Two of my pals died in Lartin. Eddie Watkins took a drug overdose and left a note behind. Ed had got life over shooting a Customs officer dead. And Barry Rondeau cut his throat and bled to death. Barry was serving life, too; he stabbed a guy at a football match. These fellow cons were two of my best pals. I think that nearly pushed me over the edge. Death affects us all differently.
But Long Lartin had seen some violent incidents over the years. Fred Lowe killed his second con there.
There was one con stabbed to death in the kitchen, another was punched to death in the TV room and another kicked to death down some stairs.
It was there that George Ince got cut (slashed with a blade) down the field. He got cut for his playing about with Dolly Kray (Charlie Kray’s wife). But fair play to George, he kept his mouth shut as he did when a shotgun was put down his trousers in later years. He may have played about with someone’s wife but he was a solid, staunch guy. For that you have to admire him.
Then there was the time Alec Sears, Andy Russell and a few of the chaps almost escaped. But the makeshift ladder snapped when they were captured in the grounds, and Alec got his head smashed open by the screws. The whole jail erupted in an orgy of violence. Alec later died in a car smash in Spain.
I remember when Chapman, the Barnsley Beast, got it in the recess. He was hit with everything – sticks, lead pipes, boots, fists. Hell … he survived and fought back. It makes you cringe at what his poor victims had to go through with that monster.
The longest serving Category ‘A’ inmate in Lartin was John Straffen. Read Kate Kray’s book Lifers and you will see why he has served fifty years; it is a great pity they never topped him! The animal killed three little girls.
Lartin is full of men who have served 20, 30, even 40 years. But they all seem to walk about like it is a hotel and they’re happy. Maybe it is down to institutionalisation, or is it just insanity?
I walked into a cell one day. There was a youngster, twenty-two years old, sucking a black con’s dick and another con was riding his butt. It just about sums it all up in a nutshell. Sick! The lad was only serving a six-year sentence; he had fallen into the hole of no return. Drugs, vice and madness!
One day, I was on a visit, and I looked over at the table next to mine; that lad was on a visit with his parents. It was that day that I realised what a jail can do to people.
They are sad, sick and evil places. And my advice to any youngster would be: ‘Behave and get out fast and don’t come back.’ Or just stay out of trouble.
I will give HM Prison Long Lartin 7/10. It does a lovely beef curry.
LOCATION: Norwich, Norfolk.
CAPACITY: 750 beds.
CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Local Prison, Remands and YOI (Young Offenders Institute) – Male.
OPENED: 1887.
HISTORY: A bit of history to this one. Although the prison opened in 1887 with only two wings, a further two wings were added in 1996 to accommodate Category ‘C’ prisoners. The YOI part of the prison is not attached to the adult male prison, it is on an adjacent site.
I was only here for two weeks and spent that time in their seg block in the 1980s.
I must say now, it was a smashing couple of weeks; the cell was clean and spacious. The food was excellent. It always is good in these little jails. And the population at the time I was there was not a quarter of that of some of the big jails. Since my stay, the prison has opened Category ‘C’ units and a detox wing for smackheads as well as its own Health Care Unit.
Norwich is an old jail but well preserved. It is quite laid-back. Even the screws were a decent bunch. They just went about their jobs how thay were supposed to, humanely.
I said to one old screw, ‘Hey, guv, if I even get sentenced to hang, I will ask to be hanged in your jail.’
He asked, ‘Why?’
I told him because it would be nice to go with a bit of humanity and no bitterness. He looked puzzled. But I fucking meant it.
It was a stress-free fortnight for me. I even slept like a baby and awoke happy. Do you know, I actually felt guilty; it is surely a crime to be so happy in jail.
I will give HM Prison Norwich 9/10. Maybe it was too nice. It could kill you with kindness. Not a nice end.
LOCATION: Nearby to the County Hall on New Road, Oxford.
CAPACITY: Nil.
CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Leisure.
OPENED: 1166.
HISTORY: Oxford Castle ceased to be a prison in 1996 and over the next few years will be redeveloped in a partnership between heritage and commercial uses. Since 1166, there has been a prison on the castle site, and in 1236 the Chancellor of the University was authorised to use the Castle ‘gaol’ for ‘rebellious scholars’.
There was a separate wing, B Wing, for female prisoners, now destroyed. There were, in the early days, separate exercise yards for different classes of prisoners. At this time, it was common to be thrown into clink for owing money; remind me never to get a loan. The Debtors’ Yard was adjacent to the Debtors’ Tower. Except for the Governor’s House in the centre of the main exercise yards, most of the large buildings remain, although altered inside. The Castle Mill was demolished in the 1930s.
The prison building that stands today is the result of major rebuilding in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which saw a house of correction, internal courtyards and new wings added, all of which were surrounded by a castellated wall.
The last public hanging to take place at Oxford Prison was in 1863, but the hanging cell became a place for private executions away from the public eye where executions were held until the 1950s.
In 1884, hard labour was introduced in the form of stone breaking. A contract was pursued to supply the local Highways Board.
In 1848, as if all the previous building work wasn’t enough, a Governor’s house was built, which was placed safely outside the prison walls.
Most of the inmates were local to Oxford, and so were the prison staff. Towards the end of the 1980s, the hospital wing began to fill up with psychiatric cases, changing the prison population from almost exclusively normal villains and crooks. I should know, because I was one of them.
The deluxe cells were those overlooking the exercise yard; you would have a view looking out over New Road, and level with the Nuffield tower.
The death knell for the prison rang when European Council standards were brought in and an overhaul of the British Penal System in terms of sanitation systems and wash areas would mean extra costs for all of the prisons.
After the prison closed, the local council took advantage of this empty shell that is testimony to human suffering and rented out the prison buildings to film and television companies.
Many drama series were shot there, including Bad Girls, Inspector Morse and The Bill. Big screen movies like 101 Dalmatians, The Spy Game and Lucky Break generated extra cash to help fill the council coffers. Considering that fees started at £3,000 for a day’s use, the Council pulled in over £500,000 from more than fifty productions.
And now, jumping on the cash bandwagon are the developers. Personally, I would have turned the place into ‘Bronco’s’, a fitness centre and self-incarceration unit for those willing to pay.
I landed here back in December 1978; the van drove in and within five minutes of walking into reception, I chinned a screw. BANG!
I was jumped on and put in a body belt and carried back to the van, and off we went.
This had to be a world record! But I must add, we were only stopping off at Oxford for dinner. I was in transit heading for Rampton Asylum.
I was accompanied at the time by Parkhurst screws; they actually thought the whole thing was funny. What was funny? I actually had the Oxford screw’s tooth embedded in my fist. But the other funny thing was, I couldn’t be nicked for it, simply as I had been certified mad and was on my way to the asylum.
Who said you can’t beat the system? This proves that you can.
I will give HM Prison Oxford a 5/10, just for the memory
.
LOCATION: Newport, Isle of Wight – get there by ferry or hovercraft.
CAPACITY: 450 beds.
CATEGORY AT PRESENT: ‘B’ and Protected Witness Unit – Male.
OPENED: 1838.
HISTORY: Although the prison first opened in 1805, it was designed as a Military Hospital. Something called ‘The Parkhurst Prison Act’ came into force in 1838 and the rest is history … just about. Back in those days, they kept prisoners in what they called ‘hulks’.
The forerunner to the punishment of being detained in a hulk was ‘deportation to the colonies and Australia’. This was clearly a form of social vengeance. Banishment was the new punishment, to be sent away from your own shores was becoming popular and replaced penal servitude.
After the feudal system broke up, the wandering, jobless and lower-class-filled slums added to the already full prisons. From 1596 to 1776, deporting these unwanted social outcasts to the colonies relieved pressure on prisons. Transportation to colonies ended in 1776.
Just before the ending of transportation, Captain James Cook discovered Australia in 1770. You lucky Aussies! The plan was to have convicts tame the new land, and 135,000 deportees were sent there between 1787–1875. The conditions in these ships were worse than the conditions in the jails.
The problem of increased prisoner loads stretched England’s facilities from 1776–1875. The (final) solution was to use the old ‘hulks’ or unusable transport ships. This represented an immediate solution to the overcrowding problem, and the hulks could be berthed in rivers and harbours.
Within these hulks there was no segregation, both young and old, male and female, criminals and miscreants were thrown together.
These great stinking hulks were moored off the coasts of England or moored in harbour under the ever-watchful eye of the turnkeys. One such hulk was called the ‘York’ and was moored close by at Portsmouth; they sent the first lot of boys from there to Parkhurst. What a relief this must have been for them to be released from the stinking hulk to a lovely cell. The hulk system of incarcerating prisoners continued until 1858, over eighty years!
The only time the prison swayed from being a male-only members club was when women were permitted to be prisoners from 1863 to 1869. After that short run it returned to male members only.
The maximum-security use of the prison was developed in 1968, just in time for the Kray gang when the prison became a secure dispersal institution.
The Protected Witness (Supergrass) Unit was opened in 1997.
Without a doubt, this is one of our most famous jails … or is it infamous? Whatever, it is a jail that holds many a horrific story.
I first landed here back in 1976; I was a young man of twenty-four years of age. As the ferry left Portsmouth Dock, I felt I was going far away from England.
Around this time, Rod Stewart had a hit record in the charts – ‘I Am Sailing’. Every time I hear that song, I can think back to that first journey over to the Isle of Wight.
For me, Parkhurst Prison was the hardest, toughest, cruellest jail in Britain. It holds the record for the most murders in any jail in the UK.
I was there for three of those murders – Johnny Patton killed McGhee on C Wing; Dougie Wakefield killed Brian Peak on C Unit; and Rogers killed Rocky Hart in the main kitchen.
McGhee copped it in the back with a 7in chib in the dinner queue. As he lay dead on the floor, cons just stepped over him as if he was a bag of spuds. Nobody sees anything in Parkhurst.
Brian Peak had his lot in his cell as he was painting a picture of a beautiful country landscape. Dougie strangled him with a bootlace, and then set about making a lot of holes in his body.
Rocky Hart got stabbed through the neck and back in an argument over a pork chop.
All three killers had killed before. All got a further life sentence. Only one has been released, and that was Johnny Patton … he left prison some years later in a body bag. He hanged himself.
Parkhurst, for me, was an exciting jail, as there was always something going on – parties, hooch, escape plots and violence. Hey, making hooch … now that is a favourite pastime of many a good friend of mine. I can’t recall how many cell parties we’ve had behind bars. When we couldn’t get booze smuggled in, then we’d have to drink some of the prison hooch we’d brew in our illicit stills.
One of the best drinks I’ve tasted was made from orange peel, fruit cocktail and water. All of this was heated in a prison sink and kept warm with prison-issue blankets; well, they do come in handy for something.
Then comes the hard part, keeping it away from the screws, ’cos some of the thieving bastards will drink it … it has happened to us before in Parkhurst! You then hide it away for between five and seven days, then extra sugar is added and it is kept warm for three more days. Skim the head off and get it down your neck … lovely.
Now, if you’ve got access to yeast, then you’re gonna have a real good party in a few days’ time! Yeehaaaa!
When yeast is added to crushed fruit, it starts consuming the natural sugars in the flesh of the fruit. This process carries on until all the sugar has disappeared and then the yeast will die. The resulting beverage (with a bit more love) could be the perfect Beaujolais, if you used grapes.
Should you have access to barley, hops and yeast, then you can make beers and lagers. To get bitter on tap, you need to get the yeast to fall to the bottom of the fermentation container and have a warmer temperature. Hey, I sound like a right alco, but it’s only ’cos I’ve had thirty years’ practice.
To make lager, you need to get the yeast to float on the top of the fermenting container (not aluminium, as alcohol reacts badly with aluminium) and have slightly colder storage conditions. The sugar that is fermented comes from the barley. Hops are added for their flavour and to prevent the growth of certain bacteria, which might cause the beer to go off.
The daddy of hooch is the spirit. Before I can go any further, you have to know how a spirit is made. When a spirit is created in a proper distillery, an already fermented drink is treated to increase its percentage of alcohol. You are increasing the alcoholic proof.
Only once have I had real spirit hooch, and that was just like drinking whisky. But when times are hard you just have to resort to the simplest methods of making hooch. We’d grab a plastic bucket, throw in some raisins, sugar, water and yeast and leave it under the bed. We’d keep an eye on it and so long as we didn’t get our cell spun over by the burglars, we’d have a party the following week.
We’ve even had the boys pick dandelions on the sports field and make dandelion wine. One of the funniest places we’ve brewed hooch is in the inside of a football in a prison gym. The fuel can for the lawnmower comes in handy, too!
Cons lived by a moralistic code, and screws remained screws. There were never any nonces (sex beasts) on the wings and grasses were severely served up big time.
The cons did their bird in the way cons should – like men. We worked out hard in the gym. We cooked our own grub. We had lots of sunbathing. We had good visits and we didn’t give a fuck.
Parkhurst Prison had a proper riot in 1969 and, believe me, they didn’t fancy a second one. That riot was the most violent prison riot of all time. Men like Frank Fraser, Timmy Noonan, Marty Frape, Stan Thompson – proper hardcore cons. The old breed, hearts of lions.
The cons all got smashed up, but so did a lot of screws; one even had his throat cut. That is what you call a riot. Floors drenched with blood. Broken bodies.
Parkhurst held the worst of the worst, but the best of the best, if you follow my meaning. It all depends what side of the wall you are on.
That jail had the ‘cream’ – the top bank robbers, the mobsters, the fraudsters. It even had its own unit for psychopaths.
I met them all at Parkhurst – the Krays, the Richardsons. Never mind Alcatraz and Capone. This was the place, our very own Devil’s Island. And we were doing our bird like men should, our way.
There was respect and a sort
of atmosphere like no other jail. Call it menace … fear … tension. But it was right in your face – ‘Don’t fuck with us.’
The place was buzzing, and behind every door there was a story. A dream turned into a nightmare. One day it would be calm, the next there would be a hostage siege.
One week would pass by peacefully. The next there would be four cuttings and two stabbings or a suicide.
But even the suicides were mysterious. I have worked out with guys on a Tuesday, and by the Friday they are dead. Drug overdoses, hangings, slashed wrists.
I once watched a con rip another con’s eye out. The guy walked away laughing whilst the other con screamed. One con got a broom handle rammed so far up his arse he ended up with a colostomy bag. Another lost his nose.
Even screws got smashed up there. Cut up … stabbed up. It was that sort of place.
I remember when Billy Skingle and Cyril Berkett had it away from the SSU. Cyril got caught almost immediately. But Billy got right away and hid in the woods. Sadly, they found him buried under a pile of earth and so had him locked back up.
Billy was serving natural life for shooting a copper seven times in the canister. Billy was a funny fucker, he used to say, ‘It was a faulty trigger.’ It was years later he died up in Full Sutton Prison. But the truth is, Billy died the day the judge at the Bailey sentenced him.
Parkhurst Prison holds some strange mixed emotions for me. It was while I was there I fell on bad times; I was wrapped up in violence and attempted murder, I also suffered multiple stab wounds and almost died. And, to top it all, it was Parkhurst that actually certified me criminally insane.
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