Small escape compass used during escape from Holzminden POW camp : Captain S S B Purves, Royal Air Force

Small escape compass made from a pair of needles threaded end to end through two pieces of paper and a small piece of wood between the two papers. A piece of thread has been wound round the wood so that the compass can be suspended, allowing it to spin freely to locate North. The compass is concealed in a Canadian made paper wrapper for a Gillette safety razor blade.

Captain Purves was a Scottish Engineer prior to the First World War. He enlisted in the British Army, in the Scottish Horse Yeomanry in 1915, and later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force training as a pilot. His aircraft was shot down in 1918 and he was captured by the Germans. He was a prisoner at Holzminden Internment Camp and along with twenty nine other prisoners, escaped from Holzminden through a tunnel on 24 July 1918, successfully using a hand drawn map and an improvised compass that he had made.
Nineteen of the prisoners were recaptured, however Purves made it to Holland, successfully using his map and compass. He arrived at the quarantine camp at Rijks, Holland on 8 August 1918. After the war Captain Purves emigrated to Australia with his wife, Sybil. He worked on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and later became the General Manager of the Goliath Cement Works at Railton, Tasmania.