Go to jail, go directly to jail

This week it’s all about durance vile. Cecil digs into the old saw about cakes with files baked insi [The Straight Dope] Go to jail, go directly to jail By [The Straight Dope]( • Issue #19 • [View online]( This week it’s all about durance vile. Cecil digs into the old saw about cakes with files baked inside and Ireland’s prison asylums for girls. SDStaff Gfactor explains what happens to your stuff when you go to the big house. Threadspotting The best of the Straight Dope Message Board  May 8, 2020: [There’s a carton of milk going bad in the fridge. And there it goes](. Straight Dope Classic: October 18, 2003 [Illustration by Slug Signorino] Illustration by Slug Signorino [Has anyone ever broken out of jail using a file baked in a cake]( Dear Cecil:  How did the joke about sending a prisoner a cake with a file baked inside it originate? Did people ever actually try this, or was there a particular movie or book it occurred in? — Terey Cecil replies: You think this is a joke? Actual escape tools have been hidden in actual cakes and the like so often you have to wonder why wardens ever allow prisoners to take receipt of baked goods. And it’s not just files, or even guns — wait till you hear about the welding electrodes.   [Click here to keep reading](. Straight Dope Staff Report: December 18, 2007 [When you’re sent to prison, what happens to your stuff]( Dear Straight Dope:  What happens to a person’s belongings when he or she is sentenced to serve time in prison? It appears that some white-collar criminals (like the Enron crowd) are given time to settle their affairs. How about everyone else? What happens to your pets, finances, house, car, and other belongings if you are sent to the can right after trial and you don’t have any family members to help you out? — Tom, via e-mail SDStaff Gfactor replies: Odds are that by the time you get convicted and sentenced you’ll already have dealt with whatever you needed to deal with however you could — in 2002 the median time from arrest to conviction in state courts was [184 days]( while in federal criminal jury trials in 2004 the median time from case filing to disposition was [over a year](. [Click here to keep reading](. Straight Dope Classic: April 1, 2005 [Did the Catholic church in Ireland imprison wayward girls](  Dear Cecil: I recently saw the movie The Magdalene Sisters on DVD. Here’s the premise: For 150 years, ending in 1996, teenage girls in Ireland who got pregnant or raped or were so attractive it was assumed they would eventually become promiscuous were sent by their parents to prisonlike asylums run by the Catholic church. Nuns oversaw day-to-day operations. The girls were forced to work in laundries from dawn till dusk 364 days a year and were fed only gruel. The asylums were surrounded by high walls topped with broken glass and had locked gates and bars on the windows. Nuns stood guard at night to make sure no one escaped. Far from being released upon turning 21, these girls were imprisoned for life; in the words of the movie’s mother superior, “I decide when or if you’re allowed to leave.” Thirty thousand women were locked up in these asylums over the years. I’m assuming even the Catholic church in Ireland wasn’t exempt from laws against false imprisonment and the like, so these women had to know they were being held illegally. Despite the high walls and so on, it’s hard to imagine a woman of, say, 35 having remained there since age 18 or 19 simply because she’d been physically prevented from leaving. Could a religious organization hold someone against her will decade after decade? Wouldn’t the more determined eventually find a way out? The inmates outnumbered the nuns by a wide margin. It’s not like the nuns were armed. What gives? — Mark Reynolds, Carol Stream, Illinois  Cecil replies: I hear you, bud. The common reaction to Peter Mullan’s The Magdalene Sisters (2002), which depicts what amounts to a church-operated slave labor camp, is disbelief. You can imagine this kind of thing happening during Victorian times, but the movie is set in 1964. Was Ireland that wacky? Was the Catholic church? Sure looks that way. The scandal didn’t break until 1993, and the full story has yet to be told, but here’s what we know so far.  [Click here to keep reading](. Did you enjoy this issue? [The Straight Dope]( By [The Straight Dope]( Fighting ignorance since 1973. (It's taking longer than we thought.) [Tweet](    [Share]( If you don't want these updates anymore, please unsubscribe [here](. If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe [here](. Powered by [Revue](