I walked into the room and from right to left I had: a door, a wash basin, a wardrobe, a small bed and a chair. That was it. No more, no less than the cells I had just seen. I placed my bag on the bed and gazed out over more prison officers’ houses. My introduction to my new life could be summed up in one word: grim. My thesaurus adds forbidding and, I would attach lonely from my own lexicon. The room was hollow, totally devoid of warmth. Any sense of homeliness was immediately challenged by the echo in the room.
I was left for the rest of the day to unpack and told I could walk to the village if there was anything I needed.
By six that evening my mood could have been described as ‘anxious’.
‘Have I made a mistake Veronica?’ I said aloud to the bare plaster wall; the small mirror over the basin sneered back. ‘You wanted to make money. You could have stayed with the police.’
‘But, it’s only two years,’ I snapped back. ‘And think of the money I can save in that time.’ The mirror nodded reassuringly, pacified.
Because I was a trainee, I did not have a uniform but was provided with a dark-blue overall so I could be identified as a staff member. The uniform came when I was fully qualified. All these niggles were still with me the next day when another prison officer drew up in her car. The two of us were on duty by ten to seven to oversee the prisoners’ breakfasts at seven. These were served before our own. (I remembered that army cavalry officers always fed their horses before themselves) The ten-minute gap was filled by the staff discussing any issues arising from the night before.
The prisoners had a small, measured cup of cornflakes and a dessertspoon of sugar. This sugar had to last all day so it could be hoarded by those with a less sweet tooth and it could be swapped for other goods as if it was a currency. There were two slices of bread and a small pat of butter. Tea, only, arrived in an enormous urn with the milk added, some time before. Not nice. Try having your breakfast like this at home to see the deprivation you might go through if you were to challenge the law some day on a mindless indiscretion.
Amazingly, after the inmates had had their meal, we had to go through the whole palaver of locking them up again while we sat down to our own breakfast. There was, to my untrained thought process, a further lack of sensible logistics when we went through this whole routine again at eleven-thirty for lunch which was too close to their first meal. It was further compressed at tea which came at half-past three. This left little room in between for other activities. A bun and cocoa were provided later in the evening.
All prisoners had one hour’s exercise each day, pacing round a concrete yard which many found boring and pointless but to me was fresh air and sunlight falling on the many bleached faces starved of vitamin D. Without it, prison life for children had often led to rickets and other deformities. Then there was Association. This was when all prisoners came together from half-past six for an hour where they could watch television, play cards, chat amongst themselves. (I am reminded of porridge, the T.V. comedy series when I think of this activity).
With the arrival of the night-staff we could leave, having recounted again to see the numbers tallied. This meant the night-staff, who did not have keys, had to ensure they had the same number of prisoners, for it required a day officer to be brought back to unlock an area of concern and sort it out if the count was different.
One of my first duties was to learn how Reception ran and how to make up the ‘bundles’ ready for each new arriving inmate. Reception was where new prisoners were processed into the prison system. It was extraordinarily degrading especially for first-timers. It was their first real experience of what life was going to be for the foreseeable future. Each bundle was made up of two sheets, a pillow case, a tiny towel which had to last the week, like all laundry; a winceyette nightdress and slippers if there were enough to go around which sometimes there weren’t; a comb, a laughably small piece of soap carved up from a block, a toothbrush and some powdered toothpaste. On the top was a Reception letter with postage paid to allow arriving prisoners to inform some relative or other that she had arrived ‘safely’.
Meals broke the boredom. Meals provided a discussion on something tangible, for there was a shortage of real news. Many could not read, so food filled a large gap. The food for the women was prepared by the chefs in the male wings and brought over in all weathers to be deposited at the back door. The menus were varied, say for lunch, a casserole with cabbage and a rice pudding. The only fixed meal was fish and chips on a Friday. Chefs would seek to set aside a small amount of the prisoners’ daily allowance for food, so at Christmas and for New Year’s Eve, a special feast could be cooked. For Christmas Day inmates, might have had a grapefruit and orange cocktail followed by roast turkey, stuffing, roast and creamed potatoes, Brussel sprouts and carrots, Christmas pudding and mince pies while for tea they would easily find room for Christmas cake, crisps and a salad. It was so good that one well-known lady would ensure she smashed a window in a street somewhere making certain the police knew who it was. She would have previously handed her cat over to a neighbour and off to prison for the holiday period she would go, acknowledging the officers’ smiles with a wave of her hand. She managed, to my certain knowledge, to have twelve Christmases inside.
When a new prisoner arrived at Reception she would be locked into a small wooden cubicle to remove every article of clothing and jewellery. Painstakingly, we had to record every item on this pile and, to prevent fraud, would describe, say, a gold watch as ‘yellow metal’ and silver as ‘white metal’. Clothes, likewise, were carefully described. From Reception, the women would be weighed, measured and issued with their uniform. They would be examined by a nurse for nits, bruises and signs of self-harm, before being bathed and led to their cell measuring twelve feet by six feet. It was eight feet to the ceiling. There was enormous impact on arrival for the first timers at the solid door with its inspection port. Inside, was no better. It held a metal bed with a thin mattress, a pair of sheets and a pillow. In winter, the bundle would be formed of three blankets and two in the summer. Over the bed was draped a very thin cotton throw either in red or royal-blue. There was a chamber pot. Plastic cutlery had to be carefully guarded for if a fork or knife went missing it was just hard luck. There wasn’t a replacement.
I have used the word chaotic above. To my ordered mind, honed through stocking up stalls and loading up delivery lorries with the correct requests it appeared as if, for very little outlay in terms of money, fights and festering arguments could have been avoided. With only two brushes and mops to clean twenty-five cells, conflict would easily arise with impatient women. Surely, there had to be a better way of planning all of this?
Spending time in Reception early on in my training, I was fascinated to study the faces of the women who came through those doors. There were the first-timers, appalled and distraught at the bundle, and the sheer exposure of everything physical and mental in their presence. Nothing at all was sacred; privacy was gone out of the window(barred). There were the old-timers who waved a hand at you as if to say, ‘Hullo, I’m back’. And there was me, in my blue overall who could walk out at the end of my shift and wave also, but from outside the wall, a free woman. It was indeed, a life of contrasts and yet certain similarities as well for we all, staff and inmates were locked up together and breathed the same air. Deep inside of me, though kept private from others, was the knowledge I was away from Fred during my watch.
So many images were retained in my mind from the very early days. Stark, tragic pictures like the three new prisoners who walked in from the van one day, none of whom had been inside previously. The first was a woman, quite superbly dressed in a mink coat, leather boots and handbag and gloves. She breathed money and bazz-azz into that dismal space; undeniably we could tell she was from the family of a very successful businessman. Her problem was, she had killed him.
Because she was a murderer, she had to go to the hospital wing to be assessed to see if there were any psychiatric disorders which had
led to the actions she had taken. This was sensible and in this lady’s case she was found to be mentally unstable which led her to being held in a mental hospital. When she was found to be safe and stable and had completed her term she was released back into society.
I mentioned three new arrivals. The other two were seventeen- year-old twins. You could not have found a greater gulf between them and the other woman brought to the same reception on the same day and given matching bundles. Every prisoner was boiled down to a lowest common denominator. The twins, from somewhere in North Wales had been found guilty of theft and each given three months. Both only had the dress they stood in, shoes but no socks, no underwear not even a cardigan. (I was very mindful of my own past which was hardly any better). They had no knowledge of how to use a bath – they had to be shown – to comb their hair, clean their teeth or eat with utensils. In fact, they were close to being feral; they could neither read nor write.
Desperately thin arms received the bundles but they had to be shown how to wash in the bath provided before being taken down to separate cells to be left to their own devices.
Although they were given uniforms, it was at a time when prisoners were for the first time being allowed to wear their own clothes. There was a catch, naturally. For to wear your own clothes you had to provide three sets rather as I had had to do in Ackworth. The twins hardly had one set of clothing between them, but, as in the nature of things, help was at hand in the form of the Mothers Union fairy godmother. They provided the clothes which were kept in a store and could be drawn down to make up the requisite stock for each prisoner. It did lead, in the early days of transition to those with and those without, clearly marked out by contrasting uniforms and everyday dresses. More fights would break out until, eventually, all prisoners were dressed as they wished. The days of the broad stripe or arrows was gone. The arrow had denoted it was Crown property. Until this was all sorted out convicted women under twenty-one were obliged to wear incredibly uncomfortable black shoes made by the prisoners, massive bras and bloomers, a grey skirt, thick stockings and large suspender belts. There was a blouse in red or royal blue spots, whatever was available. Women over twenty-one wore a mulberry coloured blouse.
When the night shift arrived to make a count, peering through inspection windows to see if they had a ‘body,’ it was to their surprise that first night of the twins’ incarceration to find the first twin missing. No keys meant a day officer had to be called and the cell was eventually opened. The twin was found, under the bed screened by the throw, lying on the freezing concrete floor dressed only in the nightie. She had no other idea of what to do but lie on the floor as she always had done. The second twin was found to have gone to sleep also on the floor under her bed. And this was in 1968!
When the twins left three months later having been taken under the wing of the other prisoners, they were fuller in the face from good food, clean, better dressed and had both begun to read and write. This is not a story one associates with prison life and I like to think they were able to make a new start in life formed totally out of their time inside.
My three weeks’ induction was completed before I had time to draw breath. My next destination was beckoning, Holloway.
I would be at Holloway for a period of eight weeks before the start of my proper training. It was strange. Why not stay at Grisley Risley? Why Holloway all the way down in the south?
The reason became clear soon enough. If Risley had been an eye-opener with its stench of fresh urine and its mad screaming to stretch every one of your nerves throughout your shift, now you were to be tested as never before. Holloway was to be far, far worse.
*
All new recruits were sent to Holloway for one reason. So as not to waste valuable training time and costs by trainees resigning half way through the course, we were to be sent to a ‘clearing house’ to weed out those who were not going to make it through to become a prison officer, and those whose sensitivities would otherwise have been numbed, those with no backbone for such a life and those who simply had ‘…. made a tremendous mistake.’ At the end of eight weeks those left remaining in the sieve would almost certainly be able to weather most storms and make good officers.
Old Holloway was opened in 1852, (that was the year Kings Cross Station was opened) built by Victorian builders for males and females with one wing set aside for juveniles. There were four hundred and thirty-six cells in all. Due to the improvement in catching wrong-doers, a further three hundred and forty cells were added and a hospital wing constructed. But between nineteen seventy-one and eighty-five the prison was reconstructed, in so doing, it lost its famous battlemented facades. To the outside world, a passer-by would have seen the grim stone towers and walls with its massive gate. From inside, for the women prisoners to whom it eventually became exclusive, as more female only facilities were needed, pigeons could be seen flying about, spraying their guano with abandon which gave rise to the millions of cockroaches in every crevice. It was, as I say, much worse than Risley and in nineteen sixty-eight, was to be our workplace to test our resolve.
Counting prisoners filled my days; counting and reading letters. Every single letter had to be read, a custom which went back into time when officers, suspecting a gaol break, would seek clues in the hand-written notes to the outside world. Whatever the origin, it was still our duty to check. Murderers, serious offenders in special units of their own had all their letters copied which then formed a complete history. Thus, Myra Hindley in Holloway had an entire file devoted to all the letters she ever exchanged. The authorities always lived in hope they might find some indication in her words of where she had buried Keith Bennett, the poor little boy, still left on Saddleworth moor. He has never been found.
These special units were there to divide prisoners up into categories of risk for not only was there a unit for the likes of Myra Hindley and others like her, but mothers and babies were in their own unit, equipped for the very young children; there were also units for Remand prisoners as were women on Trial and convicted criminals.
During reading letters time, I called a young prisoner to my attention and told her that the Royal Mail simply would refuse to deliver her letter with such an address on the front. The letter was addressed to Mr F OFF, badly written I agree but the message was there. ‘It’s too offensive.’
The girl, who was working out a drugs sentence of six years, a long time for anyone, frowned as she studied the envelope in my hand.
‘But, Miss Bird, you don’t understand. My boyfriend’s name is Fred. Fred Foff. Mister Foff is his name!’
For each letter received a prisoner was allowed to send one back in reply. It made for a great deal of reading and some illuminating results.
Naturally, there was counting. We were taught to keep a diary which would get us acclimatised to counting prisoners. Like sheep, they would occur in my dreams, so important was it that the numbers balanced. I would count them out and count them back in (I recall a similar phrase during the Falklands War), so everyone knew how many prisoners were in a specific unit at any one time. I would have to phone ahead to say that ‘x’ number of prisoners were coming through. Each roll check had to be balanced. If not, it would have to be made right before the officers could have, say, their own lunch following which, day shift officers with keys, would have to remain until the numbers tallied as required.
Although our inmates, by the very reason they were with us, were villains of one sort or another, it could often be hard on their families travelling from all over the country, to arrive in time for visiting hours at one thirty. With many fewer female prisons than male, family and friends were far worse off than the men who had prisons over most of the country. Visits for remand prisoners could be every day though just for fifteen minutes. If you had been sentenced, visits were only for half an hour every twenty-eight days. Borstal girls had to go to Exeter Prison or Bullwood in Essex which is almost off the map, was often too far for a mum to travel from the north of England
to meet the time and might not be able to make any visits at all.
Prison visits could prove interesting as it brought together two people who might not have seen each other for some time. A visit could be very strained as no-one knows what to say. A young girl was waiting for her boyfriend to arrive at one thirty after lunch; opening hours lasted until three thirty so there was a two hour window. At three fifteen he finally arrived, quite drunk. She was not unreasonably, annoyed, but her anger manifested itself in the form of attacking him with considerable force. I, being on duty, waded in, being the nearest, as I attempted to separate the furious couple. It was at this moment the Governor decided to make an inspection of the room, (timing is everything) and, seeing the fracas and never one to hold back, climbed into the affray. However, my police training had clicked in and, in the melee of sixteen arms and legs, I managed to bang her quite hard, well, very hard, well, very, very hard, I suppose, with my own head. It almost knocked her out and she had to retire to let me sort it out.
In her report on the incident the Governor, amongst other comments stated that ‘Miss Bird is a confident member of staff but bloody hard-headed!’ And added a foot-note ‘you can be on my staff anytime you like.’
One of the not so brightest prisoners had a photo of her dad in drag; not a funny party picture but a serious posed portrait. Told to hand it in with her bundle she managed to keep it. At the first visiting time, her father arrived before his estranged wife. He was dressed in stilettos and a silk dress, lipstick and handbag, looking remarkably like Dick Emery but, he was perfectly serious. Later his wife walked in and passed by not recognising her ex-husband. Came the time of the next visit, staff and prisoners would wait for him to arrive in the afternoon. But his daughter loved her dad and she was allowed to keep the photo.
There was no doubt that although Holloway was a scary place it did have its softer moments especially in the mundane jobs all prisoners did to occupy themselves. They would make pullovers for the prison population rather in the manner that shoes were made on site, and they also made jam. Plum jam, for example where the prisoners would pour plums, stones and stalks, some leaves as well into the pot and boil it all up into a red gloop. The jam had a certain cloudy consistency and parts had to be sieved between one’s teeth before any attempt could be made to swallow. From jam-making it was a simple matter to take on a major company’s request to have hundreds of thousands of those wooden spoons you find with your ice-cream, slid into a paper sleeve. Aware of where those hands had often been, I refused to eat ice-cream with a wooden spoon ever again.
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