BUCKLEY HALL
HM BORSTAL
AND
DETENTION CENTRE
GOVERNORS
G GRIFFITHS |
1955–58 |
L F WHEELER |
1958–61 |
W H C CARMICHAEL |
1961–68 |
W L KILLIP BEM |
1968–73 |
R M PARFITT |
1973– |
BUCKLEY HALL IS ABOUT TWO MILES TO THE NORTH OF Rochdale, just inside the borough boundary, standing in sixty-three acres of grounds with its own farm (with 50 cows), workshops, a staff of seventy including forty-nine officers in uniform, Chaplain, seamstress, part-time teachers and maintenance men, and at any one time round about 100 detainees between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. The inner perimeter is marked by a high wire fence which encloses the main buildings and central courtyard, although access up the driveway is perfectly free and open, with beautifully tended flowerbeds and sloping lawns on either side. The Hall itself is a dignified building in grey-brown stone – what you might imagine to have been the home of a mill owner – though without the white-painted iron bars across the windows and that air of military primness which implies there is a place for everything and everything is in its place.
In a year six hundred boys (known as first custodial offenders) pass through the Detention Centre, the biggest proportion of them from Liverpool and Kirkby. Sentences are of three or six months’ duration with usually one-third remission for good behaviour. The success rate, ie: those who within two years of leaving the Centre haven’t got into further trouble, is estimated to be about 55 per cent. The boys are paid 20½ pence per week plus a five pence bonus; they are allowed to write (those who can write) two letters a week and one half-hour visit every fourteen days. On arrival they are classified as Grade I and kept under close supervision for two weeks; after two weeks a report is compiled on each boy and subject to him having made satisfactory progress he is allowed to complete Grade I and then re-classified as Grade II, which means he can work outside the perimeter fence.
Kenny came in with three other lads, two from the ‘Pool and one from Blackburn. In the van he found out that between them they had two cases of burglary, one of taking and driving without consent, and one of common assault. They were issued with shirts, underclothes, overalls and boots, each given a number to memorise, and spent the rest of the day seeing in turn the Doctor, Warden, Education Officer, Welfare Officer and House Officer.
Standing in line with the other three newcomers dressed in strange, baggy clothes he was given a summary of the day’s routine by an officer in a peaked cap with the chain of a whistle looped from his breast pocket:
‘You rise at six-thirty. Wash, shave if you have to, and prepare for breakfast at ten minutes past seven. Parade at eight o’clock. Your duties will be assigned to you for the day. Work during the morning. Parade at twelve o’clock. Lunch from twelve-thirty to one-thirty. Parade at one-thirty. Back to your assigned duties for the afternoon – by the way, one hour’s PE during either the morning or afternoon. Parade at five o’clock. Wash and change for tea. Tea from five-thirty till six-fifteen. Evening classes commence at six-fifteen till eight o’clock: from eight o’clock to nine-fifteen, recreation: darts, cards, chess, etcetera, TV at the weekend. The library is open if you wish to use it. Supper at nine-fifteen, then wash, undress, bed and lights out at nine forty-five sharp.
‘Now, rules and regulations: there are ten work periods during the five-day week and from one to three points awarded each day for conduct and general behaviour. You will note that smoking is not allowed at any time. You will address all officers, teachers and other members of staff as ‘Sir’, rise and stand to attention whenever they enter the room and remain at attention until instructed otherwise. Disciplinary matters will be referred to your House Officer, the Assistant Warden and the Warden, in that order and depending on the nature of the offence. Is that clear? Any questions? Fall out.’
Kenny had always thought he was tough until he came up against the Scousers in Buckley Hall: they frightened the living daylights out of him. He learnt his lesson that first day when a scuffle broke out in the corridor and, standing innocently by, he was butted in the face and had his nose burst. Two officers appeared and sorted it out before it could develop into anything serious, but a nod to Kenny was as good as a wink: steer clear of the Scousers and never, under any circumstances, pick a fight with any of them. They were a breed he hadn’t encountered in large numbers before – not just hard on the surface but hard all the way through, tough as old boots – and with such a strong accent that the language they spoke was almost incomprehensible to anyone else.
His first meal in the dining-hall at teatime surprised him: it was good nosh and plenty of it. He was nervous, which made him hungry, and he wiped every trace of baked beans from his plate with a slice of dry bread and washed it down with strong tea. He felt a lot better with his stomach full and began to take an interest in this strange new environment of rows of lads all dressed alike and officers in dark uniforms standing at either end of the hall and – something he hadn’t expected – an air about the place of comradeship, almost a cosy family atmosphere with the lads bent over their plates and now and then a smothered snigger of laughter or a brief snatch of conversation. It seemed as though talking wasn’t allowed at mealtimes, though the officers (did they call them screws?) didn’t appear to enforce the rule with absolute strictness.
One of the Liverpool lads nudged Kenny and said in a murmur, ‘There’s a bloke over there looking at you,’ and when Kenny glanced up saw Skush at a table near the window raising and lowering his eyebrows. He looked fatter and there was colour in his cheeks; neither were his eyes the same staring watery brown.
The first night was the worst. Kenny and the other three were each locked in a tiny cubicle with a bed and a wooden chair. It was explained to them that tomorrow they would be given a bed in one of the dormitories but tonight they had to sleep alone. At eight o’clock the doors were locked and the light switched off and from the window all that could be seen were dark, unfamiliar shapes on a background of blackest night. Kenny lay in the darkness, the stiff laundered sheets against his skin, his feet confined by the regulation folded bedclothes; it was very quiet, no motorway traffic, no chiming Town Hall clock, none of that grating metallic sound of garage doors sliding shut. He had been brave all day, preoccupied with the newness and strangeness of everything, but now his bravery had ebbed away and he began to feel very small inside, like a child almost. He wasn’t going to cry, he would resist crying with all his might. He was a grown-up lad in a Detention Centre; one amongst a hundred other grown-up lads; locks and doors and fences separated them from the outside world. In fact he could hardly believe that the real outside world still existed. Were there people in pubs at this moment? Were Andy, Fester, Crabby and the rest of them pinting it somewhere right now? It seemed as though the rest of the world had stopped dead, vanished, ceased to exist, and he, Kenny, was alone in the darkness with the sound of his own heartbeats and the scrape of the sheets on his skin. He wasn’t going to cry, though, he would make sure of that.
He tried not to think of Janice. But in trying not to think about her she had entered his mind and he couldn’t stop himself thinking about her. He would have been strong inside – stronger, anyway – if he could be assured that she still loved him. Vera had been to blame for telling the police, she had given evidence against him, but because he hadn’t been allowed to see Janice (or she hadn’t been allowed to see him) it wasn’t clear in his mind whether she was equally to blame or had been forced to tell on him. She must have been forced, she must have been … she must still love him … there was nothing else he could think. Her mother had wormed the truth out of her, that’s how it must have happened. Vera – Christ, that woman! – the hate in her, the nastiness, the spite! What had he done to deserve such hatred? It took his breath away even now, here, away from everything, to recall that look on her face.
Margaret had stood by him: thank God for her and bless her, the old lady had stuck up for him. She had been near crying herself, but she had kept it bottled up inside. He had actually felt proud of her, they had hugged each other, and he’d felt all the suppressed movements in her chest battering against him. It showed at times like these who really cared and who didn’t. She was still his mother and he was still her son: they were a family and there would always be some love for him there. He pictured her at home with Kat, not many miles away on the other side of town, the two of them watching TV. He conjured up the warm peaceful flat in his mind, the stairs leading down to the passage, his door on the left and behind it his room and inside it his bed, empty now of course and unslept in: a huge sob came up from the depths of his stomach and he had to let it all out.
• • •
Four meals a day: Kenny hadn’t eaten so well in a long time. He was put in the same dormitory as Skush, who had done a month and, subject to a satisfactory report, was about to move from Grade I to Grade II.
‘Have you put on weight since you’ve been here?’ Kenny asked.
‘Yeh, you either put it on or take it off. The screws have a joke. They say if the police caught you before you came in they won’t catch you after you get out.’
‘What have you got left to do?’
‘Another month if I get full remission. You’ll have two months to do if you keep your nose clean.’ He used the jargon unselfconsciously. Kenny had always liked Skush but never admired him before; but this was an old lag speaking.
He said, ‘Does anyone ever try to make a break for it?’
‘A few do. A few Scousers, but it’s pointless because if you get caught you lose your remission. Watch out for the psychos.’
‘Who are them?’ Kenny said, worrying his thumbnail.
‘Some of the blokes in here are real nutters.’ He screwed his finger into his head. ‘They should be locked away. If they catch you looking at them they go for you. One of the lads nearly got knifed last week.’
‘Knifed?’ Kenny said. The word made him shiver and brought cold sweat to his forehead. But in a peculiar way he felt safer in here than he had outside: they couldn’t pick him up for that now, he was off the streets, out of the reckoning.
‘What are the screws like?’
Skush shrugged. ‘Not bad. Play fair with them and they play fair with you. It’s not them you have to bother about, it’s some of the head cases they’ve stuck in here because they don’t know where else to put them.’
Kenny was about to ask for a few names to avoid when an officer came in and they both stood to attention.
‘What you lot doing?’
‘Come to fetch my gym-kit, sir,’ Skush said.
‘Who are you?’
‘Seddon.’
‘Sir.’
‘Seddon, sir.’
‘Number?’
‘437…’ Kenny’s face was convulsed. ‘437… 972.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Mopping the floor. Sir.’
‘Don’t take all day. Carry on.’
• • •
In the evenings after tea there were classes in a dozen subjects, including English for those who literacy age was under seven; over the two months they were inside it was hoped to raise their standard to twelve plus. Kenny scraped through the compulsory English test and was able to choose the subjects he wanted. He decided on Art, Woodwork and Interior Decoration. Each lecture was complete in itself because with a class which gained a few and lost a few every week it was impossible to maintain any continuity. The teachers were part-time, from nearby schools, or local tradesmen who came in two or three evenings a week.
The days seemed interminably long at first and the nights were even worse: but after a week, what with the never-ending round of cleaning duties, PE, parades, meals, evening classes and an hour spent playing cards or, at the weekend, watching television, the hours lost their dragging inertia and merged into a passing blur and before you knew it it was time for bed, lights out, and a sound heavy sleep induced by a day spent in the fresh air and continual activity. For when you weren’t working you were exercising, and when not exercising, eating, and when not eating, studying, and when not studying, sleeping…
Still the worse time, though, was before sleep came, lying in the silent breathing dormitory with the occasional rustle of sheets as someone relieved his sexual urge and invariably the voice of a Scouser trying by turns to antagonise the other lads or make them laugh. One of the lads in Kenny’s dormitory who everyone treated as a simpleton – an enormous bloke with broad shoulders who went by the name of Desperate Dan – always waited till lights out and would then say in a loud Scouse voice:
‘Who’d like to look at my big toe?’
This set off a chain-reaction of wisecracks which mainly had to do with bum boys, giant pricks and kissing the Pope’s ring. Skush had warned Kenny to be on the look-out for queers but so far he hadn’t been approached or noticed anything suspicious going on. He couldn’t believe that Desperate Dan was a pouf, though the thought that he might be scared him to death.
He had never written a letter in his life – except for forging sick-notes at school – so he didn’t bother writing to Margaret; he thought once of writing to Janice but couldn’t think what to say, or rather what he wanted to say couldn’t be put in a letter. He would wait for Margaret’s first visit and ask her to pass a message to Jan, or better still get Jan to visit him, which is what he wanted most of all. He still wouldn’t accept that she had deserted him: it was Vera, it had to be, who had turned her daughter against him. He wasn’t resentful or even mildly annoyed that Jan had got off with a warning. The police hadn’t been too hard on her, probably because she didn’t have a record: the general consensus had been that Kenny had corrupted her and led her astray. That was how things worked in the world and Kenny was the last one to be dismayed or even surprised.
His report after two weeks was favourable, which meant that in another two weeks, all being well, he would be Grade II. The days settled down into a set routine, eating, working, studying, sleeping, and for this reason anything out of the ordinary was even more noticeable – such as the time when the bloke with four kids went berserk.
It happened in the recreation room one evening when everyone was peaceably reading, playing cards or just talking. As might be expected he was a Scouser, a thin nervous lad with a prominent Adam’s apple and tattoos on his skinny arms. Without warning and for no apparent reason he ran into the wall and started screaming. A couple of the lads tried to restrain him but he was demented and wouldn’t be held; he shook them off, pushed his fist through the window and turned his wrist against the jagged glass. The walls were sprayed with blood and a pack of cards on a nearby table was ruined; spots of blood were later found on the television screen in the far corner of the room. Kenny stood and watched as two officers picked him up off the floor and, without waiting for a stretcher, ran with him to the hospital ward.
‘Psycho,’ somebody said.
‘What’s up with him?’ Kenny asked.
‘He’s married with four kids. His wife’s been doing a bit on the side and he wants to get released quick and sort her out.’
‘It hits married fellas the hardest,’ Desperate Dan said. ‘That’s why you want to steer clear of women,’ leering vacantly in Kenny’s direction.
‘Will he get out?’
‘He’ll be shoved in hospital,’ somebody said, ‘and then he’ll be back. They’re not that stupid.’
‘What about his wife?’
‘What about her?’
It costs between £25 – £30 a week to keep a boy in a Detention Centre, though the cost would be very much greater if the place wasn’t to some extent self-sufficient: cleaning, maintenance and general repairs are done by the boys themselves with guidance from trades officers and workmen. The workshops, where Grade II detainees spend one month, produce concrete kerb and paving stones which are sent to other Borstals and Detention Centres to make roadworks and repair existing ones – which is why such establishments are always well looked after, neat and shipshape to the point of obsessiveness. Another workshop makes moulded rubber wheels under contract to a manufacturer of hand-trucks and trolleys. The farm supplies milk, cheese and eggs to the kitchens and any surplus is taken by local farmers. After two months the boys on six-month sentences are allowed outside in small working parties, either to the farm or helping Rochdale Corporation Works Department maintain roadworks in the district.
Behind the main building is the sports field, surrounded by a wire-mesh fence with barbed-wire along the top, and the Centre has a football team in a northern amateur league; all games are played at home. On Sundays the Chaplain (C of E) holds a service, and there is a mass for Catholics, which those who profess to be atheists can opt out of but which most of the detainees, who’ve never been near a church since their twelfth birthdays, if at all, attend without objection.
Kenny gradually found his feet in Buckley Hall and after the trauma of Margaret’s first visit it slowly began to dawn on him that compared with some of the other lads (excluding the illiterates) he didn’t have much of a clue: he had always reckoned himself to be pretty smart but there were some blokes – one in particular – who had really got it all weighed up. Over a game of cards in the recreation room Kenny happened to mention that he had worked at Haigh’s and Woolworth’s and a few other places; Barry Keesig pulled a sour expression and called him a pillock to his face. Work was out, a mug’s game.
‘What did you get at Haigh’s?’ Barry Keesig asked, dealing a hand of crib.
‘Just over eleven,’ Kenny said.
‘Clear?’
‘No, nine pounds-summat clear.’
‘Nine quid for a week’s work.’ Barry Keesig smiled in his snarling way and shook his head. He had a long flat contemptuous face with a rectangular jaw and eyes like slits. He was the kind of bloke whose opinion everyone respects, though he never went out of his way to gain that respect and didn’t seem bothered one way or another. ‘I could make double that in an afternoon.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Using this,’ – tapping his head.
‘Yeh but doing what though?’
‘Not robbing fucking meters for a start,’ somebody said.
‘Who asked you?’ Kenny said, suddenly angry. He was willing to learn but he wasn’t prepared to let any of them put him down. They had all been caught, hadn’t they, no matter how clever they might have been?
‘Most of them in here are bums,’ Barry Keesig said. ‘Deadbeats. If you’re going to make it pay you’ve got to get organised. And it’s no good going for a few measly quid – it’s got to be real money.’
‘The cars is a good number,’ somebody said.
‘For that you’ve got to have the gear. Workshop. Spraying equipment. Log books. Number plates. And it means driving them down south somewhere. Hard cash, that’s the only way, no frigging about. Straight in, lift it, and out again.’
‘Post offices,’ Kenny said, coming up with a positive thought.
‘Yeh,’ Barry Keesig said. ‘Or better still, factories. There’s always loads of cash in factories. Three or four of you, say, in overalls; get in at dinner time with the rest of them and have a shuftie round. Wages office. Canteen. Cloakrooms. Christ, you can’t go wrong.’
Kenny’s hands trembled a little as he held the cards. Barry was right, it was dead easy. An afternoon’s work and you could get away with, what – forty or fifty dabs each – enough to last a fortnight. He felt himself getting excited at the idea.
The following day he received a letter from Margaret saying that she hadn’t yet been able to get in touch with Janice. Kenny had asked her to persuade Janice to visit him but he knew that if Mrs Singleton got to hear of it she wouldn’t allow it. The problem was how to get to Jan without Vera finding out. He put the letter in his locker.
Skush said, ‘Cheer up, it may never happen.’
‘It’s all right for you, you’re getting out on Friday. Lucky twat.’
‘It comes to us all,’ Skush said.
‘Hey,’ Kenny said, thinking.
‘What?’
‘If you happen to see Jan when you get out tell her to come and see me. Will you?’
‘Yeh,’ Skush said. ‘If I see her knocking around.’
‘What are you going to do when you leave?’
‘Get a job, I suppose. I’ll have to; the old fella will be on at me.’
‘Have you got rid of the habit?’
‘I have now. Give me two weeks outside and I’ll probably be on heroin.’
‘It’s a fucking hard life,’ Kenny said.
Kenny became good friends with Barry Keesig and they talked a lot about what they were going to do when they left Buckley Hall. Barry Keesig had three months to serve – two months longer than Kenny – but they promised to keep in touch and meet up when they were both outside. Kenny had forgotten, or so it seemed to him, what it was like to be a free agent. He watched Skush walking down the stairs with a brown paper parcel under his arm and it was as though this life, inside HM Borstal and Detention Centre, behind the high wire fence, was the only one he had ever known. Skush was walking off the edge of the planet, away from the real world and into the mysterious Outside. Of course he, Kenny, could remember what it had been like before, but in an odd way it seemed unreal, a distant dream filled with people who were like actors in a film he had seen a long time ago and only faintly remembered. The place inside – Inside – had a life of its own; even the sky looked different, and for the first time in his life Kenny noticed such things as trees and grass and even heard the birds singing. He came to know the buildings, the courtyards, the workshops, the sports field in such intimate detail that he found it hard to recall his own bedroom at 472, Ashfield Valley: this was reality, here and now, the other was a memory from a half-forgotten past life.
Sometimes he was shaken out of his dream-state as when, for instance, three Scousers went for him in the showers and nearly broke his wrist. There was no motive for their action – none that Kenny could fathom, anyway – unless it was simply that they had stared at him and he had stared back. They waited, with cunning calculation, until the others were clear of the shower, and then closed in with fists and heels, Kenny slipping on the wet tiles and attempting to save himself by the reflex action of his left arm. The next thing he knew it was as if someone had inserted a white-hot needle between his hand and the protruding ulna on the point of his wrist, and he nearly fainted with the pain. Two of them held his arms flat against the streaming tiles while the other stood astride him and worked his heavy hanging cock into life, arriving quickly at a climax and masturbating into Kenny’s face. The spray of water soon washed the sperm away but he didn’t forget their faces in a hurry.