A Catholic prisoner in England used invisible ink with far happier results in 1597. The Jesuit priest John Gerard came to England in 1588 to carry out a secret mission for the Catholic underground. Caught and detained in the Tower of London, Gerard was tortured for information. The priest befriended his prison guard and began to ask for oranges, whose juice he saved to write to confederates to on the outside. With the help of this guard, Gerard even communicated with a fellow Catholic prisoner whose cell he could see from his own, miming directions for developing the orange-juice letters over flame. The two eventually conspired to escape the Tower, with the help of outside accomplices who brought a rope—a feat made more impressive by the fact that Gerard’s fingers had been wrecked during his torture sessions.
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