The Development of Cumber Poidy. (extract taken from Understanding the past, a school textbook by Prof. Mufudazi Flowers) "Chapter 12. Years passed, and the weight of testimony against the Cumber Poidy prison from ex-guards and staff members slowly grew. Anecdotes filtered across to the mainland. The town of Word, which was the prison's only point of contact with the rest of the country, was especially responsive to stories of maltreated prisoners. Most Wordians were criminals themselves. Songs about the prison were sung in the streets. For example: "He laughed at them, he did, he laughed And cried, "I'll ne'er be caught! Your prison island won't hold me Nor will your chains, nor aught!" It's two years since we heard that laugh And heard him bold proclaim For Billy's on the island now And won't come back again." The song goes on to describe the tortures suffered by poor Billy, which include flogging, beatings, starvation, dehydration, insults, semi-asphixiation, the amputation of his nose and two fingers and days of isolation in a sealed box. All of it had been suggested by true accounts of life inside the prison. It was these accounts, along with stories such as Strait of Shame! and The Exian secret that finally put an end to the prison. The Governor of Ex ordered its closure in the Year of Spreading (1687) Ironically, the town of Word became known as Jail soon afterwards, because, "That's where all the criminals live now." Upon returning to the mainland, the prison staff discovered that they were not welcome. Clarke Turtlebell's An Unnatural Life was enjoying a resurgeance in popularity, and the ex-guards found themselves nicknamed 'Rosebushes,' after the brutal prison warden who was the book's principal villain. Those guards who had not been thugs discovered that the only people defending them were the prisoners who had been in their charge. Most of them returned to the island, embittered by what they saw as a betrayal after years of hard service. Here they began to establish a settlement of their own, accompanied by a few former prisoners whose return to the open air after years of subterranean life had left them disconcerted and unhappy. They chose to become cave-dwellers. It was these ex-prisoners who became the settlement's ambassadors to the town of Word, now Jail. They set up the supply route between the seaside town and the island and began working to convince the Wordians (now the Jailites) of the trading value of some of Cumber Poidy's unique delicacies. One of these former prisoners, Mimette Glass, discovered Table Weed in a sea-trench off the north shore of the island and became the progenditor of a dynasty that continues to this day. The settlement grew. Without news of fresh atrocities to sustain it, the mainlanders' dislike for the prison staff faded, but the islanders decided to remain where they were. Today Cumber Poidy is a friendly, tight-knit place. You can still see the holes where chains were driven into the walls, but the chains themselves are gone, and the old metal grills that formed the cell doors are rusting at the bottom of the sea. Go back to the Timeline.