by Ray Deveroux
With house block two fully manned, I returned to the SPUD unit, where Ken had been doing his best to keep up with the lifer plans on his own. Relieved to see us, he set about dishing out the work that had lined up. By this time, Andrew had taken up his new position in the SSU; we saw him very little after that, the SSU being all secret squirrel stuff. Back on the SPUD unit, we had a new Governor, whose task it was to bring all of the sentence plans up to date as quickly as possible. Half his staff were depleted for the last three months, us having been deployed to support the house blocks until more staff arrived and the prison was settled.
He was a horrible, pushy man; badly-fitting suit over his ample gut, small piggy eyes and bad breath. He had recently been promoted and was out to prove himself. None of the staff liked him. Ken our Senior Officer, was trying his best to support us during this demanding time.
One day I got a call from the wife. Our youngest daughter was ill. She had been to the local doctor who had advised her to take the baby to casualty. The hospital was some six miles away. Our other daughter was at primary school and needed to be collected. She couldn’t do both at once, she had no car, and having just moved to the area, we didn’t know many people.
So I went to see our SPUD unit Governor, Mr. Peterson, his piggy eyes staring at me. He squeaked in his high-pitched voice, what do you want, showing his impatience at a mere Officer darkening his doorway. I explained to him about the problem at home, and that I needed to get away; after all it was an emergency, it wasn’t as if I would be docked any hours, the prison owed me over a hundred hours in T.O.I.L. (time off in lieu) hours that I had built up during the incidents. No overtime was paid then.
He didn’t even look at me, and squeaked, No, close the door on the way out. I tried again to appeal to his better nature; my wife was in tears on the phone, I couldn’t let her down. It wasn’t as if we would be short on landings, for Christ sakes, this was a Sentence Planning unit with no prisoners.
Still here? he said. You’re going nowhere son. Get out of my office, stop sniveling, and get on with what you are paid to do. Again, he didn’t even have the courtesy to look at me.
I was livid, yes; I was nearly in tears through frustration that this horrible little bastard was treating me like an idiot.
I’m fucking going, I shouted. He tried to stand up to stop me leaving the office, but I had flipped his desk over on the fat little bastard by then and walked out the door.
He shouted after me, you will never get through the gate; I have ordered the gate staff not to let you through. With tears welling up in my eyes, I was off to the gate and no one was going to stop me. I wasn’t about to be treated like that; my wife and children was more important to me than the Prison Service.
When I got to the gate, it opened. Ken had phoned down after the Governor and explained what had happened. The gate staff didn’t like Peterson either. I was let straight through.
I got home in time to take my daughter to hospital. Thankfully, the doctor had phoned ahead and we were seen straight away. We got back in time to collect our eldest daughter from school.
After I had returned from the hospital, I tried to phone the jail to speak to Governor Peterson, to explain myself and to apologise. My job was on the line here. Instead, I was put through to the deputy Governor, a more understanding man, who asked me to come see him first thing in the morning.
He obviously couldn’t condone my actions, saying that perhaps Mr. Peterson could have dealt with it differently, but I was still half-sheeted, a method in which you were stopped half a days pay, and a black mark put on your record. He recognised that my probation period had passed with ease and I had a commendation added to my record.
Back on the unit, I got on with my job, but the enjoyment had gone from it by then. I was beginning to hate the place.
Around the same time, there was a call for a “trawl”. A trawl is put out to fill staff spaces, this time to Highdown Prison, near Sutton in Surrey.
A new local prison was looking for Officers that had passed their probationary period to move down and take up post; this was a lifesaver for both my wife and me. I had moved up to Kings Lynn on a promise of a job with MFI that never transpired. We were both missing friends and family down south, and to put the icing on the cake, the Prison Service was paying all expenses. It was a chance for us to settle back into our own area, with friends and family nearby to support us. No longer would I have to beg Governors to let me go out of the jail to sort out personal problems, although I would not hesitate to walk out if my family needed me.
There was a long drawn-out period where Officers had made applications; a selection process, as with any job, was being done first. I was worried that my half-sheet would stop me from being selected. I hoped that my commendation would stand me in good stead. Of course, all the other Officers were taking the piss on a daily basis. It was mostly good-natured banter, but the wait was getting to me.
The letter was sent to Governor Peterson first. He called me into the office. Of course, I wasn’t aware that he called me for the letter, and I was dreading going to see him, since the last time we met he had ended up with a desk on his legs.
Again, he didn’t even look up at me. Holding the letter in his hand, he smiled, and said that he hoped that my transfer was successful. Of course, he already knew the result; he had a copy open on his desk. I tried my best to read it upside down, but, noticing, he fucked me off – out of the office.
I got back to the lads on the landings. Allison was there as well. She knew how much I wanted this move and was rooting for me. Come on, come on, and get the letter open, she said. I wanted to take the sealed letter home and open it in front of my wife, but I would have probably been C&R’d myself trying to get off the wing without opening it. All the Officers, including Ken, my Senior Officer, were wishing me good luck.
With nervous hands, I opened the letter.
I was accepted, the move was on!
The whole wing heard my relieved shout, YEEEEEEEEES! All my colleagues clapped me on the back to congratulate me. Even Ken smiled, which was a bit of a challenge for him. It must have taken a momentous effort to move his enormous mustache.
Allison let me use the phone in her office to call my wife. She was as excited as I was, adding that the wing would not be the same without me. I had been an asset and would be missed. She was nearly in tears herself, soft woman. My wife was over the moon; she was, as normal, speaking so fast she was mixing her words up. I had to cut her short otherwise we would have been on the phone for ages.
When I got home, she had already phoned her parents with the news and made plans; Christ the ink wasn’t dry yet on the letter.
I had a good few hours in the bank and leave to take, so I booked three weeks off to get things sorted at home. The wife was pleased that she would finally be moving back home. She was close to her family and was glad to get the chance to go back.
After my leave and TOIL, I was back at Whitemoor waiting for a final date. The house was sold, solicitors were appointed and a removal company lined up, all courtesy of the Prison Service.
I was told it would be very soon, but each day was a drag, the kids were asking every day when we were going to move back to London, the wife was getting edgy, waiting for the date. I was on tender hooks waiting for the final call.
That’s when poor Andrew took his life. I was gutted. He was such a great bloke. What a loss.
There’s me, all smiles waiting to move, looking forward to being near my family when we got the news. Talk about putting a dampener on the celebrations. All the staff were shocked. We knew he was having trouble. Each and every one of us tried to help him out in our own small way.
His funeral service was very emotional, I had joined and went to the same training school as him, knew his wife and kids.
What a waste of a life.
There was further trouble on house block two when Mr. Singh was stabbed in the back with a shank. A shank is a homemade knife. Two other
prisoners who wanted to be in his place in the pecking order, stabbed him. In actual fact it wasn’t them who wanted it. Another, cowardly prisoner had paid them to get rid of Mr. Singh so that he could peddle drugs on the wing. Mr. Singh hated drugs, and ensured that anyone dealing on his patch was rooted out and warned off.
Mr. Singh did not go down without a fight. They had sliced through one of his kidneys, but whilst bleeding from wounds in his back and side he managed to break one prisoners jaw, and throttle the other one. Both went out to hospital in an ambulance with Mr. Singh following behind, in a separate ambulance. The escort was manned with three four-man teams. We didn’t want any further trouble from them, although none of them were in a fit state to do anything.
We found out later that the prisoner he throttled died shortly afterwards; Mr. Singh was up again in court on a manslaughter charge, although there was aggravating circumstances.
He got ten years added to his sentence. It didn’t bother Mr. Singh too much; he was serving five life sentences already. He knew full well that it was unlikely he would ever be released.
The story with him went like this: as a child, he had been brought over from India to live with his uncle for a better chance in life and the all-important chance for an education. His uncle was a cruel man who had physically and sexually abused him. Knowing no different and with nowhere else to go, he suffered this humiliation until his eighteenth birthday. Soon after his birthday, he was married to a young woman in an arranged marriage. This young woman, who he had never met, had been promised to him at an early age. He had been given a photo of her that he cherished and longed for the day he would be free of his uncle.
He was provided with a home and help from the rest of the family, all the while his father sending money and gifts to his uncle for his upkeep.
To his delight, Mr. Singh found that his new wife was pregnant. He was looking forward to his first-born, hoping it was going to be a boy. He was a very happy man. His father back in India sent word that he was proud of his son, fathering a child so soon. Mr. Singh spent hours working on the house preparing for the baby, working many hours overtime in his uncle’s shop to gain extra money to support his wife and child.
He found out later, his wife sobbing, that the child wasn’t his; his uncle had raped her on the night before her wedding, telling her that it was his right as the guardian of her husband to do so.
Young Singh went mad; he slit his wife’s throat, and plunged a bread knife into her stomach, making sure that the mother and baby would not survive. Next, he went to his uncle’s house, where he slaughtered his uncle, his aunt, and their two teenage daughters. One was due to be wed the next day. He left his uncles house, with all of his victims in pools of blood on the floor, knives stuck in their stomachs.
Then he went to his uncle’s shop where, with a sledgehammer, he smashed the place to pieces, leaving nothing undamaged.
The police soon caught him, and the rest is history.
He had no other life but the prison, his parents had disowned him, he was going to die in prison.
Three days later, I got the call I’d been waiting for – a transfer date for Highdown. Since I still had two weeks TOIL owing, my new receiving prison, Highdown, insisted that I came to them with zero hours TOIL, and was allowed one week extra off to move.
I was off!
Although my new post was Highdown Prison, it still, just like Whitemoor, had no serving prisoners. A jail in Winchester was crying out for staff because of a recent riot. So I would have to wait a bit longer until my post at Highdown was ready. We still moved to our new home in London. It was just a shame that I had been diverted, albeit, temporarily, to Winchester. Still, I had a couple weeks before being moved to the new prison.
HMP Winchester
Highdown was a brand new purpose local prison. A local or remand prison takes prisoners straight from the courts, produces prisoners to the courts and is a feeder prison, sending prisoners out to other jails in the area. When prisoners are sentenced, they get sent to the appropriate prison that best suits their needs. In some cases, locals take from other prisons, so that prisoners nearing the end of their sentence can be nearer home on release.
However, it was completely empty, no prisoners!
Oh well, I thought, take it easy then shall I?
No such luck, HMP Winchester had recently had a riot and they wanted any spare staff down there, pronto.
I didn’t mind really, the wife and kids had settled into the new home, her mum and dad were there constantly, fussing over her and the grandchildren; I seemed to be in the way!
Winchester were paying detached duty rates. Detached duty is when a jail is short of staff for one reason or another, and paid Officers extra to fill the gaps. So on top of the expenses gained from the move, I was doubling my monthly wage. The extra money came in handy, and it paid for new central heating, furniture and a car
So, with Highdown not expected to receive prisoners for at least three months, I was off to another jail – HMP Winchester.
Winchester is a very old Victorian jail, with equally as old, Victorian staff. It is like going backwards in time. Although disconnected years ago, they still had gas lamps on the outer walls of the prison.
Walking round the prison walls was like walking around a film set. Everything was old, the walls crumbling, old doors bricked up years ago and window frames from the 1900. On entering the prison, it was very much like the first time at HMP Norwich, especially the smell. Winchester was undergoing a transformation; in-cell sanitation had started, but many cells still had no toilets or washing facilities, and they still slopped out on some wings.
The riot was over the slow goings of the transformation, prisoners not wanting to live in their own shit wanted to move to the new bright shiny cells with toilets and wash basins and who could blame them.
It was decided, however, in terms of humanity, decency whatever you want to call it, that YP’s (young prisoners) should be given the up-dated cells first.
Young prisoners were aged between sixteen and twenty-one. As soon as they hit twenty-one they were moved onto the adult wings, where there was no sanitation. This was causing the problems. Anyone who ever worked with YP’s will know that they are little bastards and I, for one, didn’t like them one bit.
I was on detached duty with Sally. She was, like me, on transfer to Highdown and had taken up the offer of detached duty to Winchester. Sally was great to work with. She was ex-military herself. She was basically a bloke with tits. Sally was well built, but not fat, very tall, over six foot and with thick black curly hair. She had hairy arms and a dark line under her lip, which looked for the entire world like a mustache; something she was self-conscious about. No one dared pointing at the dark line above her lip for fear of getting a slap from her giant hand.
Sometimes, with your beer goggles firmly on, she was quite attractive. Other times, you didn’t know whether to fuck her or fight her. She was that type of girl; more like an arm breaker than a heartbreaker.
But she knew how to handle prisoners, particularly YP’s, although she did have a tendency to be a bit spiteful with them, pinching their nipples or the inside of their legs. Her grip was like a vice, so the young lads did scream when she got them. Sally got her come-uppance one day, when a young lad got her back and pinched both her nipples. Two things happened then; a shriek from Sally, followed by an almighty great slap followed thereafter by a young man squealing like a stuck pig.
When I met up with her at the end of the landings, I asked her what it was all about. She said one of the little bastards only pinched me nips!
Well I said, you had it coming to you Sal, you’ve made your mark on some of the lads. It’s inevitable one of them was going to get you back.
Little bastards, she said rubbing her nipples, which you could see though her blouse. They were like dinner plates.
Who did it? I asked.
Don’t you worry, she said, with an evil glint in her eye, he won’t
do it again!
It was easy to see who the culprit was, the hand mark on his face lasted almost a week!
The jail was run by an aging population of staff, who were hanging on to the “Winchester Way” for dear life. They didn’t want anything new or remotely modern to rock the boat. All of them were firmly against change.
They even had a Chief Officer – a throwback from pre-fresh start days. Pre-fresh came in at the end of the eighties. He was a sort of Sergeant Major, short slashed peak cap, short back and sides and a short temper. He ruled the roost. He looked like a throwback from porridge. Incidentally, the exterior filming of porridge was filmed at St Albans prison and Maidstone prison in the late seventies, both prisons being built in the same era, and probably manned by the same Victorian staff. He even took on the same appearance of Mr. Mackay, who was a character in the programme.
Of course, everyone called him Mr. Mackay, or “Chief”. We never knew his real name, but he didn’t seem to mind. One wonders if the character was based on him.
When Sal and I first got there he treated us like NEPO’s and demanded that we be given a week’s induction before handing us keys. However, the number one Governor was desperate for staff on his landing and convinced the chief to let us have keys. After all, we both had a couple of years under our belts. In Winchester terms though, were still “bairns,” a term used in the north for babies.
So, Sal and me ended up on the YP wing. None of the other older regular Officers wanted to work on there; they didn’t like change, and as far as they were concerned, prisoners should be locked up in their own shit. Running water, sinks and flushing toilets were far too good for them.
We had a laugh though. You could play with the YP’s. Mostly they were as thick as short planks and serving short sentences or were on remand. Remand prisoners were waiting to go to court for trial/sentencing etc.
Although they were the first to get the newly refurbished cells, they had no respect for them. Half the time we were turning the mains water supply off to their cells because they kept flooding them. Having the typical mentality of teenagers, although they had sinks with hot and cold running water, they rarely washed or brushed their teeth. Talking to them was a challenge, trying to avoid bad breath. Personal hygiene was not on their high list of priorities. Most of the time, scrounging a smoke was on the top of the list for these young men.