Bronson 3

by Charles Bronson

  The jail, with a small population of less than 170 prisoners, stands in the grounds of Hewell Grange Estate, a former manor house owned by the Earl of Plymouth. There is also a male open prison nearby.

  Such a sighting of a monk could be due to the past history of the estate and the fact that it is near Bordesley Abbey in Redditch, which would account for the apparition being a monk. On seeing the apparition, both staff and inmates admit to having had strange sensations. Sleep well, girls!

  HM PRISON DURHAM

  All old jails have to have a ghost or two. Durham Prison also, apparently, has its own ghost. The story goes that in December 1947, an inmate stabbed a fellow prisoner to death with a table knife. Then, a few days later, another prisoner was put into this same cell and, the next morning, was found in the corner of the cell in a huddled up state of fear. What he told the screws sent chills of fear down their spines; he had seen the murder re-enacted. Eventually, the cell was converted into a storeroom due to prisoners refusing to be put into it.

  HM PRISON OXFORD

  Although I didn’t stay at Oxford for more than the blink of an eye, I did follow up my stay there by digging around into its past. Well, what is a man to do in his cell all day but read and exercise? There have been many ghostly happenings at Oxford Prison, and I do a like a ghost story or two.

  As I’ve already said earlier on, you surely can’t escape hauntings by those who have passed on inside prison. What about all those people executed behind the walls of pain and suffering? What about executing a woman by hanging, isn’t that an evil thing to do, unless it’s Rose West or the like?

  Back in the 1700s, they were hanging women like it was going out of fashion. One particular woman to receive the neck bungee jump was Mary Blandy; she was executed in 1752 for the alleged murder of her father. Her ghost is said to haunt the area and has been seen darting across the top of the Castle Mound.

  As the prison drew to the end of its life, a group of prisoners held a séance in their cell. Afterwards, it is said, they experienced poltergeist activity. From what I read, a priest was called in to perform an exorcism.

  Back in the late 1980s, two security guards were on duty one night, sitting in A Wing offices overlooking the stairs to the basement. As they sat there, they saw a white misty shape rise up the steps towards them before fading away.

  A Wing seems to be the most haunted of places in Oxford Prison; this is confirmed from an incident that took place in September 1998.

  His dog growling and snarling, as if in pain, alerted a security guard on patrol outside the entrance to A Wing. The guard spotted a pair of black figures; they turned in his direction. These ‘intruders’ seemed to lack arms and legs, and they were hovering above the ground!

  Now, I’ve never read about ghosts being able to talk, but the guard swore that he heard the figures say, ‘We live here, why are you here?’ After running to his van and making for the gate, the figures were in front of him.

  The following morning, his wife found him sitting in shock in his van outside their house. The guard couldn’t remember anything between leaving the prison and the morning. In a bizarre follow-up, his guard dog died a few days later.

  In another A Wing incident, two members of the cleaning staff were cleaning A Wing when they heard a voice screaming, ‘Help, let me out!’ The voice was coming from the cell area, but when they went to investigate, the voice was coming from the area they had just left.

  Another incident experienced by a cleaner who was cleaning a ground-floor cell in A Wing happened when she sensed someone enter the room. Turning around, she expected to see one of the other two cleaners in the block, but later on found them both to be on the third floor.

  Other ghostly happenings in or near A Wing include a cleaner’s bucket tipping and spinning by itself, a full binbag lift itself at least 3ft into the air and the sound of a stick being dragged along the nearby railings. Other strange happenings include voices being heard to shout from empty cells, and physical damage to items stored in the empty prison.

  One of the other wings reported to be haunted is C Wing’s recess, so no slopping out now!

  HM PRISON STRANGEWAYS

  The set of ghost stories wouldn’t be complete without old Strangeways Prison having a story to tell. Night duty staff have often seen a mysterious man in a dark suit carrying a small briefcase scurrying about the place, walking along B Wing from just outside the old condemned cell towards the central control area. Some of the staff gave chase to the sinister-looking figure, but as the figure got to the old iron staircase leading up to the main office, he vanished into thin air. Some say that this apparition is John Ellis who committed suicide in 1932.

  9

  LAST MAN/WOMAN HANGING

  And now we get to the moment when the violin starts to play and you get your handkerchief out to wipe the tears away. But I don’t want any of that. I will just give you facts, thousands of them … all dead!

  Prison is no holiday camp, regardless of what these politicians tell you … look at how they lied about the Iraq situation and saying we were all going to be fizzed out by chemical weapons … bollocks! And so the same is true of our penal system!

  I would hope that you now have a grasp of what it’s like being a prisoner. Even if it’s just being an armchair prisoner, then you will have learned something.

  A life of hard labour was imposed on prisoners when they were given such tasks as turning the crank machine, shot drill or climbing the treadmill. Man has always taken delight in imposing such punishments on his fellow human beings. These useless and exhausting activities were thought to act as a deterrent and discourage prisoners from committing further crimes on their release … as well as giving great pleasure to those imposing such punishments. Haven’t you heard of masochists?

  Samson in Prison from the painting by E Armitage which was housed in the Bristol Museum and Art gallery

  It was common to impose such brutal punishments as every prisoner being expected to walk six hours a day on a treadmill in twenty-nine-minute increments with five-minute breaks, covering the equivalent of a 6,000ft incline. The tread wheel was rather like the elongated wheel of a paddle steamer with twenty-four steps instead of paddles. Prisoners stood, hanging on to a bar or strap, in individual compartments over these steps. The wheel turned under their weight. Prisoners had to keep climbing or fall off. Though they were widely used in English prisons, few tread wheels were built in Scotland and all were removed by the 1840s. Nowadays, these brutal punishments are outlawed in the UK.

  Such punishments as the illustrious crank machine formed part of a useless labour regime that was introduced in the middle of the nineteenth century to make prison life tougher for those prisoners sentenced to hard labour. As I mentioned earlier, the prisoner (male) had to turn the handle some 14,400 times a day forcing four large cups or ladles through sand inside a drum. The number of revolutions was registered on a dial, so no one could cheat. The warder could, and usually would, make the task harder by tightening a screw – hence the slang word for prison warder. In Inveraray Jail, there was only one crank machine and little evidence that it was, in fact, used.

  Another form of hard labour was the shot drill, which was practised in certain English prisons. The drill consisted of stooping down without bending the knees, picking up a heavy cannon-ball (much like the Atlas stones used in the TV competition The World’s Strongest Man) bringing it up slowly until it is level with your chest, then taking three steps to the right, replacing it on the ground and then stepping back three paces … and then starting the whole mundane procedure all over again. All of this was done while the screws shouted and bawled at you!

  Moving away from the self-inflicted punishment of the treadmill and other highly exciting machinery, what about when screws dish out the punishments? Screws assaulting us cons? Nah, that can’t be true! Well, here is some proof for you; a prison officer from Barnet was jailed for three-and-a-half years for his part in beating up a convi
ct for his own ‘bizarre and sadistic entertainment’.

  You are going to say that I’m making this one up … wrong. The screw’s name is Darren Fryer, of Barnet; he was sentenced with two other screws for assaulting Steven Banks, an inmate of Wormwood Scrubs Prison, in March 1998. You’ve read about my claims of prison brutality in HMP Wormwood Scrubs; well, here is the proof.

  The court heard how Fryer, Robert Lawrie and senior officer John Nicol, who both received sentences of four years, subjected inmate Steven Banks to a beating, crying, ‘There’s going to be a death in custody tonight!’ With that, the three screws then smashed the con head-first against a wall before repeatedly punching and kicking him.

  Passing sentence at Blackfriars Crown Court, Judge Charles Byers, said, ‘You three men are guilty of not only an appalling assault but also of the grossest breach of that authority, responsibility and trust.’

  The screws, as usual, claimed that Banks had attacked them with a mop handle! This is the normal ploy used by bent screws, but the jury rejected this and convicted them of assault and actual bodily harm.

  At the end of the trial, The judge added, ‘Not only did you commit the assault, you sought to cover the matter by charging him with assault on you, and saw to it his record was endorsed as a violent prisoner, particularly violent to prison officers. I can only conclude this episode was done for your own bizarre and sadistic entertainment.’ So there was also proof that these screws were falsifying inmates’ records and putting them down as ‘violent’.

  The court cases involving twenty-seven prison officers from Wormwood Scrubs who were accused of assaulting inmates took fourteen months to conclude. Only three others were found guilty with the twentyone remaining officers being acquitted. Why wasn’t my case put in with the multi-party action against the Home Office?

  DEATHS IN POLICE CUSTODY TO 2001

  A total of ninety-four prisoners took their own lives in Britain in 2002, 9 compared with seventy-three the previous year, a rise of 29 per cent. Many more prisoners across the world have died in uprisings and fires caused by overcrowding.

  DEATHS IN PRISON 1990 – MARCH 2002

  (ENGLAND AND WALES)

  Source: Inquest monitoring – Figures to 26 February 2002

  OVERCROWDING KILLS PRISONERS

  As the prison population increases then so will the suicide rate among prisoners rise.

  In an uprising against overcrowding in Lincoln Prison, one prisoner, Lee Blake, died. At the current rate, the British prison population is set to reach close to 100,000 by 2009. In a survey conducted by the London School of Medicine, it is revealed that black people are six times more likely to be sent to prison than white people.

  The current Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owers, has noted the situation of having inmates locked in cells for twenty-three hours a day, and states that ‘prison overcrowding threatens all four of the Inspectorate’s tests of a healthy prison – safety, respect, purposeful activity and resettlement.’

  Believe it or not, Scotland only has one women’s prison, Corton Vale. You would think all would be cosy at such a place, but it has seen three suicides since May 2001 and it only has 290 inmates. The population in Corton Vale in 1996 was only 180; maybe now you can see the correlation between the increases in population and the suicide rate. Former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Clive Fairweather, has said that overcrowding contributes to a ‘recipe for disaster … a large proportion of the women at Corton Vale are more of a danger to themselves than they are to the public.’

  Take a moment to think about Richard Jones, a remand prisoner who hanged himself in Gloucester Prison, the third suicide in the prison in two years. A report on Gloucester Prison from the Prison Service said overcrowding there was creating unacceptable living conditions.

  DEATHS OF BLACKS, ASIANS AND 9 MIXED-RACE PRISONERS 1969 to November 2001

  Key

  Po: Police

  Pr: Prisons, Young Offenders Institutes, Remand Centres

  Ps: Psychiatric Hospitals

  Figures courtesy Race Relations Board

  The year 2002–03 saw the highest number of suicides on record – 105.

  Prison is not the answer to crime, it is a soft option. Something more radical is needed! I will end now with a quote – I can’t recall who came up with it originally, but it just about says it all:

  ‘THE ONLY PERSON WORSE THAN THE FELON WHO COMMITS A CRIME IS THE MAN WHO LOCKS HIM UP.’

  For more information about my other books, access my website: www.bronsonmania.com

  Copyright

  Published by John Blake Publishing Ltd,

  3 Bramber Court, 2 Bramber Road,

  London W14 9PB, England

  www.johnblakepublishing.co.uk

  www.facebook.com/johnblakepub

  twitter.com/johnblakepub

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those may be liable in law accordingly.

  ePub ISBN 978 1 78219 251 0

  Mobi ISBN 978 1 78219 289 3

  PDF ISBN 978 1 78219 329 6

  This edition published in paperback in 2010

  Parts of this book have previously been published as The Good Prison Guide

  ISBN: 978 1 84358 190 1

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Design by www.envydesign.co.uk

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  © Text copyright Charles Bronson and Stephen Richards

  Papers used by John Blake Publishing are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  Every attempt has been made to contact the relevant copyright-holders, but some were unobtainable. We would be grateful if the appropriate people could contact us.