This Day in History

The Birdman of Alcatraz tastes freedom

On 23 November, 1959, the famous “Birdman of Alcatraz,” Robert Stroud, is released from solitary confinement for the first time since 1916. Stroud gained widespread fame and attention when author Thomas Gaddis wrote a biography that trumpeted Stroud’s ornithological expertise.
Sent to prison in 1909 after he killed a bartender in a brawl, he had nearly completed his sentence at Leavenworth Federal Prison in Kansas when he stabbed a guard to death in 1916. Though he claimed to have acted in self-defense, he was convicted and sentenced to hang. Stroud mother’s handwritten plea to President Woodrow Wilson earned Stroud a commuted sentence of life in permanent solitary confinement.
For the next 15 years, Stroud lived amongst the canaries that were brought to him by visitors, and became an expert in birds and ornithological diseases. But after being ordered to give up his birds in 1931, he redirected his energies to writing about them and published his first book on ornithology two years later. When the publisher failed to pay Stroud royalties because he was barred from filing suit, Stroud took out advertisements complaining about the situation. Prison officials retaliated by sending him to Alcatraz, the federal prison with the worst conditions.
In 1943, Stroud’s Digest of the Diseases of Birds, a 500-page text that included his own illustrations, was published to general acclaim. In spite of his success, Stroud was depressed over the isolation he felt at Alcatraz, and he attempted suicide several times.
The legendary “Birdman of Alcatraz” died in a Missouri prison in 1963 at the age of 73.

IRA member sentenced for Mountbatten’s death

Also on this day, twenty years on, Thomas McMahon, a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is sentenced to life imprisonment for preparing and planting the bomb that killed Lord Louis Mountbatten and three others three months before.
On August 27, 1979, Lord Mountbatten was killed when a 50-pound bomb, hidden on his fishing vessel Shadow V, was detonated by McMahon and other IRA member. World War II hero, elder statesman, and second cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, Mountbatten was spending the day with his family in Donegal Bay off Ireland’s northwest coast when the bomb exploded. Three others were killed in the attack, including Mountbatten’s 14-year-old grandson, Nicholas. Later that day, an IRA bombing attack on land killed 18 British paratroopers in County Down, Northern Ireland.
The assassination of Mountbatten was the first blow struck against the British royal family by the IRA during its long terrorist campaign to drive the British out of Northern Ireland and unite it with the Republic of Ireland to the south. The attack hardened the hearts of many Britons against the IRA and convinced Margaret Thatcher’s government to take a hard-line stance against the terrorist organization.