′Mike, a lot, sometimes rot, has been written about me. Please hold this, my real story, to edit and present to a new generation, after I and the crooks we′ve exposed have turned to dust.′
Darcy Dugan Written in secret during his long years in jail and smuggled out to keep it safe from his enemies until now, Bloodhouse is Darcy Dugan′s brutally honest and gripping story of his extraordinary life and times.
During Dugan′s criminal career, he pulled off countless hold-ups but it was his daring escapes that captured the public′s imagination and earned him the monicker of ′Houdini of the prison system′. One of his many famous escapes occurred less than half an hour after arriving at Long Bay, another after sawing a hole in a moving prison tram, but even Dugan couldn′t crack Grafton Jail, the infamous ′Bloodhouse′, where he spent 11 torturous years.
In all, Dugan spent 44 years in prison. His firsthand experience of brutality and corruption led him to become an outspoken campaigner for reform and the archenemy of Sydney′s criminal underworld, corrupt police and an unjust prison system.
Threatened with execution if revelations in his book became public, Dugan asked Mike Tatlow to suppress this story until both he and his enemies had turned to dust, and write the concluding chapters.
The result is a must-read account of a true Australian original.
Michael Tatlow was Chief-of-Staff and Pictorial Editor at the Daily Telegraph, News Editor of the Sunday Telegraph and Acting Editor of The Bulletin. He also worked as Producer and Chief-of-Staff for ABC-TV News in Tasmania.
Darcy Ezekial Dugan was a career robber and brilliant jail escapee. In later life he became a rehabilitation officer, until he died from Parkinson's disease in 1991.