Copyright � 2026 by Shane
Tourtellotte
Well, that didn’t work.
The police officer or constable or bailiff wasn’t sympathetic. Your calm and reasoned explanation was less so than you thought, or witnesses were glad to stick the blame on you, or the authority figure just didn’t care. And here you are, being hauled away in chains, figuratively if you’re lucky. What do you do now?
First, don’t scream and struggle. That will only get you treated more roughly and scrutinized more closely. It’s surprising how many people in our age do such things, but a large proportion of them are stupid or chemically impaired or both1. Keep calm, and keep thinking.
Next, consider the charge that will be laid against you, and what the punishment is likely to be. Your chances of an acquittal are uncertain, especially since any thorough examination of your case may reveal that you have no background here, as if you dropped in from nowhere. Outsiders making trouble historically get very little benefit of the doubt.
The punishment you face may well be something you can bear. If getting swept into a brawl results in a fine, you can probably afford it, if you’ve benefitted from the chapters on money and trade. If your crime gets you banished, that’s even better. You’re equipped to get farther away than they can imagine. Even outlawry (being put outside the protection of the law) would be acceptable. All that means is that you’ll need to reach your machine a little faster to get away.
Even with the more terrible punishments, there can be an escape. Elizabethan England had the death penalty for a frightening number of offenses, from treason and murder through manslaughter down to grand larceny, which back then meant stealing goods worth at least twelve pence2. Witchcraft was included on this list, and given the unimaginable technology you command, this is a significant risk if you aren’t careful.
First, since the death penalty was mandatory for these crimes, juries could be reluctant to convict, so stay cool until the verdict is in. If you are convicted, and it’s the right offense, plead benefit of clergy. Clergy had once been exempted from secular punishments, and the clemency was extended to those who shared a defining trait with clergy: being literate. You could receive this leniency only once, however, and they enforced this by branding you on the thumb3. Given the alternative, you’ll probably go this route.
Supposedly lighter punishments of the time might ironically be worse for you. A lengthy imprisonment would not only leave you stuck in highly unhealthy conditions far from medical aid, but the batteries of your time machine could run down, stranding you. There were also nasty physical punishments like whippings, or the stocks and the pillory4. The problem with the latter two wasn’t merely public humiliation. People could throw things at you while you were thus displayed. Don’t count on them being soft, like rotten produce. Prisoners could be killed in the pillory, and it was regarded as the stupid prize that players of stupid games could win.
How can you escape such fates? The ideal way would be to escape your arrest, or your pre-trial or pre-punishment confinement. The absolutely ideal way to manage this would be to use your time machine. This is where the disadvantages of a portable machine would pale before one vital advantage. Get a moment unobserved, and you can vanish from your cell, or from the urban alleys through which lawmen have been pursuing you.
Escaping from the lawmen who just arrested you is probably a poor bet, especially if they’ve taken the time to shackle you. There is a loophole, however, and ironically it works better in more recent centuries than deep into the past. You can get free of shackles, or more accurately handcuffs, easier than you might imagine.
A dirty little secret of handcuffs5 is that they don’t have separate keys. A key that fits a particular pair will fit all the pairs of that make and model, and very often it will fit handcuffs of other makes also. If you have a few handcuff keys stashed on your person, or even just one, you have good prospects of being able to spring yourself loose … at least from the cuffs.
Escaping handcuffs doesn’t do anything against the law officer or officers escorting you while you are cuffed. Handcuffs are meant only to hamper your escape from custody. Your guards prevent that escape -- until they get you locked up. If you have an incapacitating weapon on you, quickly reachable, you have a fair chance of following up your handcuff success. If not, the Houdini trick is liable only to worsen your situation.
Picking the lock of your cell -- if it has a lock -- will be much harder than opening handcuffs. Those locks are not standardized. Also, it will take a much bigger piece of metal, making a lot more noise that your jailer can hear. Of course, depending on time and place, your door may be bolted or barred rather than locked, making lockpicking moot6. A bar might be movable with a shim, if there’s enough space between the cell door and its frame to fit one through. A good bolt will not be movable.
The bigger implements necessary to perform a jailbreak will be harder to hide on your person, greatly raising the chances the suspicions items will be noticed and taken from you. There is a way around this, but it’s not pleasant. Cold War-era spies could carry a capsule filled with miniature tools -- saws, blades, bores, and the like -- that would evade most searches. The secrecy came from where they carried it: the rectum.
I am not suggesting you do this. I am not providing any more help than mentioning the bare possibility of this technique. What you do with this information is wholly up to you. You may thank me by not telling me anything about how it goes.
What is your path to escape, if physically you’re balked at every turn and you don’t have the bowels for the most committed methods? It’s one you might have employed when first detained, only that was probably too public. It’s one with time-honored effectiveness throughout much of human history. It’s one you can plan for ahead of time, not depending on the physical characteristics of your confinement.
Yes, I’m talking about bribery.
Don’t assume they’re going to take all of your belongings, money included, when they jail you. That kind of thoroughness is fairly modern. As a small example, English jails7 of the 18th and 19th centuries let you buy outside food for yourself, and that was made easier if you had the cash on hand. It didn’t hurt that this also made it easier to slip something to the guards for other small considerations.
As a more dramatic example, consider Winston Churchill. In 1899 during the Boer War, young Winston was taken prisoner by the Boers. A few weeks later, when he escaped his jail and ran for it, he was still carrying seventy-five pounds in British banknotes. The equivalent value today would be over ten thousand dollars. A foreign enemy, in time of war, had let him keep all that money. Your chances of hanging onto a not too blatant stash, anytime before the 20th century, are surprisingly good.
This is no sure thing. You may need a few days of observation to decide which of your keepers is most receptive to remunerative corruption. Don’t stint the time. You get one shot. Fail, and you might be hoping for the relative mercy of a whipping, or a branding.
That portable time machine is looking better, isn’t it? Just be sure you aren’t watched when you disappear. Timing it to redound negatively on a jailer who’s been more than usually cruel toward you is fine, though.
Footnotes:
The categories not only overlap broadly, but reinforce each other.
Roughly the price of a pair of shoes, or a quart of wine. Inflation adds up across four hundred years.
If you have the wrong kind of tattoo, you might want to stick with other destinations.
The pillory held you by the head and hands; the stocks by the feet (and sometimes hands). Many people have been taught that stocks were head and hands, including me as a child. It’s a minor point, but shouldn’t minor points be easier to get right?
Handcuffs as we know them were invented very roughly in 1800, with their use becoming more frequent around 1850. The advice I’m dispensing won’t help you beyond that, or with recently invented “zip-tie” cuffs.
There is plenty worse. Look up “oubliette” sometime.
Okay, pedants, okay: gaols.
Back to Top
Back to "I Fought the Law ..."
Back to Home Page
|