revenge”.
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