So all these sex killers are humping each other and having a bloody party, while Bronson rots in a cage and is fed under the door as though I am the mad dog with rabies. Somebody tell me I am dreaming it.
Wakefield has had its fair share of murders – Bob Maudsley killed two cons in one day; Tony McUlloch killed a con; John Patton killed a second con. All in all, I would say there have been a good ten murders in the last 30 years there.
I remember when Colin Robinson steamed into a paedophile with a blade, that was in the 1970s. Fuck me, he cut him to bits. The guy lost five pints of blood before they got him sewn up. His face was like King’s Cross Station. Awesome! A screw saved him by holding his neck together.
Only recently, the monster who killed little Sarah Payne got stabbed up. That was nice. Let us hope he gets some more of that. Next it will be someone doing his eyes like the ripper had his done.
That was funny when fat Joe Purkuss took a monster hostage. He demanded a six-pack of beer and a box of crisps or he would cut his throat. True to his word, he cut the throat! Ha.
Another time, big Steve Lannigan, a Manchester lad serving life, took a work screw hostage. For that, he got sent to Broadmoor. That was twenty-five years ago. Steve is still inside.
There used to be some sensible screws in Wakefield. Nowadays, they are mostly hobbits. Over-paid and under-worked. But who knows, the odd good one might be lurking about waiting to give Bronco an easy time.
I personally feel the place is now a joke, and giving condoms to sex monsters is like giving me a shotgun. I am a robber; I use a shotgun as a weapon of my trade. They are sex cases. Work it out; what do they use to help them commit a crime?
It is fucking sick and a disgrace. And, you, the taxpayers are buying them condoms, and their TV sets and their nice gyms and nice cosy cells with carpets and curtains.
Who is fucking mad now? And you let me rot in a cage with sod all. But the bigger joke is, they are never to be freed, but I am. So shouldn’t I be getting the soft touch, a taste of the rehabilitation? Look, face facts, what good are they? Why not just exterminate the filth?
One sure fact is … I am no danger to your kids or your old grandmother. And I am not going to climb in your house and nick your TV set or mug your old mam. But it is me who they call a danger to society. I had reports that people were slagging me off on a website guest book, saying they wouldn’t want me as a neighbour. Well, I just hope they don’t have kids and end up with a sex monster living next-door to them ’cos they’ll wish they had me on the other side of them, but maybe when it’s too late!
Wakefield is a joke, with double standards. Stuff your condoms up your arses. I mean, this story may help you understand my anger. A screw from Wakefield Prison was jailed in April 2003 for twenty-eight days after he sent sexually explicit material to the husband of his former lover.
The screw, Terry Armstrong, from Monk Bertton near Barnsley, admitted breaching a court order restraining him from contacting the woman or her family. Armstrong scrawled graffiti on walls and a motorway bridge at Higham, near Barnsley after the five-year affair ended, but just over a month after that court appearance, Armstrong sent a sex-aid catalogue to the woman’s husband. Wonder if it had any blowup dolls in it?
I will give HM Prison Wakefield 0/10.
PS. It wasn’t like that when Principal Officer O’Hagan was up there. He would have told the Governor what to do with his condoms. Nowadays, screws will lick arse to get up the ladder of success.
LOCATION: Walton, Liverpool.
CAPACITY: 1,600 beds.
CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Local and Remand – Male.
OPENED: 1855.
HISTORY: Replaced an even older prison in Liverpool. During World War II, Hitler saw fit to bomb the prison; pity he didn’t destroy it all. The aerial shot shows the extensive buildings within the grounds.
It was back in 1974 I first landed here. Well, I tell a lie. I actually first went there in 1970, but that was to visit a friend. This is another prison that has had its name bastardised by the cons. Officially the place is called ‘HM Prison Liverpool’, but us cons have worked for many years at giving it its real name of ‘Walton’.
When I hit there in 1974, the Christmas Number One single was Mudd’s ‘Lonely This Christmas’ … and by God was it!
This is another big old Victorian prison; in fact, it shares the last execution with Strangeways. They hanged two on the same day simultaneously at Strangeways and at Walton, and after that, hanging was abolished. The Moors Monsters, Brady and Hindley, just missed out! Although I think Hindley went the best way possible, nice and slow and done to a crisp … anyone for toast?
The prison was infested with rats and cockroaches. It’s also one of the old jails that has got five landings, so it is quite tall. I should know better than most how tall it is, as in the summer of 1985, I spent a glorious week up on their roof.
It’s a tough old place with old-time rules and a strict regime. But the Scousers are a good-humoured bunch so they just laugh if off. They’re just old characters in Walton.
Some of the old screws are a funny lot, witty and jokers. I recall one old screw used to keep a bag of hard-boiled sweets under his hat. He often used to give the cons one.
Another one, they used to call ‘Mr G’ – I don’t know why – but he had been there forty years and in all that time he had never once kicked any con. He used to tell all the old stories of days gone by. I used to tell him, ‘Write a fucking book, it would be a number-one bestseller.’
But, sadly, in all jails there are the Gestapo rats with the sliced peak hats and studded boots and Walton was no exception. And that is why I tore their lovely roof off.
The bashing they gave me! My tearaway exploits cost prison HQ a quarter of a million pounds. It cost me more time but it was worth it just to look back on such a victory.
The food in Walton is shit; total and utter shit. Even the drinking water tastes like river filth. The cells are spacious, the good old type of cells. Long and roomy. I believe now they have got toilets and sinks in, but not in my time they didn’t. It was all piss pots and slopping out. And jugs and bowls of water. One bath a week.
I remember one morning, I slung a pot of shit all over two screws. Why? Well why not? I just felt like it. They were two dogs anyway. Always making trouble for us cons. So I shut them up. All the cons cheered. I got a bloody good doing over for that. Yeah, good old days.
Liverpool Prison still speaks of when the cat went missing. It was a big chubby brown cat that all the cons loved to watch through their cell bars when it pounced on rats. The cat was the best rat-catcher in any prison. Cons idolised that cat and some would even give it their rations of milk. Then, mysteriously, the cat disappeared and nobody saw it for ages.
Word went around that a big fat rat had killed it. Rumours had it that a screw’s dog killed it or even old age had crept upon it. But nobody knew the real truth until the boxer Paul Sykes walked out of his cell with a Davey Crocket hat on! I don’t know if he’d killed and skinned it, but he had it on his head. This story is still being told now.
There was an old picture house in one of the old workshops where they used to show films. It even had an upstairs balcony. We got a film once a week in those days. There was no TV then. It was a movie projector on a big screen. I saw the film The Magnificent Seven there, it was brilliant.
During weekdays, we would wear overalls and T-shirts. At weekends we wore what were called ‘Greys’ – jacket, grey itchy trousers and a cotton striped shirt. You had to wear them, otherwise you were nicked!
There was no gym either. I hear Walton has all changed now. Not before time. But to me, it will always be a shit life. But I will say this much, I really have no bitterness. I actually had some laughs in that place. And let’s be truthful, I did have the last laugh when I ripped the place apart.
I will give HM Prison Walton 5/10. Not bad, eh?
LOCATION: Wandsworth, London.
CAPACITY: 1,400 bed
s.
CATEGORY AT PRESENT: Local – Male.
OPENED: 1851.
HISTORY: Originally the County Jail, look at the aerial shot and study the typical radial design; see the wings looking like the arms of a giant windmill. You can also see some separate buildings that were once used to house females; they now house what are called VPs – Vulnerable Prisoners – who are at risk of violence from other prisoners.
When Wandsworth Prison opened in 1851, it was called ‘The Surrey House of Correction’. It was another one built on the panopticon design, which allowed for 700 prisoners to have a cell of their own and a toilet of their own, yet all that vanished and it reverted to slopping out piss pots.
The slopping out started in 1870 when the toilets were removed from the cells to make room for extra prisoners. Slopping out came in and stayed until 1996. All for the sake of cramming in more prisoners!
The execution duties were transferred to Wandsworth Prison when Horsemonger Lane Gaol closed in 1878. And again, like all hanging prisons, an execution shed was built in one of the yards and it housed the hanging tackle. From 1878 to 1961, 135 prisoners were to be put to death by hanging. 134 men and one woman.
The hanging shed was dubbed ‘The Cold Meat Shed’, which remained until 1916, when, like all hanging prisons, the facilities were moved indoors into the cell area where a new facility was constructed within the prison.
Would you believe that this evil lot of bastards kept the gallows there until 1992 just because the death penalty was still a theoretical possibility for the crimes of treason, piracy with violence, mutiny in the armed forces and arson in a naval shipyard. They even tested the gallows every six months, probably with ‘Old Bill’ right up until 1992. Finally, the gallows were dismantled and transferred to the Prison Service Museum at Rugby. They just can’t lay off it, can they? And the old execution chamber … it’s used by cons as a TV room!
William Marwood carried out the first execution at Wandsworth on 8 October 1878 when he hanged Thomas Smithers, 31, for the murder of his wife.
The first woman, and only woman, to be hanged at Wandsworth Prison was Kate Webster in 1879 for the brutal murder of her mistress.
The introduction of the Treachery Act of 1945 stated that: ‘If, with intent to help the enemy, any person does, or attempts or conspires with any other person to do any act which is designed or likely to give assistance to the naval, military or air operations of the enemy, to impede such operations of His Majesty’s forces, or to endanger life, shall be guilty of felony and shall on conviction suffer death.’
This Act was responsible for the hangings of nine men at Wandsworth. But one of the more bizarre Acts brought into play was the Treason Act of 1351, which was responsible for John Amery facing treason charges. He was hanged on Wednesday, 19 December 1945.
One of the more infamous characters of the Second World War was the man dubbed ‘Lord Haw Haw’. The owner of the voice that became so familiar was William Joyce (1906–1946), a Native American, brought up in Galway, Eire, who had taken up German citizenship during the Second World War before leaving England with a fraudulently obtained passport.
Joyce was born of an Irish father and an English mother in the United States in 1906. He went to Ireland with his parents in 1909, was educated at Catholic schools, and was brought up in a household that was fervently loyal to the British Crown.
For his pro-British stance, his father suffered having much of his property burned in the Irish rebellion of 1916. Maybe this is what gave William the impetus to go against these ideologies.
As the situation in Ireland worsened, young William sought revenge by becoming a youthful informer for the paramilitary auxiliaries, the hated ‘Black and Tans’.
By 1921, Michael Joyce took his family to England. William, although not yet 16, joined the regular Army; he gave his age as 18, explaining that he had never been issued with a birth certificate. His army career, however, was short-lived; his real age was discovered when he was admitted to hospital with rheumatic fever and he was discharged after serving only four months. Joyce, being a fighter, made his way back and, in 1923, he entered London University, where he joined the
Officer Training Corps. A year later, he became involved in the embryonic British Fascist movement. In October 1924, during a scuffle with what he later called ‘Jewish Communists’ at the Lambeth Baths Hall in south-east London, someone tried to cut his throat with a razor. The woollen scarf around Joyce’s neck saved his life, but he was slashed across the right cheek from the corner of his mouth to behind his ear, leaving a scar that marred his once handsome features and gave him a rather sinister appearance that enhanced his tough reputation on the political platform.
By the early 1930s, Joyce was heavily involved with the British Union of Fascists, led by Sir Oswald Mosley. But the Fascist cause made little headway in Great Britain and, in 1939, as the clouds of war gathered, Joyce and his second wife, Margaret, emigrated to Germany.
Out of admiration for Hitler, Joyce founded the British National Socialist Party. He fled to Germany before the start of the war in August 1939 and was eventually employed by the Nazi regime in their propaganda war on Britain. The Joyces arrived in Berlin, with British passports, on 27 August 1939. Four days later, Germany invaded Poland. It was then that Joyce received a shock. A friend told him that if war broke out between Great Britain and Germany, he and his wife would be separated and interned!
Joyce tried to leave Germany but a bizarre set of circumstances meant he couldn’t use German currency to buy tickets for travelling outside Germany – the Joyces stayed in Germany and eventually William and Margaret Joyce worked for the German Radio Corporation.
Lord Haw-Haw was the name given to Joyce by the Daily Express newspaper when referring to a journalist that had written: ‘A gent I’d like to meet is moaning periodically from Zeesen [one of the main German transmitters]. He speaks English of the haw-haw, dammit-get-out-of-my-way variety, and his strong suit is gentlemanly indignation.’
And so Lord Haw-Haw he became to the millions of Britons who, anxious for news of the war, tuned in to German radio broadcasts. The voice of Haw-Haw became the most hated voice to come out of Germany, but his was also one of the most fascinating. The legacy of a broken nose, as the result of a childhood fight in Eire, gave him a unique twang. He would pronounce the word Germany with a peculiar intonation so that it sounded more like ‘Jairmany’ – this became the identifying trademark of his upper-class drawl.
The British authorities became worried about Joyce’s contribution to the German propaganda effort. He was clever; often enquiring about the welfare of British personalities. Lord Haw-Haw made his last broadcast to Britain on 30 April 1945, the day Hitler is alleged to have committed suicide. ‘Britain’s victories are barren. They leave her poor and they leave her people hungry. They leave her bereft of the markets and the wealth that she possessed six years ago. But, above all, they leave her with an immensely greater problem than she had then. We are nearing the end of one phase in Europe’s history, but the next will be no happier. It will be grimmer, harder and perhaps bloodier. And now I ask you earnestly, can Britain survive? I am profoundly convinced that without German help she cannot.’
Tentative plans had been laid to smuggle the Joyces out of Germany by Josef Goebbels, the German Propaganda Minister, but Goebbels died in Berlin and the plans came to nothing. They tried to escape to Sweden via Denmark, but Allied forces had landed ahead of them and they were forced to turn back. The end of the war found them in the village of Kupfermuhle, near the Danish border. Their apartment was visited several times by British soldiers, who took them for an ordinary German couple and showed no interest in them.
Joyce was out walking one morning, soon after Germany’s capitulation, in the woods. He stumbled upon two British officers who were gathering wood for a fire. He spoke to them in French and walked on. Their suspicions aroused, the officers followed him. One of them, Lieutenant Perry, an interpreter, calle
d out, ‘You wouldn’t happen to be William Joyce, would you?’ Reaching into an inside pocket for his German passport, Joyce looked to be reaching for a weapon. Perry fired his revolver. The bullet passed through both of Joyce’s thighs and he fell to the ground.
He was taken to Luneburg, where he spent time in hospital recovering from his wounds, and then to Brussels, where he was detained while the British Parliament hurriedly passed the The Treason Act 1945, which made treachery a capital offence. This was obviously done in readiness for Joyce’s trial.
On 16 June, he was flown to London and taken to Brixton Prison. His trial began at the Old Bailey on 17 September 1945. It was a complex business; much hinged on Joyce’s possession of a British passport, which as you will recall was obtained by fraudulent means, and his allegiance to the Crown.
His defence argued that, as an American citizen, he owed no allegiance to the Crown and therefore was not guilty of treason. The prosecution’s argument was that, as a British passport-holder, he did owe this allegiance. The outcome was never seriously in doubt, and no one showed much surprise when the jury, after only twenty-three minutes, found him guilty of high treason.
His appeal was dismissed on 1 November 1945 and Albert Pierrepoint hanged him at Wandsworth Prison on Thursday, 3 January 1946. The following day, the last execution for treason in the UK took place at Pentonville Prison, that of Theodore Schurch.
To the end, Joyce remained unrepentant. After the execution, Margaret Joyce was interned in Germany while her status was debated. She died in London in 1972, having regained her British nationality.
Even though there was solid evidence against Margaret (Lady Haw-Haw) to convict her of High Treason by virtue of the fact that she had acted as assistant treasurer to her husband’s National Socialist League, in reality, she, too, was a German citizen. Although born in Manchester, England, she relinquished her British citizenship when moving to Germany.
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