Tech brings prisoners' Tower graffiti into the light

The writing was on the wall for many of the prisoners incarcerated in the Tower of London over the centuries. Now, it can finally be deciphered.

- Dalya Alberge

Hundreds of graffiti texts scratched into the stone walls by prisoners as they awaited their fate have come to light for the first time. Examples that were overlooked or illegible are emerging through cutting-edge technology.

Dr Jamie Ingram, who leads a major project to study graffiti in the Tower of London, described the discoveries as "exciting". He began studying the Salt Tower on the south-eastern corner - part of the curtain wall that Henry III built in the 1230s. Its prisoners included Hew Draper, a Bristol innkeeper accused of practising sorcery and imprisoned in 1561, who carved an astrological sphere with zodiacal signs into the wall, despite having claimed he had destroyed all his magical books.

His fate is unknown.