On the night of the sixteenth of August 1890, an alarm bell went off at the main gate of Dartmoor Convict Prison. The wire that triggered it was designed to catch men trying to climb out. The man whose foot had caught it that night had just climbed in. He was found in the carpenter's shop with a knife and a box of matches.

His name, that day, was Joseph Denny. He was Barbadian, in his forties, and across twenty-three years of British court appearances he had used at least seven other names. Nine years earlier, standing in the dock at the Old Bailey, he had told the court he would commit murder before he was done. He had crossed the sea to keep his word.

This is his story, told through the records he left behind.