Bronson 3

by Charles Bronson

  I am fed through a flap in the lower part of the door; I am let out just once a day for only one hour’s fresh air in the yard. I will be searched and metal detected. There will never be less than eight screws escorting me; electronic cameras follow my every move.

  The other 23 hours a day, I will be caged up alone. My visits (social and legal) are through the door. Now you see why Durham Prison is hell on earth for me.

  When I went to the dentist, ten screws took me over there and some were accompanying me with dogs; I was double-cuffed, and that was even while I was in the dentist’s chair.

  The female dentist, I could see, felt embarrassed. But that’s Bronson’s life. This is how I live inside, under extreme daily security.

  My sadness is the effect it has on my wife and daughter. Not being able to cuddle them. Touching their fingers through the cage wire like I am a fucking beast in a zoo. It is torture to see it; it kills me inside to do it. But it rips their hearts up to see me in such inhumane conditions.

  I will give HM Prison Durham 1/10. Well, I could have given it nil. The 1 is for Tony the art teacher who helped me a lot. And Kath the lady who worked on the censoring of my mail, she was lovely. A wonderful human being. Always got a smile and a kind word. I bet she was a smasher in her youth. She is still a looker in her fifties, and her heart is in the right place!

  LOCATION: Brasside, Durham.

  CAPACITY: 670 beds.

  CATEGORY AT PRESENT: High Security and Category ‘A’ wing.

  OPENED: 1980, albeit on a temporary basis to relieve overcrowding in mainstream prisons due to POA industrial action, which resulted in the Army having to be brought in to man the prison for a period of four months. After the POA failed in their action over Continuous Duty Credits, the prisoners housed there on temporary basis were returned to mainstream prisons. The prison proper opened officially in 1983 after building work was completed.

  HISTORY: Originally, the prison was earmarked to become a dispersal prison, but is now a high-security establishment.

  This is most northerly maximum-secure jail you can go to in England; it is well past Scotch Corner, and on the outskirts of Durham city.

  I first landed up there in 1990. Since then, I have been back there many times. It’s crazy! So much for helping me to maintain ties with my family, who are hundreds of miles away from the place. I may as well be on the moon. It’s bloody ridiculous for families to travel so far.

  In fact, it is disgusting. You imagine a mother with children travelling all that way just for an hour’s visit. Then all the way back home again. It is a bloody crime on it’s own to put so much stress on loved ones.

  Adding it all up, I must have spent a good part of my thirty years inside up north. It is a wonder I don’t talk like them … but I divvent let that gan te me ’ed, like!

  It was on my second stay up there; I was out on the yard with 200 other cons when I lost the plot! (Not like me, is it?)

  I was chatting away to Kenny Noye and Vick Dark when I just flipped. I ran across the yard and hit this geezer in a black suit, and put him on my shoulder and ran off with him.

  I wanted to smash my way into a wing office and take control. Would you believe, I did not even know who he was. Obviously he had to be an official, either a governor, or a doctor, or a teacher, or maybe a member of the Board of Visitors. Maybe even a Home Office rat. It turned out to be Mr Masserick, the Deputy Governor. Oh well … that’s life.

  Frankland Prison holds some right dangerous fuckers and it often explodes with violence. It is a very claustrophobic jail and has a serious drug problem. So you can imagine the backlash. I once went in the shower only to ‘almost’ step on a syringe. It terrified me. If I had stepped on it, I could have been infected with AIDS or hepatitis C, or whatever the junkies had, TB or whatever. It was a serious health hazard.

  And it was a joke to some to slip acid tabs into cons’ drinks and then watch them go crazy. Personally, I couldn’t see what the fun was. They are sick bastards to do that. You get the pricks outside doing it in pubs and clubs. God help them if they ever did it to me. I swear I would kill the slags, I just know I would flip out. Those drugs are evil. Always will be to me.

  Frankland’s got a good gym but, sadly, I got banned from it, as I was about to cave the gym screw’s head in. So I did all my workouts in the yard and in my cell. I really don’t need their silly gyms. Read my book Solitary Fitness and you will see why.

  The place had a great canteen. We could buy proper food to cook. And it had the best field out of the entire maximum-secure jails. Only one con has actually escaped from the jail itself – Frank Quinn. He slipped out in the laundry van. Others have got away from hospital escorts.

  It was built in the 1970s and has seen it all – riots, arsons, rapes, stabbings, cuttings. To my knowledge, there have been no murders. That has to be a miracle.

  Old Harold Shipman was up there, but they moved him in 2003 to Wakefield for an eye operation or something.

  I met some smashing lads up there and they remain strong pals today. It is amazing just how many southerners actually get sent up there. I am sure it is a conspiracy to destroy all contacts and to fuck up our family life. Prisons are not happy with just locking us up, they want to punish our loved ones as well.

  My old mate Ronnie Abrahms (the Screaming Skull) died up there. He had served over thirty years, all to die in a cell. He was a top legend, was our Skull. A complete one-off. There will never be another like him. I miss old Ron. It was also here that I got the news that Ronnie Kray had died. That was a bloody sad day for me, as Ron was the best friend I ever had.

  I remember strangling a con in the TV room; it was fortunate for him that a pal of mine intervened. The fat piece of shit was forever farting. He only had to move and he’d let rip. We were all watching a football match, Spurs v Newcastle. So the northerners outnumbered us southerners 5-1, but it was all in good fun. And I had the fat piece of shit sitting next to me.

  After the twentieth fart, I got sick of it and I just blew up. And before I knew it, I was on him, strangling him. His eyes bulged, his lips were starting to turn blue and he was about to leave this planet. As I say, a decent lad helped bring some sanity to it all. But the frightening fact is, out of a room full of cons, all sat there watching me kill a man for farting. Only one guy helped stop it. Now that is what you call insanity.

  I could have killed him, and left him dead, and we would have all carried on cheering our teams on. That is prison life in a nutshell. It is just another day for us. We are all deep in the madness. You have to be mad to survive.

  Frankland, to me, is a powder keg, but a very lively jail to be in. Just take this one piece of advice – stay clear of the drug scene. Because if you enter into that, your whole life will end in misery. Please believe it, as I have seen it time and time again.

  I am giving HM Prison Frankland 7/10, only because of its electrifying atmosphere.

  LOCATION: Full Sutton, York.

  CAPACITY: 600 beds.

  CATEGORY AT PRESENT: High-Security, Category ‘A’ and Remand – Male.

  OPENED: 1987.

  HISTORY: Always to be intended as a max-secure unit and now is under the remit of the Directorate of High-Security Prisons, a law unto themselves. Very sneakily, they also made the place into an assessment centre for sex offenders.

  First, I’ll start by saying that the prison is not normally a remand prison, but it has held people there on remand. One of the most famous remand prisoners held there for over a year from 2001–02 was John Sayers from Newcastle’s Geordie Mafia. A great guy, and he walked free from a £22m murder trial held in Leeds.

  This place opened up in the late 1980s. I first landed there in 1988. It is a real nasty maximum-secure jail. Considering it has only been around for seventeen years, it has seen it all. Several riots, murders, arson, suicides, cuttings, stabbings, assaults on screws. And some of those were down to me. I even grabbed an official hostage there.

  I spe
nt a great Christmas up there with Freddie Foreman and Eddie Richardson. And with proper booze, too. Some bent screws … £50 a bottle of vodka. He must have made a fortune out of us lot! I squeezed three bottles myself, but that was my lot. I am not into making screws rich. Greedy pig … 50 quid a bottle!

  But I have got to say, Full Sutton was a bloody good jail then. We had it all – gym, field, cooking, good visits. The cons run that place, big time.

  The screws just unlocked our doors and let us out. I tried to electrocute a con there … he was a smackhead. He owed my pal 200 quid and he had no intention of paying up. It was more his attitude. Arrogant, 19st of shit.

  So, when he was in the bath, I plugged in the electric floor polisher and slung it in the bath. It somehow bounced off his head and fell outwards! So I ran and tried again but by this time he was up and running. He ran all the way to his cell and banged himself up.

  I was gutted! I went to his door later and spilt a load of petrol through the crack. Comes in handy that lawnmower on the works. You should have heard the rat screaming; he didn’t half go up. But the spoilsport screws came running to save him with fire hoses.

  And did you know that it was a con who invented a valve in the early 1990s that is now integrally built into cell doors? This valve allows a fire hose to be connected to the door from the outside landing and have the water aimed around the room while the hose sits in this multidirectional valve. It was invented to overcome those prisoners who barricaded themselves into their cells and set fire to contents. I bet they never thought about cons setting fire to those inside the cells when this invention was made.

  I was there when Mickey Jameson topped himself. He got life in the 1970s along with Jimmy Anderson for killing four people in East London. Sad day that.

  I had a riot of my own there. I went bananas in the hall, I wrecked it. Two Scouse brothers started me off, but they legged it and left me to face the screws. I really blew it that day. But what’s new? I did one screw with a table leg and another with a broom. Such is life … I got worse later. It’s evil.

  I went back there four or five times; each stay ended in violence. But I still enjoyed my time there. Even in the seg unit, the food was good, and you could get a shower every day. There are times if I cannot get access to a shower then I’ll have a strip wash in my cell. My workouts cause me to sweat, and there’s nothing worse than the smell of a sweaty body.

  There was also a good canteen there. You can buy cakes and bags of fruit and nuts and other goodies. But I have not been back for a few years.

  Old Billy Wilson was my old buddy there; Bill was in his sixties, and an ex-fighter, a big proud man, serving life. He had one of those silver tashes and his cell walls were covered with boxing photos of the greats – Marciano, Louis, Dempsey and so on.

  Bill always wanted to shape up; sadly, he was a bit paunchy. I would sit in his cell and listen to all his old times; I’d heard them 100 times over. He was such a man of pride that he even fucked off medical treatment. He had cancer of the kidneys … bollocks to the lot! Old Bill died. He never did get to work out his dream, but I won’t say what his dream was as it was told to me in private. A man’s dream is personal, see. But it was a lovely dream that kept him going for years inside, only to be wiped away by cancer. I really loved that old git.

  Full Sutton, for such a modern jail, holds a lot of misery. A lot of the violence was down to drugs. There must be a lot of AIDS in that place, as they use dirty needles. Plus there are a lot of young lads paying their debts off by getting their arses shagged or sucking dick! It is tragic, but it is life for a smackhead. You can’t help them, they used to help themselves, but it is sad to see it. Mums and dads sending them in presents, all to be sold for smack.

  People ask why do I hate drugs so much? Well, I will tell you. In the 1970s, in the asylum, I was forced to take drugs by injection. They held me down and pumped into me with a syringe full of psychotropic shit. That is why!

  And I despise drug addicts because they are weak, dangerous people, so that is why places like Full Sutton breed desperate people.

  I am giving HM Prison Full Sutton 4/10. But I did kick ass, didn’t I?

  LOCATION: Market Harborough, Leicester.

  CAPACITY: 350 beds.

  CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Category ‘B’ – Male.

  OPENED: 1966.

  HISTORY: Became a dispersal prison and then later became a Category ‘B’ prison for long-term cons (5 years+). Now leans towards a therapeutic regime with prison psychologists and counsellors. But why close down Parkhurst Prison’s centre, which was run by the renowned Dr Bob Johnson?

  Fuck me; I had some fun and games in this gaff. I first hit here in the mid-1980s and again in the ’90s.

  Gartree was built about the same time as Albany Prison; it was one of the dispersers for High-Risk Category ‘A’ inmates.

  Well, that was until December 1987 when Johnny Kendal and Siddy Draper flew out in a helicopter, hijacked by Andy Russell. What a fucking classic that was. First and last chopper escape in England. Now I have said that, there’ll probably be another one next week.

  Gartree is a modern jail, a two-tier, flat-roofed building housing A, B, C and D Wings. It had a great gym and a good football pitch with a proper running track. We could cook our own meals.

  It all sounds nice, but Gartree was a powder keg, and it often blew up. What the prison HQ failed to accept is that they couldn’t expect to put so many high-risk prisoners under one roof and hope to keep the peace.

  Face facts – if you put IRA with UFF, they kick off and they did just that in Gartree. Not just with the Irish but with everybody. And the end result was riots, violence and destruction. That place really was a war zone.

  I remember Michael Hickey spent three months up on the roof, the longest ever prison roof protest in the UK. He was one of the Bridgewater Four, later to win his appeal. And he did those three months in the winter. A right achievement, amazing.

  Con killer Fred ‘Butcher’ Lowe stabbed a sex case to death; he put forty holes in him. The blood ran like a river. Fred was laughing as he did it. The laugh of a madman.

  The cop killer Freddie Sewell almost broke out but got caught on the fence. He spent two years in isolation after that.

  The daddy of the prizefighters Roy ‘Pretty Boy’ Shaw, who wrecked the fucking place.

  The monster Ian Brady went insane there in his isolation cell in the hospital wing; he began to eat and drink his own body waste.

  A con cut his dick off, as he wanted to be a woman; another con cooked some budgies in a pie. There were hangings, cut-throats and overdoses.

  The IRA cons were pissed up every weekend with hooch; the Jocks were slashing each other; the Afros were smoking their dope; the smackheads were junking it up; the faggots were pumping arse.

  It was a crazy jail. Many cons lost the plot and got nutted off and were sent to Broadmoor.

  There were hostage sieges and hunger-strikes. It really was a powder keg.

  I come out of my cell one day and went berserk; it was on A Wing. Most of the cons ran and banged themselves up. I chinned three screws and kicked one down the stairs, then smashed the whole wing up.

  I left there with a bad head, I can tell you, but Gartree for me was a real test of your sanity. You were pushed to your limits. And I enjoyed it!

  I am giving HM Gartree 7/10 for the simple reason, I love a challenge.

  OCATION: Sutton, Surrey.

  CAPACITY: 700 beds.

  CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Local and Category ‘A’ – Male.

  OPENED: 1992 at a cost of £91m.

  HISTORY: Anyone recall the infamous mental hospital of Banstead? This place is built on that site. Most of the buildings proved to be unsuitable, so this new prison was built. On part of the site, another prison was constructed – HM Prison Downview.

  This is quite a modern jail, built on the same design as HM Prison Bullingdon and around the same time. I landed in High Down seg unit in the mid ’9
0s and again in the late ’90s.

  Both times I was held in their seg unit. The first time I only lasted a week when I gave the Governor a right-hander and tried to stab his eye out with my toothbrush. I was having an off day. Not like me!

  But I have got to say now, the food there was brilliant, and plenty of it. And the cells had toilets and sinks, with nice windows and a lovely bed!

  It really was a decent, humane place and the screws were as good as gold. Unfortunately, the Governor I served up was an ex-screw in Wandsworth some years back, I remember him well. He set me off on a bad spell.

  While I was there, a con hanged himself. But he was a multiple rapist, so no tears then. He should have hanged himself by his bollocks and let me in to kick the dog to death! I shouldn’t really say dog, as dogs are lovely animals.

  I will give HM Prison High Down 7/10. It is hard to give a jail points when you see so little of it. If I had made it up on the wing, then maybe I would have given it a 10 out of 10. Who can tell?

  LOCATION: Hedon Road, Hull.

  CAPACITY: 700 beds.

  CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Local and Category ‘B’, Remand and Young Offenders – Male.

  OPENED: 1870.

  HISTORY: What this prison hasn’t been in its time in relation to detaining prisoners is hardly worth mentioning. It was originally used to house male and female prisoners, then acted as a military prison, then as a depot for civil defence, then as a Borstal, then a max-secure unit and then it hit a brick wall! A riot broke out on 31 August 1976 and continued for three days.