His spies, when things were dull, often fabricated plots and stories to hold their jobs. Sunday, before the break, they reported to Murphy that something was brewing in the prison. He ordered fifty suspected men searched but nothing was found. The knives Gordon and his men were to use were being carried about by a “harmless” short-time convict, who kept by himself and was not suspected.

Murphy, finding nothing wrong after the search, put the reports down to overzealousness by his stool pigeons and forgot them.

The next morning the knives were distributed and the dozen men dropped out of the line at the captain’s office as the men went out to work. Every officer in the prison except the doctor was captured.