Showing Inter-war Penal Policy and Crime in England: The Dartmoor Convict Prison Riot, 1932 by Alyson Brown

One of the largest and most destructive prison riots in British history occurred in Dartmoor Convict Prison in 1932. Between 1932 and into the 1960s the Dartmoor 'mutiny' was the most widely-known outbreak in British prison history. This was partly due to the attention it attracted but also to the notoriety attached to Dartmoor as holding offenders convicted of the most serious crimes. It was impossible for the prison authorities to deny the seriousness of the outbreak when smoke and flames could be seen for miles around billowing from buildings set alight by rioting convicts. Press reporters besieged Princetown, the village next to the prison, and a Daily Mirror airplane took dramatic photographs that helped to make this riot a national media event and one of the most dramatic stories of the 1930s.