Larry Marley to come to fruition, he joined the blanket protest in the Maze's H-Blocks for four years. In September 1983, he helped Brendan McFarlane, Bobby Storey and Gerry Kelly to orchestrate the successful mass escape of 38 republican prisoners from the Maze. It was the largest prison escape in British penal history. According to a BBC documentary about the escape, Marley was the mastermind, having come up with the idea with the aim of embarrassing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as the Maze was considered to be one of the world's most secure prisons. Marley, unlike his three co-conspirators, did not
Fremantle Prison A few days before the second anniversary of his escape, Moondyne Joe was recaptured, returned to prison, and sentenced to an additional four years in irons. Eventually, Governor Frederick Weld heard of his predecessor Hampton's promise, and decided that further punishment would be unfair. Moondyne Joe was given a ticket of leave in May 1871. From 1865 to 1867, British authorities rounded up supporters of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or Fenians, an Irish independence movement, and transported sixty-two of them to Western Australia. In 1869, John Boyle O'Reilly escaped on the American whaling ship "Gazelle" and settled in Boston. Later