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Spectrum was a long-running weekly radio documentary series which captured the essence of New Zealand from 1972 to 2016. Alwyn Owen and Jack Perkins produced the series for many years, creating a valuable library of New Zealand oral history.
A man is being admitted to Mount Eden Prison, he stands before the mighty iron portal which is the main gate. At first glance there is nothing to distinguish him from a thousand criminals who passed this way. Sixty-two years ago [in 1913], John A. Lee left this jail a free man, and went on to excel in many fields. Soldier, orator, politician, author and now he returns, not as a felon, but as one of New Zealand’s folk legends.
John A Lee speaks with the warders as he re-enters the prison. john talks about the surroundings as he enters Mount Eden.
Jack describes some of John’s background. John remembers when he received his sentence, mainly he thinks, because he had escaped from the Burnham Industrial School. He remembers the old prison and describes the living conditions and the work they did. How they cut stone that was used to build a new wing in the prison and working high up on scaffolding.
Warder Tom Hughes conducts John and Jack around the main cell block, the rooms such as the exercise room where prisoners walked round in circles, the punishment room where you went with only a blanket and a bible and the gallows yard where hangings used to occur.
From the upper level they look down on another yard, where the stone cutting was carried out. John describes the clothing they wore; marked with the Broad Arrow.
Returning to the main admittance area, they meet a prisoner carrying his lunch and John asks him what he has. He then explains what they had in his days in prison.
Jack asks about the appetites of the flesh in prison and John says there’s a lot of talk about sex in jails; that may occur now, but not in his day with one man to a cell.
As far as entertainment, there was only one performance in the time John was there, a well-known elocutionist named Montague, who gave a talk on poetry.
Jack asks about escapes and John said none while he was there but did meet young Christie, one of New Zealand’s greatest jail escapers.
10 March 1913, John was released from prison and he headed for Nelson’s Restaurant in Victoria Street for a three course meal for sixpence.
John Lee’s pilgrimage ends when it began at the main gate, the doorway to servitude and to freedom.