Behind the Crime
Colin Ferguson
Austin Macauley Publishers
Behind the Crime
About the Author
About the Book
Dedication
Copyright Information
Part One
Taking the Plunge
Harry and the Angels
Trio
West London The Hostel and Balham
Fussing and Feuding
Welcome to South Lambeth
Oddities
The Sex Crime
Danny and the Dole
Polly – Sometimes Justice Is Not Enough
Sugar Daddy
Hercules
Them!
Arthur
Holloway – 1970 and on the Move to Prison
The’Sump’
The Women
Rosie
Elsie
Sally and the Chaplain
Myra Hindley
Eve
Mary
Keep My Cell for Me
Alcoholic
At the Door
Miriam
Tea at Lyons Corner House
The Electric Fire
Bad Dreams and Blue Blobs
Helen
Kerry
Let Me In!
Keep the Door Open
Not Good Enough
Hitting the Wall
Valentines
The Campaign
Battersea
The Chairs
The Flannel
When Love Is Not Enough
Murder Will Always Be a Bad Dream
Like, Man!
Responsibility
Cockroaches
Illness
Transgender
Bungled!
In the Wardrobe
Grass
That’s Not Me!
Patience
Potatoes
Reading
The Brick
Broken Jaw
Ginger
A Kiss at Waitrose
The Long Shadow
The Latter Days
Excuses
The End and a New Beginning
Looking Back
About the Author
The author was born in Perth but moved to Richmond, Surrey, in 1948 and attended Tiffin School, Kingston. He served in the RAF, followed by 9 years in the Bank of England, then retraining as a Probation Officer. He worked as such in Brixton and Battersea as well as two years in Holloway Prison. Came on promotion to Reading in 1979. He retired early, in 1996 and then spent ten years as a Family Mediator. Since then he has written two novels and several books of worship material, mainly new hymns. Also took a master’s degree in Criminal Justice at University of Reading in 1987. He is married to his wife, Janet, for nearly sixty years and has four children. He is still active in local life and church – a lay preacher for sixty years.
About the Book
Whatever the crime, there is a human story behind it, and though many crimes are frightening and even horrifying, most of them are a story of human failure. In this book, Colin tells about his journey into crime from the safe environs of the Bank of England into the chaos of disordered lives. The book is full of people with whom he worked from the late 1960s to his move-on promotion to Reading in 1979. It was South London reeling from the power of the Krays and Richardson gangs and the coming of young children to join parents who had come to England from the Caribbean ten years before. For over two years it was the desperation of Holloway prison. They are only pen pictures and are not meant to go into great depth neither do they excuse the crimes that brought them to court. They are simply a look-behind the crime to meet the people. The events may be historical, but they are still being relived today.
Dedication
With my great respect for all those involved in the Criminal Justice System, especially the Probation Service.
Copyright Information
Copyright © Colin Ferguson (2019)
The right of Colin Ferguson to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528938723 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528969659 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2019)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Part One
Taking the Plunge
It doesn’t seem like fifty years ago but it was 1967 when I decided to become a probation officer. A career in the Bank of England seems a long way from working as a probation officer in Brixton, or in Holloway Prison, but this was the journey I took. I could truthfully say that my own unsettled childhood experience often made me feel there but for the grace of God it could have been me on the receiving end.
But here I was at twenty-seven, married with two children and a mortgage when I was struck down with TB and for some time thought, I may never recover. The result was nine months off work and two years of taking things more gently that made me review my life. My voluntary involvement with an open youth club run by a church in Battersea led me slowly to see this as what I was meant to do. Trips to the Juvenile Court with club members led me into contact with the service and I had a high regard for two of my friends who were both in the service.
Three years later, when I was fully fit again, I took a leap of faith from the security and comfort of the bank into the chaotic world of criminal justice.
I couldn’t have done it without the wonderful support of my wife, especially as we had two young children at the time. I am sure my mother thought I had gone mad.
Janet shared with me the good days and the more frequent hard days for it was not like the bank, a job where you came home in the evening and that was that. Probation became a way of life and I am so glad that I had the great experience of working with so many dedicated colleagues in both the service and the courts, and of course the people themselves.
Why did I do it? The probation service grew out of the police court missionary services and for me, even though the church connection had long since been replaced by professional training, faith and a strong belief in the worth of everyone were at the core of my decision, and they still are. Even though I, like everyone else, could hate some of the things that they did, I could still retain a respect for them as individuals and believe in the power of hope even in the darkest corners of society.
I suppose that it was meeting with Harry that started me thinking that this was the direction I should follow. He was in hospital with me in 1965 and so it seems right to begin with his story.
Harry and the Angels
He came in with a prison officer attached to his wrist via handcuffs. Thankfully, they were removed before he went for his operation which was for a serious breathing condition.
I was at that time very involved in the local Churches together group and three of my ministerial friends all called to see me at the same time. They were gathered around the bottom of my bed, which was also across from the end of Harry’s bed just as he came out of his anaesthetic. They were the first thing he saw and he told me later how he had thought he wa
s dead and now facing the angels who would judge whether he went up or down.
Harry had a long criminal record having started early by being taken by his father on burglaries. His father died in prison before the war and Harry was called up and served in France and North Africa before he was invalided out with a gammy leg and a chest wound which was what still brought him into hospital. His mother sadly, was killed in the blitz.
After the war, he was on his own, unable to walk properly and with no family support he soon began to drift back into crime, especially burglary. He told me, and I had no reason to disbelieve him, that he only burgled for food and any loose money.
Being caught gave him security and prison was therefore not a problem. We felt sorry for Harry who we could see as a casualty of the war and of poor education and homelessness.
Two years later, he was released and we offered him a room to give him a chance to find some security for himself. We knew it was a gamble but we wanted to give him a chance. He was obviously very grateful and went to all his appointments and looked at various options. Sadly, he was unable to get a job as his injury and his record militated against him.
All was fine for nearly a month and then he disappeared with half of our housekeeping money. I always thought that it was a good sign as he could so easily have taken the lot. He also left behind most of his possessions. Poor though they were, the money he had stolen would not have been enough to replace them.
It was three years later when I was rung by the local hospital almoner to say that he was there and that he was dying. He had asked her to ring and to say that he was sorry to have let us down. He died before I was able to get in to see him.
There was no indication of him having been in court for the last three years.
The cynic might say he hadn’t been caught but that would have been unusual as the prison was the nearest thing he had to a home. Perhaps our kindness had given him more respect for others and for himself. We were the last people he remembered before he died and that meant something.
It was September 1967, when I started my first practice placement in Tottenham. That experience is told in the following recollection.
Trio
I had made the leap and here I was in North London on my first practice placement. My supervisor was very good and showed me round the courts and made me read all his records to see in particular how to write reports for the court. After only two weeks, he said, “Now it’s your turn.”
He came with me on my first home visit and I think even he got more than expected. It was simple enough on the surface. A fourteen-year old boy had been charged with stealing a bicycle. He came to see us and it soon became clear he was poorly educated and just wanted to be one of the gang. The home visit was what made it different. His mother was Spanish and had very poor English and his father was deaf and dumb but only spoke sign language in Spanish. It was not a good idea to get the boy to translate for us so his twelve-year-old sister did so. She spoke to mother, she signed to father and back again. It was my first report, checked of course by Kevin, my supervising officer.
I was then given a report to do by myself. “It’s a fairly simple one,” said Kevin and then he went on holiday for two weeks with me covering for his work. “There shouldn’t be much to do and you can always ask Fred for help.”
The two brothers, aged fourteen and twelve, were from a travelling family and had been selling wicker baskets on the street. They were just doing what their family always did. Then mother said something about social services.
After a lot of digging, I discovered that the social service records were having trouble following the family.
Two days before my report was due in, I discovered they were well known to a social worker in Suffolk. There was a care order on the older boy going back to when he was seven, when he had been responsible for drowning another child. They were both conditionally discharged for the present offences on condition that Social Services became involved.
Tom was one of Kevin’s probationers with a very large family and a horse which pulled his totter’s cart as well as a small menagerie in the garden. They lived in an old Victorian mansion. Tom was banned from driving for many years and had therefore taken to a horse and cart to do his totting (rag and bone man).
Tom had called in to see Kevin, but got me instead. He was livid about his oldest daughter being pregnant again. I did very little other than to let him tell me his concern, which bearing in mind, she already had two children did seem over the top. I promised to let Kevin know the moment he returned. Tom was waiting for him on Monday morning.
Fortunately, I had left a note on the top of Kevin’s desk. Later I discovered why Tom was so irate. He was the father of his oldest daughter’s two children, but not of this one. Those were the easy ones! – Welcome to probation!
West London The Hostel and Balham
After three months in Tottenham, there was a more intense theoretical training on the Home Office Training course in West London. Success here led me to a more active placement in Balham when I had my own first responsibility for a case from court report on. Finally, I was ready to be released on to the criminal justice world.
First though, was a placement for four weeks in a probation hostel in Kent. Set in the deepest countryside, the Hostel was in fact an old farmhouse and the work was still farming. I was to be as one of the residents for this placement, which meant cleaning the cowshed, feeding the pigs, washing up after the twenty residents had been fed. As an added attraction, we had one of the worst snowfalls for a long time and had to dig ourselves out of the four hundred yards to the gate. Needless to say, the residents thoroughly enjoyed the snow but not the digging.
Not surprisingly, I caught flu and was confined to the house. Just my luck, this was after all the hard work. As I wasn’t too badly affected, I soon found a useful task in sorting out the house accounts and by the time I had done that, I was able to return home for Christmas and prepare for my next placement in Balham.
One of my colleagues was about to retire after thirty years because he had suddenly realised that he was supervising the grandson of one of his early cases. He had been in Balham all of his career.
Talking with him made me realise that probation would never be a 9:00 to 5:00 job. As I have often said, I always knew when I had to begin but I never could be sure of when it would end.
Balham was still a fairly protected time as I was again only there for three months and most of the work was in court taking notes and occasionally seeing a referral from the court. Often this would be what was termed a matrimonial case. One never knew what might turn up as one of my female colleagues found out, when one man insisted on showing her where his wife had bitten him. It was such a referral that brought me into contact with Leroy and his wife.
Fussing and Feuding
One of the first such cases showed me where my education proved rather lacking as Leroy Johnson was sent to me. He was a slight man with a very pronounced Jamaican accent which was rich with words that I had to learn quickly. Leroy was the first of many contacts with the black community.
He was in court because his wife had asked for a divorce. They had lived together for some years and only married last year. It was as Leroy put it, “She only got married so she could divorce me. Ever since then, she has been fussing and feuding me.” (Which I gathered was giving him hell.) I promised I would write to her and invite her to come and see me as well, which she did.
She was a small quiet woman, who did not seem quite the person who was always ‘fussing and feuding’ with Leroy. She was concerned that they had no children and it was down to him being too tired when he got home. I offered to talk with them both together and she seemed happy to do so. I was quite unprepared for what was to follow.
Two weeks later, Leroy was back unexpectedly. He had gone to work that morning and come home to an empty house. Not just his wife but everything that could be moved had gone.
A neighbour told him that
a furniture lorry had turned up half an hour after he had left and his wife had gone with it.
Their joint account at the bank was also empty and there was no information at all as to where she may have gone. The van had been hired by another black man and she had gone with the van.
Leroy was distraught. He felt dishonoured and betrayed. He paced up and down the office then suddenly left after I had given him some solicitor’s names to help him with the legal ramifications. I wrote to him later but there was no reply.
I never saw him again but two years later I had a call from a probation officer in Birmingham. Leroy had remembered my name. Sadly, it was the worst possible news as Leroy had waited for his wife in the morning as she was going to work and stabbed her to death.
Welcome to South Lambeth
My first office as a qualified officer was at Tierney Road, Streatham which sounds all right but was in fact the base for working the whole of South Lambeth from Acre Lane in Brixton, Tooting, Tulse Hill, Streatham and Gypsy Hill. The area was well known for many wrong reasons as the influence of the Krays and the Richardson gangs still hung over the criminal fraternity. It was also the epicentre of the mainly Jamaican immigration. Not the first wave but the coming of the children who had been left at home with grandparents and who now came before they had to pay full fare.
They came to a society that was not prepared for them, and which failed to understand them and as such they soon became alienated, rejected and angry.
Their parents didn’t know what to do with them, the schools didn’t know how to work with them and they didn’t know what was happening, except that they did not like it. Neither the police nor the courts were adequate at dealing with them and responded harshly, which soon helped to create even more disillusion.
For me, it was a steep learning curve though my own slight experience of coming from a Scottish village to live in a single room with my mother and sister, and then having to cope with an abusive and prejudiced school situation which seemed intent on demoralising me, gave me a slight understanding of the devastation of the life they were facing.
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