by Will Birch
There had always been a no-nonsense philosophy at Chailey, and the regulations were tough. The ethos was one of self-sufficiency, fresh air and cheerfulness, and the habits of hard work and a strong moral fibre were drilled into the children. New arrivals were given the task of building a toy ladder that, however crudely assembled, would become a symbol of the ‘ladder of life’. Most pupils would never physically get beyond the lower rungs, but they could aspire to reaching the top with their head held high. Most of their day was spent in the open air, year-round. Only during a thunderstorm – the outdoor beds were metal-framed – would the children be moved inside. An inspirational sign over the doors read: ‘MEN MADE HERE’.
There is no doubt that the system at Chailey had a monumentally positive influence on Ian, but the school also had a dark side. As Ian later told me: ‘Chailey made me strong . . . it was all right, although some terrible things went on there. There were some really evil sadistic fucking bastards and bullies amongst the teachers. Anything I saw, I told my mum. If I was being sexually abused by anybody, she tried to put a stop to it. I didn’t hear of anything like rape or forced oral sex, mainly just wanking. There were a few pervy teachers there, but only on a wanking level. If there was any shagging going on I think I would have known.’
It seemed to me that Ian was making light of the more sinister side of life at Chailey, where, as he later admitted to friends, he had been ‘forced to masturbate bullies’. Perhaps these incidents were rare, but such abhorrent abuse of a young, defenceless child was bound to leave its mark on Ian’s psyche, and even though he could now shrug it off with commendable humour, how much of this contributed towards the ‘difficult’ side of his adult personality? In addition to the sexual abuse, Ian also witnessed the occasional violence. ‘I saw some heavy-duty sadism a couple of times with a bloke hitting a kid with a stick, kids who were small and disabled and mentally not on the case. But there were wonderful things there. Bear in mind that the National Health Service had only been going for one year. Prior to that, Chailey had been a charity institution. It was a healthy place. We were outdoors most of the time. We were all tough little fuckers, it was a bit like Wandsworth, D-Wing. Once I got strong, I became quite a little tyke.’
As Ian would one day tell journalist Steven Fuller: ‘Being in that place is one of the reasons I talk the way I talk. Before that I talked not quite BBC. A third of the kids were funny in the head as well as being disabled. It was a very tough place, very cold and very brutal. The law of the jungle reigned . . . thinking about it [Chailey] now, I realize it was fuckin’ heavy. It was like a hospital in one way, like a school in another way and like a prison in another way. It was very uncomfortable. Guys would die there.’ Ian then went on: ‘The third day I was there I woke up and discovered I had shit myself in the night. There was a guy called Hargreaves who had a big boot, he was an orderly . . . I was lyin’ on it and didn’t know what the fuck to do, and he came in and said, “Why haven’t you got up yet?” He says [to the other children], “Come ’ere, everybody.” They all came around the bed . . . I’m lyin’ there in the shit, and he says, “Now roll over.”’
For Ian, being away from home was the worst aspect of Chailey life, as he would tell BBC Radio 4’s Peter White: ‘I remember crying, waking up in the morning and hearing the bell ringing and facing the wall and knowing you were not at home. I missed my mates and my home and family.’ Ian looked forward to visits from his parents and the occasional outing. In May 1951, Peggy took Ian to London’s South Bank to visit the Festival of Britain, a ‘tonic for the nation’, which was slowly recovering from the ravages of war. There would also be trips back to Upminster in the school holidays. On one such break, Ian was taken to visit his paternal relatives in Southborough, Kent. With Peggy pushing Ian in his wheelchair, they travelled by train from Upminster to Tilbury and caught the ferry to Gravesend. The 122 bus then took them to Southborough. The arduous journey fatigued Ian, and he arrived at his destination in a mischievous mood. ‘He was a little “basket” that day,’ recalls his cousin, Margaret Webb. ‘He was so naughty, and I was so good, being a girl. He did naughty things that I found difficult to handle, because I wasn’t used to big naughty boys. He was bolshy, partly because of the reaction to what he was going through. He’d make silly faces and I found him a bit intimidating. When they were leaving that day, everyone said to me, “Give Ian a kiss goodbye,” but I wouldn’t. It worried me for years afterwards.’
Barry Anderson visited Ian at Chailey and regaled him with tales of life on the outside. ‘I used to go to Saturday morning pictures at the Gaumont in Upminster where I would sing and do a silly act,’ says Barry. ‘Once they asked me to go up on stage in front of all the other kids. I got my courage up and did it. When I told Ian about it, he asked me a lot of questions: “What was it like being on stage? Did they cheer? Could you see them? Were you scared?” Ian was very interested in my experience.’
In late 1953, Peggy arranged for Ian to take the eleven-plus examination, which he passed with ease. But on reflection Ian felt that his education at Chailey was poor. Unlike many of the children, however, he was able to read and write, thanks to his mother’s early tutoring. ‘Eighty per cent were affected mentally, mostly hereditarily,’ he told me. ‘Those that could write would have a queue of boys behind us asking us to write their letters home. “Did you get a parcel this week? A letter?” My mum thought if I stayed at Chailey until I was sixteen I would suffer education-wise. Only twelve out of 120 boys passed the eleven-plus.’
With a grant from Essex County Council, Ian gained entry to the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe. Once again it was Aunt Molly, now working in the Education Department of Buckinghamshire County Council, who was instrumental in securing the place. Molly Walker recalls, ‘Peggy wanted Ian to have a good start so he could get a position in the world, and she knew that it meant you had to have a certain amount of wit to get into further education. That was what she had in mind.’
In May 1954, Ian made the journey by rail from Upminster to commence his secondary education at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe. There, he would board alongside 150 or so of the school’s 900 boys. The 400-year-old seat of learning, founded during the reign of Elizabeth I, was divided into three houses: Terriers, in an annex 4 miles away in Haslemere; Uplyme, which occupied several temporary structures, one of which contained the music room; and School House, which abutted the quadrangle of the main building and into which Ian was placed. The school was surrounded on three sides by built-up areas, but on its fourth was a large sports field with rugby pitches, tennis courts and a running track, none of which of course held any interest for Ian.
On his first day at the school, he roamed the wood-panelled corridors, where portraits of former headmasters adorned the walls. He had been asked to report to the matron’s office, where a metal-framed sick bed and a comprehensively stocked medicine cabinet sent a chill through his bones. Had he brought all his school kit? Peggy had been issued with a checklist of mandatory items including ‘grey suit – short or long trousers at parent’s discretion’, or alternatively ‘grey flannel trousers with School blazer; shirts, white or grey’; ‘raincoats should be of navy blue’. Boys were expected ‘not to wear open-necked shirts at School except when a white flannel shirt is worn with a School blazer and flannel trousers’. Those taking chemistry in the upper school would be ‘expected to wear overalls to protect their suits’. The next item, sadly not applicable to Ian, called for ‘Gym shorts, towel and rubber-soled shoes; Rugby Football shorts, maroon and white jerseys, stockings, boots; Cricket: white shorts, white shoes or boots, flannel trousers’.
Shortly after arriving at his new school, Ian was dragged to the surgery of one Doctor Agerholm, a specialist in matters of physical disability. With Ian accepted into the Royal Grammar School, the local education authority had seen an opportunity to put Agerholm’s medical skills to the test, but Ian steadfastly refused to undergo the foot lock operation recommended b
y the doctor. Instead, in a rare act of conformity, he joined the School House boy scout troop, at the suggestion of housemaster Reginald Howard. Although his time in the scouts was mercifully short, Ian would attend one summer camp, at Looe in Cornwall. ‘It rained incessantly,’ recalls fellow scout Graham Watson. ‘A few of us took it in turns to push Ian in his wheelchair, but he never stopped moaning and whingeing.’
Back in school, the other pupils peered with morbid curiosity at the iron calliper that ran the full length of Ian’s left leg. Revealed by the short trousers of his school uniform, the device was designed to bend at the knee, if he chose to unlock it, but usually this would only occur at bedtime. In class he would sit with his leg out straight to one side. Bicycles were prohibited anywhere in the school grounds, but Ian was permitted to ride his customized tricycle on the playing field. This and other special dispensations singled him out, forcing him to contend with persistent taunts and jibes, some of which may have arisen because of the over-protective behaviour of the school matron, a Miss Toulson, known to the boys as ‘Toolbag’. ‘People did stupid things,’ says Molly Walker. ‘I only heard about this afterwards but I was horrified. The very first night Ian was at High Wycombe, the matron tucked him up in bed and bent over and kissed him goodnight. Well . . . there was a start for a boy in his teens. The other boys must have thought, “My God, what have we got among us here?”’
The dormitory itself was a danger zone for younger pupils, who were often at the mercy of over-zealous, sadistic prefects and teachers of dubious propensity. And whereas day-boys would come in each morning freshly scrubbed, boarders only got their underwear changed after their weekly bath. Consequently, Ian and the other boarders could be easily identified by their smell. For Ian, living away from home had become bearable, but, in every other respect his time at the Royal Grammar School would be pure, unmitigated hell.
3
The Magnificent Seven
High Wycombe, 1954. The dormitory bell rang at 8 p.m. sharp, followed by the cry: ‘Juniors up!’ As the command echoed around School House, the first-form boys washed their hands and faces, brushed their teeth and lined up in front of an imperious prefect who carried out his inspection. Ian, being a little slower than the rest, struggled to get in line before his absence was noted. Then it was all into bed and lights out. In the dark corridor the prefect crept about, listening for the sound of voices. Suddenly, he burst into the dorm. ‘Who was that talking?’ It was Dury, as usual, reciting a dirty joke.
In September, after Ian had been at the Royal Grammar School for four months, a fresh intake of boys arrived. Among them was Warwick Prior, whose family hailed from nearby Aylesbury. For the next five years, Prior would live cheek-by-jowl with Ian, experiencing every nuance of his developing personality. Today, he has mixed emotions about Ian’s behaviour at school, ranging from reluctant admiration to outright loathing, but is generally of the opinion that a school that groomed rugby players for England was a strange environment in which to find a disabled boy like Ian. ‘He was not popular because he was not nice,’ says Warwick Prior. ‘You could argue that being there in his circumstances led to him not being nice, but he turned up there not being nice.’
Ian had in fact turned up at the school still bearing the scars of Chailey, where a culture of bullying existed, from ward orderlies humiliating children who had soiled their underclothes to pupils picking on each other because of their tragic deformities. To such children, bullying was the norm and Ian brought the behaviour with him. Ensconced in his new surroundings, he began picking on the odder characters in the junior dorm, including a Jewish boy and a chronically asthmatic lad, whose wheezing kept everyone awake on a nightly basis. Both boys were unpopular and taken out of the school within a term. Although Ian wasn’t the ringleader, he had tagged on to their bullying because he’d seen an opportunity to deflect his own shortcomings.
None of the others pupils could be bothered to walk with Ian because they found him incredibly surly, foul-mouthed and possessing a verbal style that was ill-suited to the public school environment. Fellow scholar Michael Claridge remembers his ‘slow and lurching gait’ being painful to watch. Consequently, Ian had few friends and spent much of his time alone. Claridge once attempted to help him when he appeared to have mobility problems walking over the clinker patch, but Ian just said ‘fuck off and stuck the worn metal end of his crutch into Claridge’s back. ‘He did it with an extraordinary force for someone with his disability,’ says Claridge. ‘In short, my perception of Ian Dury was that he was a thoroughly nasty piece of work.’
Nasty or not, Ian was simply using whatever ammunition he could summon to survive under difficult circumstances. His unfortunate predicament didn’t help, but he did possess an undeniable charisma. Realizing this – and it was an important turning point – Ian began to exploit his special powers. Like some first-form Fagin he formed a gang, into which he enlisted two particularly impressionable boys to form a ‘terrible trio’ that frequently set on smaller pupils to extort money or tuck. Although violence was only threatened, Ian’s menacing presence, heightened by the flash of the leg iron, was usually enough to do the trick. As he and his crew moved up the school they became the persecutors, rather than the persecuted, emboldened by each little victory. But mugging boys for biscuits was fairly mild. Ian’s behaviour hit rock bottom when a lad named William Busby came into the school. Busby was tall and crippled with rheumatoid arthritis, in a far worse state of health than Ian, but he immediately became another victim. Ian would physically set upon him, force him to the ground and beat him. At last, Ian had found someone physically weaker than himself, whose life he could make hell and force to share his suffering.
A sexual undercurrent exists at any boarding school where teenage pupils are thrown together to sleep in dormitories. The Royal Grammar School was no exception, and Ian dabbled in the mild homosexual behaviour that is common amongst twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys. Discovering masturbation ahead of the pack, he revelled in discussing the sensation of orgasm with his room-mates. ‘He tried to jump into my bed more than once,’ says Warwick Prior. ‘He found sex quite early on and had a hell of an “old man” compared to the rest of us. The fact is, he had an extremely strong personality and if he’d had all his faculties he could have become anything he wanted, but he chose to go the thug route.’
Ian’s educational opportunities, it seems, were excellent. Perhaps he could have now become the doctor or lawyer that Peggy dearly wished for, but he preferred to obscure his background and play the cockney barrow boy for all it was worth. In truth, Ian was suffering from a massive identity crisis and chose to side with his working-class dad, deliberately assuming the role of an East End villain with all the attendant behavioural quirks. But despite his thuggish tendencies, it is generally agreed that he was ‘saved’ by his artistic ability. ‘He could draw like a saint, even at twelve,’ admits Warwick Prior.
With his classmates watching in awe, Ian would produce drawings of big-chested pin-up girls for everyone’s amusement. Confident of his sketching skills, he mailed one of his cartoons to Punch, in the hope that they’d reproduce it. It depicted a Teddy Boy with a pick axe. In the first picture his luxuriant hair is swept back, but in the second frame his quiff has fallen over his eyes, making his work impossible. Ian received a kind rejection letter from the magazine. Nevertheless, he became celebrated around the school for his drawings of sexy females, many of which were painstakingly copied from magazines such as Reveille, Titbits and Parade. Even more exciting for Ian was that holy grail of adolescent titillation, Health and Efficiency, also known as ‘the nudist bible’. Published under the ethos of physical fitness and a vigorous outdoor lifestyle, this dubious publication was the one place where young boys could legitimately enjoy photographs of the naked female form, even if the pubic hair had been airbrushed out.
Another source of inspiration for Ian was the paperback novel and, in particular, the works of Mickey Spillane and Hank Janson, w
hose lurid detective thrillers epitomized the genre of ‘pulp fiction’. Janson’s output in particular was prolific during the 1950s. In addition to the story, which usually contained some racy text, there was the bonus of a colour jacket illustration by the artist Reginald Heade, often depicting a vulnerable, scantily clad blonde. Priced at half-a-crown (12 /2 pence), Janson’s books were perfect pocket money fodder for teenage boys, and Ian devoured them. Heade’s illustrations informed Ian’s improving drawing skills, and Janson’s stories fired his imagination, but it was a novella entitled Two Murders, One Crime by Cornell Woolrich that had the greatest impact. The book’s central character, ‘Gary Severn’, was a three-time loser, charged with a murder he didn’t commit. Ian was captivated by the name. Seeking respect and tired of being referred to as ‘Spastic Joe’, Ian suddenly announced that forthwith he was to be known as ‘Severn’, perhaps failing to appreciate that a successful nickname is usually one that is given to you by others.
Returning to Upminster in the school holidays, he insisted that he was now ‘Severn’ and gave his local friends nicknames as well. ‘He had to give everybody a bloody name,’ says Barry Anderson, ‘I was called “Lucky”; Dave Fry was “Spick”. We went to the pictures to see films like Blackboard Jungle and go to Upminster recreation ground and hang about in the park-keeper’s hut, pretending to be gangsters.’
Ian’s friends and classmates were not about to start calling him ‘Severn’ just because he fancied the idea, and the name failed to catch on. In his frustration, Ian pushed himself even further into the character and persistently promoted himself as a hoodlum. Becoming ever more resourceful, he turned to petty crime. ‘I was an outlaw at High Wycombe,’ insisted Ian. ‘I was as hard as nails, as tough as fuck. Resilient. I got a reputation as being a naughty boy, smoking, nicking. I had keys to every room in the school. I used to raid the desks for porno, ’cos nobody’s gonna grass up that the porno’s gone missing, and put it back in the desks again on Sunday night.’