True or Not?

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

Maps were produced on silk and embedded in gramophone records. I am pretty cetrtain (and may be mis-recalling) that maps were also embedded in board games' carboard playing boards; in both cases by sandwiching. Wasn't it MI9 that dealt with PoW escapes as well? Airey Neeve joined them when he had his home run.

[Grant Bowker]

My feeling is that some of it might be true, but having the location of safe houses printed on a map sounds dangerous.
If one of the maps fell into German hands they would obviously have raided the safe house, with obvious consequences to the resistance workers. They would also have set up a dummy safe house to act as a trap for escapers or evaders.
It is hard for me to believe that either consequence would have been considered acceptable.

[Clive_Dakers]

The original monopoly sets were produced using surplus Confederate States bank notes.

The Cumberland Pencil Company of Keswick in Cumberland secretly produced pencils with silk escape maps inside for use by downed airmen. The owner and only one other man stayed behind after hours to make them themselves to reduce the security risk.

[Barry Churcher]

It is interesting that after the OMVA show in Kingston last week we visited the radio museum which is on the base. If you are ever near Kingston it is an excellent museum. Anyway, we found the same story printed in the museum. Could be that they never researched it but they are displaying it.
Barry

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

There's a nice pencil museum in Keswick, which is not far from my company's HQ in Appleby.

As regards the suggestion, I rather think that this is an amalgam of fact mixed with some mis-recollection? The existence and location of safe houses seems implausible as they would and did change all the time. Further, the cellular system was intended to prevent anyone outside the cell from revealing anything about another cell.