Queen of Thieves

by Beezy Marsh

  I found out from one of the girls what one of those was, in one of our sewing classes. Even at nearly nine months’ gone, we were still on our hands and knees scrubbing floors all morning, but in the afternoons, we were allowed to settle down in the hospital wing with our sewing and knitting.

  As well as patching up torn smocks and darning woollen stockings for the other prisoners, we were expected to make a full set of baby clothes for our little ones. After the drudgery of the daily prison life, this felt like heaven to me. I’d always been a dab hand with a needle and thread and now, with a few lengths of cotton material, some scissors and thread, I began to fashion a full layette for my baby. I poured all the love I could into little matinee jackets and sleepsuits.

  Ma Doherty would keep a close eye on us and tell us what we had to do after having our babies, how to care for them. She’d seen so much childbirth it had put her off marrying or having one herself, that’s what she said. If she hadn’t come to the prison to work, she’d have been a nun. Having heard the screams from the girls giving birth, I knew what she meant but there was no way back for me now.

  The Governor kept morphia in her room, under lock and key, for pain relief, and that is where it stayed. Girls had torn themselves virtually in two during labour and she still refused to hand it over to them, no matter how much they begged and pleaded.

  We’d heard that Ma Doherty had even asked the Governor if a girl who had ripped so badly that she had to be stitched right the way underneath, from front to back, could have some but still she would not budge.

  ‘Pain is a natural part of childbirth,’ she told us chirpily on one of her visits to the hospital wing, to check we weren’t slacking.

  It was on one of those bitterly cold, wintery days that Ma Doherty brought me a letter and a small packet, which had been opened.

  ‘Just keep it to yourself, Nell,’ she said, softly. ‘I thought you should have this. You know you are one of my favourites.’

  I ripped it open and my fingers touched some pieces of rabbit fur, enough to make a little hood, and a beautiful offcut of sheepskin, to make bootees for the baby. They felt so welcoming and familiar to me, like a bridge to my lost life.

  I hadn’t heard a single word from my parents – I hadn’t expected to – so this meant the world to me.

  Dear Nell,

  I hope you are keeping your chin up. I got you these offcuts from the basket at work, thought they might come in handy for the little one.

  I miss you, Nell, and have lots of other news but we will see each other soon, I hope. I expect you know by now your parents don’t want nothing to do with you anymore because of the baby. I’m sorry, Nell, it don’t seem right because I know you are a good sort. Jimmy has been around asking about you. I saw him down the market cos he’s giving your parents a wide berth for fear of the belting your dad will give him. He’s really broken up that you’re doing bird. He wants to make things right, to start over with you when you get out. He swears he only thinks of you and is so cut up that you turned him down. I know it ain’t my business, Nell, and I’d like to box his ears for how things turned out, cos it’s so unfair, but the way he talks about you, is like you are the only woman on earth. I told him it was his own stupid fault that he couldn’t keep it in his trousers, and it weren’t right that you had to take all the blame for it. He looked so ashamed, like he wanted the ground to swallow him up.

  None of these fellas of ours are perfect, but Jimmy’s heart is in the right place and he’s working all the hours God sends over the water in Soho, which has got to be worth something, hasn’t it? You can tell me to mind my own business and you’d be right but he made me promise I’d write and tell you he still feels the same way about you, if you can forgive him for everything.

  The council are rehousing all of us in Tenison Street down at the Elephant and Castle because they say the streets have to be condemned because they are insanitary or something or other. Some of us wanted to put up a fight but it’s useless because no one wants to live in these houses anymore, they all want a prefab down in Brixton if they can get it. We’re all moving out in the New Year. Tommy says it will be a fresh start and he’s hoping to get a job on the market down in the Borough. Come and find me there when you are back. You are always welcome in my house.

  Love and best wishes,

  Your pal,

  Iris x

  I put my hands on my swollen belly, feeling the baby inside me wriggle. Since being in the nick, I’d done my best to put Jimmy out of my mind because, well, what was the point? I’d tried to see it as all a foolish mistake and that I was just so green, and he’d taken advantage and I was living with the consequences. But now Iris said he was serious about me. And this baby we had made was real. It gave me a huge kick that took my breath away, just to make a point of that.

  I hadn’t even considered us making a go of it as a family but if what Iris said was true, perhaps we could? Perhaps Jimmy would turn out to be a reliable husband and we could raise our baby together. Thinking back on it, Alice Diamond had done her level best to put me off married life and the way I saw it now, maybe she had a reason to because she didn’t want me happily married. She wanted me to be one of her girls and to be the boss of me herself. The conniving old cow! But she hadn’t switched off Jimmy’s affections for me, no matter what, which was like a glimmer of hope for the future.

  The thought of Jimmy and how I used to feel about him when we were courting made my heart flutter and I must have smiled because Ma Doherty said: ‘Whatever was in that letter has cheered you up, hasn’t it?’

  She was hovering over my shoulder, the nosy cow.

  ‘Is it good news from the family?’

  ‘Yes, they are all fine,’ I replied, folding the letter before she could read any more. Maybe I was just dreaming about how things could be with Jimmy and I didn’t stand a chance any more, but I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of knowing about it.

  I put it together with the offcuts at the bottom of my baby box, where I laid the baby’s clothes, away from the prying eyes of the Governor. But Ma Doherty wasn’t done yet. She had a funny look in her eye as she pulled up a chair and sat beside me: ‘Nell, you should really think about the baby’s future. Will your parents be happy to have you at home, unmarried with a baby?’

  I stared at the floor.

  A clock ticked loudly on the wall. There was no point lying to her.

  ‘No, Miss,’ I said.

  ‘There are plenty of good families out there who would be willing to give a baby a home…’

  I knew what she meant but I didn’t want to face it. The thought of giving the baby away was like a knife in my heart.

  ‘I’ll manage somehow,’ I said, flatly.

  ‘On your own?’ she replied, swiftly. ‘That wouldn’t be wise, would it?’

  ‘Perhaps I won’t be on my own,’ I shot back. ‘Perhaps the fella who got me into trouble is going to stand by me! My friend wrote me that he is sorry for everything that has happened to me, and he wants to make it right.’

  Ma Doherty put her arm around me, her face softening: ‘Oh, Nell, dear, is that what made you so happy after reading that letter? Men who get girls pregnant out of wedlock will say anything to avoid facing the music in their community. They are just so selfish. If he was a decent man, he would never have got you into trouble and if your parents thought he was a suitable type, they would welcome him into their home, but that isn’t the case, is it?’

  I felt tears prick my eyes.

  All the hope in Iris’s note was just a house of cards and it had come tumbling down.

  ‘No, Miss, they don’t want to see hide nor hair of him and not of me either,’ I mumbled.

  There was something steely in her voice now: ‘You have to be sensible, stop living in a silly fantasy about how your life is going to be once you have this child. Your community will never accept it, even if you are married to the one who got you into this terrible, terrible situation, they will
always gossip about you putting the cart before the horse. Everyone will know about it, love, everyone. Can you imagine the shame that little one will feel?’

  It didn’t take too much to think about Mrs Avens, the parish foghorn, and her sly looks and snide comments. She’d relish the chance to make my child feel shame.

  Ma Doherty brushed her skirt down and stood up: ‘You’re one of the lucky ones to be chosen. This is giving you a second chance. All the clever girls come round to my way of thinking eventually, Nell. You’ll see.’ Her voice was soothing and so reassuring.

  ‘All I want to do is for you to be able to rebuild your life, free of the shame. You are in prison, and you are paying the price for your crime, but your child will live what you have done forever and it would be a lie for me to tell you otherwise. I have seen it so often. The most selfless thing a truly loving mother can do for her child is to give it a better life than her own.’

  I wanted to run away from her then, but deep down, I knew she was right, and I really only had one choice. But it was a choice I didn’t want to think about.

  She smiled and patted me on the shoulder: ‘Now, you look like you could use some extra cocoa. Would that be nice?’

  The Governor absolutely relished Sundays, walking proudly, like a mother hen at the head of a long line of us pregnant girls into the prison chapel. Even those who had just given birth were expected to come along and, what’s worse, they had to kneel on the stone floor for the whole service, which lasted longer than the daily services after breakfast during the week, on account of the vicar’s endless sermons about sin.

  It was there that a miracle happened because I found that I could sing, really sing. I’d been raised on My Old Man Said Follow The Van and Roll Out The Barrel but now I found my voice soaring through hymns and I even had a go at some of the Latin stuff.

  Ma Doherty taught me the words, Ave maria, grazia plena, dominus tecum benedicta tu in mulieribus, and I hadn’t a clue what they meant, but my I mouthed them well enough and my voice soared up to the rafters because in that moment, I was free. It didn’t matter that I was pregnant and unmarried or that I spent all day scrubbing the floors or toiling like a slave in the prison laundry, I didn’t have to be silent and they couldn’t tell me to be quiet because I was in church and I was singing. It wasn’t just opening my mouth, it was opening my heart. I was singing for my unborn child, all the things I wanted to say to it and the baby would kick and wriggle in response.

  Chapel was the one place I could get a good chat with Rose, other than the exercise yard when Miss Fanshawe’s back was turned, but she’d been missing for the last few days and I was beginning to get worried.

  The last time I saw her, I’d put my hoisting skills to good use, swiping a bottle of surgical spirit from the hospital wing while Ma Doherty’s back was turned. I hid it under my maternity smock and passed it to Rose one tea-time, because she’d been planning to brew some booze in a chamber pot to trade for ciggies. She loved a fag, did Rose. I’d managed to get her a few dog ends from the fireplaces around the screws’ rooms which I was allowed to sweep out, on account of being a hospital inmate. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy Rose’s cravings so she decided to make a little distillery in her cell.

  It was a crazy plan, and I’d almost wet myself laughing when she told me about it, but she’d managed to get some yeast from the kitchens, and she’d saved all the prunes from pudding for a week in the pocket of her cardigan. The whole lot were going into her jerry in the cell to make Holloway hooch.

  But now as she shuffled in to sit at the end of our pew, I saw she was black and blue, with a bust lip and one eye half closed. A little slip of paper found its way down the line of prisoners to me. The chapel service was the usual place where deals were made and gossip was exchanged, or warnings were given, so everyone knew the drill. The racket of so many women singing was the perfect cover and notes could be passed with relative ease.

  If the vicar had listened closely to what we were doing to his hymns, he wouldn’t have been best pleased either, because sometimes messages were passed that way too. Who knew that the words to Abide with Me could be changed to ‘Mary on B, has jam for tea’ or ‘grass on me, I’ll break your knee’?

  I hid the note in my hymn book and when the organist struck up, I unfolded it and began to read:

  ‘Joan’s got it in for me and you’re next.’

  Rose loitered by the end of the pew as we filed back out of the chapel and fell into step with me. There wasn’t much on her to start with but her cheeks were drawn, making her skin almost translucent, apart for the dark bruising around her eyes.

  ‘Two days bread and water in the punishment cells,’ she said, out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Joan found out about my little gin still and when I wouldn’t let her in on it, she tried to cop a feel in return for not grassing. I slapped the randy old bitch when she stuck her hand up my skirt, didn’t I? And Fanshawe saw it and said I started a fight.’

  ‘What about the others in the laundry, didn’t they vouch for you?’ I whispered, as we made our way past the garden, where the most trusted and privileged prisoners were allowed to work in the summer months. It was either there or the library, but that was reserved for the Governor’s top favourites, because they got to sit on their arses all day flicking through books or taking them from cell to cell for people to borrow.

  ‘No chance, Joan has got the laundry dancing to her tune,’ said Rose. ‘They all said I started it.

  ‘Once you’ve dropped your sprog, Joan will be after you too, you mark my words. I’m thinking of trying to escape. I don’t think I can take much more. Fanshawe hates my guts to start with…’ She was properly choked up, like the lifeblood was draining out of her.

  The huge prison wall loomed in front of us. There was no way little Rose could get over it and we both knew that. She got a twelve month stretch so her suffering was going to go on a lot longer than mine.

  ‘It’s either escape or do something to myself,’ she said. ‘Then I might see you in the hospital wing.’

  ‘No, Rose,’ I said. ‘There’s got to be a better way than that…’

  I didn’t get to finish what I was saying because we were just coming back into the cell blocks when I felt a trickle of something running down my leg, and in an instant, it had turned into a gush, which splashed onto the stone floor.

  Miss Fanshawe must have thought I’d done it on purpose because, even though my waters had just broken, she made me get down on her hands and knees to scrub the floor with a bucketful of disinfectant, right the way through my labour pains.

  Chapter Twelve

  NELL

  Holloway, London, February 1947

  ‘I think the baby’s coming!’

  I was doubled up over the iron bedstead, groaning.

  In the half-light of dawn, Ma Doherty appeared by my side.

  She ran her hands over my belly and her brows knitted into a frown.

  I snatched at her fingers and clasped them hard as my belly went rigid. Then, I let out a terrible scream.

  ‘Be quiet! You’ll wake the whole prison. I’m trying to help you!’ scolded Ma Doherty getting down on to her knees and peering up my gown.

  ‘This baby’s breech,’ she muttered to herself, ‘Let’s see what we can do…’

  She began to prod and poke, making me wail: ‘Oh, please, God, no! Can I see a doctor? Make it stop!’

  ‘There’s no time for that! Bear with it,’ said Ma Doherty as sweat ran down her face in rivulets from the effort of trying to manipulate the baby into the right position.

  I was grunting like an animal and one of the other girls rolled over and said: ‘Shurrup, will ya?’

  Ma Doherty told me to push and so I did, with all my might and a tiny wriggling lump of humanity came into the world behind the walls of Holloway Prison.

  My baby boy was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

  His fingers curled around mine as he slept soundly in my arms.


  The months of misery inside the jail melted away as I hugged this warm, wriggling bundle; my child.

  Ma Doherty plumped the pillows behind my head to make me more comfortable.

  I winced as she sat me up a little, as I’d torn badly during the birth, despite Ma Doherty doing her best to help me.

  ‘Now, the sooner you are up and about the better. It will help you heal,’ she said.

  ‘It is all worth it, for him,’ I murmured, ignoring the pain. Hearing my voice, the little mite opened his eyes.

  ‘He’s looking at me!’ It was the most exciting thing ever.

  ‘Oh, he can’t focus on you just yet, you’re just a blur to him, but he knows your voice right enough,’ she said, with a smile, ‘A baby knows his mother. Have you thought of a name for him?’

  ‘Joseph,’ I replied. It was my grandfather’s name and it sounded strong and kind, which was everything I wanted him to be.

  Ma Doherty beamed: ‘A good choice. I’ll tell the Governor. Now, you need to get some rest.’ She eased the baby from my arms

  I opened my mouth to protest but Ma Doherty just kept on talking as she lifted my child and wrapped him in a blanket: ‘I’ll take little Joseph to the nursery overnight so you can sleep, because you will need your strength for your chores back in the laundry during the day. You’ll have time to feed him and change him in the morning and you’ll have all evening with him too. It’s a new routine, but you’ll settle in quickly.’

  Tears pricked my eyes, but I fought the urge to cry. My baby’s life was already planned out and I had so little say in it.

  ‘We don’t want him to get too attached,’ said Ma Doherty, firmly, seeing the expression on my face. ‘He must learn to feed from the bottle while you are busy with your chores, and at night, it means you can get some rest, so this is the kindest way for both of you, do you understand?’