by Stephen Wade
Society generally is rarely asked to take note of anything good going on behind the high walls of the prisons in our cities. The local jails are sometimes in the midst of a town or city and at times they are in empty, barren places. In Wakefield, which is a high security prison, there has been a prison in the ironically named Love Lane since the sixteenth century, when it was a House of Correction. The jails we have are tucked away, out of sight. What we know of prisoners extends only to what the papers tell us. Television gives us tales of monsters behind bars; producers think we want to know only about the comfort zone of having killers and rapists locked up for ever. Most of us have driven at speed on a motorway and passed a ‘meat wagon’ – the prison van, the Group 4 as it used to be. Inside are people on their way either to court or prison. They are mostly pathetic, sad, lost characters who do not need muzzles, chains and cuffs.
Still, the prison house holds fascination. People live there and survive, and what they survive is explained by Oscar Wilde:
All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;
And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long.
The prison service acts as a kind of patron in encouraging prisoners to write (‘it stops them kicking off’) but then has to apply all kinds of repression when that writing begins to succeed. As Dr Johnson said when writing to his patron, Lord Chesterfield, ‘Is not a patron my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?’ What is needed to make the prison authorities see themselves as patrons is a mystery. Prison memoirs again and again return to the question of why people revisit, imaginatively or as historians, their crimes, so there has to be a way to use that desire – with the exception of the most heinous and horrendous offences of course. In most cases we are talking about the mainstream category of crimes committed either as part of a concept of crime as a business or as a series of unfortunate errors and bad influences which tend to be understood only later in life when mistakes are seen for what they were in the past.
Most of the prisoners here have wanted to find some way of expressing themselves – something very different from a gun barrel or a knife. There is a link between crime and creativity, and that was spotted and written about in the Regency period in the first literary work in English which dealt with true crime as we think of it now – Thomas de Quincey’s long essay, Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts. De Quincey writes about murder, with the terrible Ratcliff Highway murders of 1811 in mind – as if it were one of the visual arts and he were a professor or an art historian. He had realised, a century before the True Crime in the popular press ever mentioned prisoners’ creativity, that in some proportion, a prison population had talent there somewhere.
On balance, my chapters have covered a fair proportion of mindless killers and in contrast, criminals for whom jail has become almost a vocation. Indeed, for Charles Bronson, it almost seems like his kingdom and he resents others wanting any power there.
Acknowledgements
Thanks go to my editor, Brian Elliott, and to the artist, Vicki Schofield, who produced the line drawings. I also must thank A.M. and G.B. – anonymous but very helpful. In terms of the oral history I gathered in order to write these tales, several people interested in prison history answered questions and told tales.
As usual, there has been some digging in obscure works and forgotten ephemera for this project. Thanks go to Clifford and Marie Elmer for this assistance.
I also have to mention Pauline Tait, June Hanrahan, Jimmy, Mr T and my group who told tales of slopping out and worse. Also Ian Lawman has to be thanked for some new perspectives.
There is also a massive body of prison writing in ephemera and in local publications, and thanks are due to various scholarly researchers who have answered questions.
Bibliography and Sources
Books
Bilton, Michael Wicked Beyond Belief (Harper Collins, 2003)
Bronson, Charles Bronson (Blake, 2004)
Bronson, Charles The Good Prison Guide (Blake, 2007)
Byrne, Gerald Borstal Boy: The Uncensored Story of Neville Heath (John Hill Productons, 1955)
Clarke, John and Shea, Andy Touched by the Devil (Simon and Schuster, 2001)
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Denning, Lord Landmarks in the Law (Butterworths, 1984)
Dernley, Syd, with Newman, David The Hangman’s Tale: Memoirs of a Public Executioner (Robert Hale, 1999)
Dineage, Fred Reg and Ron Kray: our Story (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1988)
Douglas, Robert At Her Majesty’s Pleasure (Hodder, 2007)
Eddleston, John J The Encyclopaedia of Executions (Blake, 2000)
Fielding, Steve Pierrepoint: A Family of Executioners (Blake, 2006)
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Foreman, Freddie Brown Bread Fred (John Blake, 2007)
Fraser, Frankie Mad Frank’s Britain (Virgin, 2002)
Gaute, JHH and Odel, Robin The Murderers’ Who’s Who (Pan Books, 1980)
Godfrey, Barry and Lawrence, Paul Crime and Justice 1750–1950 (Willan Publishing, 2005)
Hale, Leslie Hanged in Error (Penguin, 1961)
Hancock, Robert Ruth Ellis: the last woman to be hanged (Orion, 2000)
Harrison, Richard Foul Deeds will Rise (John Long, 1958)
Hastings, Sir Patrick Cases in Court (Pan, 1953)
Hopwood, Clive Free With Words: writers in prison (Bar None Books, 1999)
Humphreys, Sir Travers A Book of Trials: personal recollections of an eminent judge of the high court (Pan, 1955)
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James, Trevor There’s One Away: Escapes from Dartmoor Prison (HedgerowPrint, 1999)
Jones, Richard Glyn True Crime through History (Constable and Robinson, 2004)
Koestler, Arthur and Rolph, CH Hanged by the Neck (Penguin, 1961)
Kray, Kate Killers (John Blake, 2003)
Lavelle, Patrick Shadow of the Ripper (John Blake, 2003)
McVicar, John McVicar by Himself (Artnik, 2007)
Morton, James East End Gangland (Times Warner, 2001)
Moss, Alan and Skinner, Keith The Scotland Yard Files (The National Archives, 2006)
Parker, Norman Parkhurst Tales (Blake, 1995)
Pierrepoint, Albert Executioner: Pierrepoint (Coronet, 1971)
Priestley, Philip Victorian Prison Lives (Pimlico, 1999)
Read, Leonard with Morton, James Nipper Read: The Man who Nicked the Krays (Times Warner, 1991)
Rowland, John Unfit to Plead? (Pan, 1965)
Seddon, Peter The Law’s Strangest Cases (Robson Books, 2005)
Smith, Noel ‘Razor’ A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun (Penguin, 2005)
Staff, Duncan The Lost Boy (Transworld, 2007)
Stokes, Anthony Pit of Shame: The Real Ballad of Reading Gaol (Waterside Press, 2007)
Stout, Martha The Sociopath Next Door (Broadway Books, 2005)
Thomas, Donald Villains’ Paradise (John Murray, 2005)
Tibballs, Geoff The Murder Guide to Great Britain (Boxtree, 1994)
Wilde, Oscar Complete Works (Collins, 1948)
Wilde, Oscar The Ballad of Reading Gaol (Two Rivers Press, 2004)
Woodley, Mick Osborn’s Concise Law Dictionary (Thomson, 2007)
Wynn, Douglas On Trial for Murder (Pan, 1996)
Articles
‘Broadmoor Hospital Gives up its Secrets’ Converse August, 2009 pp. 24-25
James, Erwin ‘I’m on a Journey’ The Guardian 26 May, 2004 (interview with Noel Razor Smith)
Presser, Lois ‘The Narratives of Of
fenders’ Theoretical Criminology Vol. 13 no. 2 May, 2009
Self, Will ‘When will we Ever learn?’ The Guardian 7 June 2005
Web Sites
www.bbc.uk/l/hi/uk
www.bullyonline.org/workbully/munchaus.htm
www.eastlondonhistory.com
www.enotes.com/forensic-science/macdonell-herbert-leon
www.express.co.uk
www.guardian.co.uk
www.prisons.org.uk
www.prisonservice.gov.uk
CD
Williams, Paul RL The Ultimate Price: the unlawful killing of English police officers (in two parts); also at www.murderfiles.com
Contemporary records
Court of Criminal Appeal records (Sweet and Maxwell, 1969)
Crown Cases Reserved
Old Bailey Session Papers
Newspapers and Magazines
Annual Register
Context
Daily Mail
Daily Mirror
Inside Time
Lincolnshire Archives
Sunderland Echo
The Police Journal
The Times Digital Archive
Yorkshire Post