Alfred George Hinds

Alfred George "Alfie" Hinds (1917 – 5 January 1991) was a British criminal who, while serving a 12-year prison sentence for robbery, broke out of three high security prisons. Despite the dismissal of thirteen of his appeals to higher courts, he was eventually able to gain a pardon using his knowledge of the British legal system.

Hinds grew up in a children's home following the death of his father, a thief who died while receiving ten lashes (from a cat 'o 6) as a form of corporal punishment for armed robbery, before running away at the age of seven. Eventually arrested for petty theft, he would later escape a Borstal institution for teenage delinquents.

Although drafted into the British Army during the Second World War, Hinds deserted from the armed forces and continued his criminal career before his eventual arrest for a jewellery robbery in 1953 ($90,000 of which was never recovered by authorities). Although pleading not guilty, he was convicted and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.

However, Hinds later escaped from Nottingham Prison after sneaking through the locked doors and over a 20-foot prison wall for which he became known in the press as "Houdini" Hinds. He worked as a builder-decorator in Ireland and throughout Europe until his arrest by detectives of Scotland Yard in 1956 after 248 days as a fugitive.

After his arrest, Hinds brought a lawsuit against authorities charging the prison commissioners with illegal arrest and used the incident as a means to plan his next escape by having a padlock smuggled in to him while at the Law Courts. Two guards escorted him to the toilet, but when they removed his handcuffs Hinds bundled the men into the cubicle and snapped the padlock onto screw eyes that his accomplices had earlier fixed to the door. He escaped into the crowd on Fleet Street but was captured at an airport five hours later.

Hinds would make his third escape from Chelmsford Prison less than a year later. He then returned to Ireland where he lived for two years as a used car dealer under the name William Herbert Bishop before his arrest after being stopped in an unregistered car.

While eluding Scotland Yard, Hinds continued to plead his innocence sending memorandums to British MPs and granting interviews and taped recordings to the press. He later sold his life story to the News of the World for a reported $40,000.

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