Strangeways

by Neil Samworth

  I was on a landing with a couple of orderlies when a lad shouted, ‘Mr Samworth! You’re in trouble.’

  Sure enough, there came the familiar sound of Sandy’s clippy-cloppy shoes. I was pretty sure I hadn’t done anything wrong so tried not to look guilty. ‘Mr Samworth! Would you have a word with Mr Vass.’

  No question mark, because really it was an order.

  Jonathan Vass was truly horrible. He’d a personality disorder: narcissism.

  Personality disorders were among the worst prisoners we had. A bodybuilder and steroid abuser, he murdered a young nurse at Warrington, his fiancée who he’d had a child with. She’d accused him of raping her nine times, and some judge bailed him, so then he’d figured that if he killed her there’d be no evidence and he wouldn’t be convicted. It was horrendous: he’d waited for her in a car park, and not only did he have one go at her, he went away, thought better of it and went back to finish her off. The parents of the woman he killed have campaigned for a change in the law and my heart goes out to them. Absolute scum, quite definitely.

  At the time, his profile was high and really he should have been in seg’, but the fact that he was infamous and on an ACCT form meant we had the nasty piece of shit. A big lad he was, bigger than me, but Sandy had been very unimpressed with his manner of dress. I found him on Y landing, talking to another prisoner outside the office, not far from his cell. He was wearing a checked shirt unbuttoned to his navel.

  Believe it or not, sometimes I can be quite subtle. On this occasion I wasn’t, ‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, mock politely.

  ‘Where do you think we are? Fucking Roxy’s nightclub?’ That was a real place in Sheffield, by the way: hairy chests, medallions. ‘Get behind your door. Button your shirt up. Start dressing appropriately.’

  If he fancied cracking me, here was his opportunity. He was a bit of a giant, loved himself. This was his chance to drop a prison officer. How would he react?

  It wasn’t bravado on my part. The creep would be with us a while, so he was not going to strut about like a peacock. Just as I suspected he would, this big bad hombre wimped away to his cell. I followed him in and told him in no uncertain terms that he’d be there until he left healthcare if he didn’t watch his step. After that he was quiet as a mouse – or rat, which seems more appropriate.

  Sandy, through all this, had been stood behind me. I’m guessing that was not how she’d have preferred it to be dealt with. A quiet word would have been more to her taste, no doubt. However, she said, ‘Thank you, Mr Samworth,’ and marched off. That’s how our relationship went.

  Bradders was lovely. Unlike KK, she is still in the job and has given everything to it. A mental health nurse for over thirty-five years, she taught me and everyone else on the unit a lot. She often knew more than the psychiatrists or doctors who came on there. We had a doctor who was more or less resident to begin with, though later they were brought in from outside when needed. Those experts saw patients for five or ten minutes; she lived with their troubles.

  One patient, James Whitehead, had been mentally ill since his teens. In his case it was non-specific, but a terrible affliction nonetheless. People struggle to live normal lives but can’t. He dropped on us after behaving inappropriately. Like a lot of people on medication, he’d begun to feel better and stopped taking his dose. His crimes were petty, but he’d done about five spells inside, in and out of medium- and low-security hospitals as well. Maybe during a psychotic incident he might become violent, but he wasn’t getting out and was no risk to the public. He’d play pool and mix, a nice lad. The mentally ill need interaction or they become isolated and unsociable.

  Bradders and me took him to a psychiatrist one day, who began examining his meds. ‘You’ve been on these for two years,’ he said. ‘It’s time we changed them.’

  This seemed unwise, but what did I know? Only that Whitehead was well behaved, stable and currently under control. He didn’t look happy now mind. Yet the psychiatrist persisted.

  Now one thing about mental health patients: they might lose touch with reality in all sorts of ways but they know their meds. This lad reeled off a fifteen-year history of different combinations, stuff they no longer make, all sorts. Not only that, he also had a good understanding of how each affected his moods. This shrink wasn’t listening, so the kid made a prediction.

  ‘If you change them, I’ll stop taking them,’ he said, ‘and you’ll end up sending me to hospital.’

  The psychiatrist got the hump and I put James Whitehead in his cell, while Bradders continued to make his case. I overheard her warning when I came back. If someone’s unwell, I need to know.

  ‘Look, I understand why you think changing the meds would be a good idea,’ she said, ‘but these seem to be working and I believe him when he says he won’t take the new pills.’ That was his problem, replied the psychiatrist.

  Soon there were no more games of pool. Whitehead went from sociable to withdrawn in the space of three days. Bradders and I tried to lure him out, but he wouldn’t collect his meals or anything. In prison no one sweated that, he’d have gone hungry. On healthcare, we took it to their cell. Different strategy. By day nine, Bradders asked me to go with her and talk to the lad who by now was in a ‘safe cell’ and very agitated. (A ‘safe cell’ or ‘anti-ligature cell’ has very smooth surfaces, meaning in theory that a prisoner has nothing to fasten any kind of rope to. In reality, no cell is totally safe.)

  Whitehead was covered in excrement. He had it in his eyes, ears, up his nose, all over the shop. He was completely naked, had his cock and balls in his hands and was trying to pull them off. It was awful to see. I tried to talk to him but he ignored me – it was impossible to reason with the kid. He was incoherent and deteriorating fast.

  ‘Do you mind opening him up?’ said Bradders.

  Anywhere else in jail, having so much shit around is classed as a dirty protest, and you are not unlocking that door. You’d put your PPE on and a team would go in. Bradders wanted to give him diazepam, so I cracked the bolt and went in first. He wasn’t showing any violence towards us, just himself. She bent down and spoke to him for ten minutes or so. His hand came out for the meds, which he then poured on the floor, so we came out.

  As a rule, a prisoner can refuse treatment. Healthcare staff are only allowed to go against those wishes if they reckon him incapable of making a rational decision himself. In theory, having a mental health condition can fit that bill, but often it’s not so simple. For a start, you are supposed to try and discuss the issue with the prisoner’s family first and, generally, it’s very much a grey area, a legal shitstorm if anything goes wrong. It’s also true that this sort of scene wasn’t all that rare. The doctors – who have the final say – just like the nursing staff and prison officers, are under pressure from all sides.

  Next day, he was in an even worse tangle: on his bed, blood all over. He’d been sticking things up his backside. After that, nothing was left in the cell. We stripped it, apart from the clothing he wasn’t for wearing. Watching him was painful; if ever there was a signal for the liquid cosh then that was it. He was still tearing at his bollocks, and had begun sticking his fingers in his eyes, rubbing shit in them. It was now obviously an emergency and one of the doctors arranged for a hospital bed on the out somewhere.

  Had the wrong crew come in to move him, they’d have smashed fuck out of the poor sod, knocked him all over. When I was younger I’d have maybe been the same. You’re educated by experience, or should be. Bradders, in tears, said please be careful with him. He struggled a bit but, having had nothing to drink or eat for ages, was weak. Eventually, they got a pair of cuffs and a tracksuit on him, wrapped the lad in blankets, and off he went.

  Prison can’t just be about banging heads. Sometimes it requires a bit of compassion. It was thanks to Bradders that Whitehead lived to see another day.

  It was around this time that an ITV production crew came in
to make a documentary about Strangeways. The prison service, not the prison, had given permission for them to film on healthcare, which put us on our best behaviour. They spent a lot of time with us, filmed more than a hundred hours of footage to fill three hour-long programmes. When the series was shown, the number-one governor at Strangeways, Richard Vince, thanked us all for the part we played, which meant a lot. He said we were a credit to healthcare, a credit to Manchester and a credit to the prison service.

  12. I Wanna Be Adored

  A prison officer quite definitely needs a strong stomach. It ought to be in the job description. When people aren’t slicing bits off themselves – or others – they can get very creative with stuff best left to U-bends and sewers.

  Meds can help mentally ill people sometimes, antipsychotics and the like. But for extreme narcissists like Jonathan Vass, and those with personality disorders in general, they don’t work. Such characters might be pacified or subdued for a while, but that’s your lot. A common symptom is self-harming, and in healthcare a lot of that went on, more than anywhere in the jail. What personality disorders do need is continuity. They need a regime, too, and that’s tough in prison because you can’t guarantee similar days.

  Thomas Riley, our twisted firestarter, had personality issues of the worst kind, putting him among the most dangerous and disruptive prisoners around. He was nine or ten on the self-harm scale. I saw him try it several times. His behaviour didn’t depend on his surroundings. If you’d put Riley in the Savoy, in a luxury suite with champagne and a sauna, had someone pissed him off he would at some point have cracked on with a blade or box of matches.

  While I was on healthcare at Strangeways I was Riley’s personal officer for a while, and if I was on shift with him all day, that worked. You might get a period of calm. But on this particular day Mr Angry, a healthcare manager from downstairs with no patience at all, had given Riley both barrels and wound him up. Despicable as he was, there was no need for it, not least as Mr Angry then fucked off and left the creature to me.

  When his cell door was shut Riley produced a razor blade out of his mouth – I saw it through the hatch. Prisoners do that: they’ll carry them under their tongue or under skin flaps . . . up their arse . . . you name it.

  ‘Where’ve you got that from, Tommy?’ I asked, knowing full well he wasn’t going to tell me. It would cut off the supply chain, wouldn’t it? I was playing for time, trying to settle him down. It didn’t work. He started cutting into his left arm and made six cuts. And when I say cuts, I mean cuts – down to the wood. He wasn’t doing any arteries or committing suicide, just slicing into himself as a butcher might prepare a sirloin steak.

  I could have pressed the bell and called the troops, but it wouldn’t have made any difference. I could have gone in myself and tried to take the blade by force; again no point. When he was that way out, you’d only be putting off the inevitable. I’d get it off him once he’d had enough. If we’d bent him up, taken everything out of his cell, he’d have found some other way, probably just as grisly. He hadn’t asked for anything: he was either throwing a paddy or punishing himself. Medically, though, it looked dodgy. I alerted KK.

  All the while Riley was talking to me very politely, ‘Mr Samworth’ – not prick or dickhead – ‘please fuck off and let me finish.’ The cuts were half an inch wide, bits of flesh protruding.

  KK came on. ‘Thomas, what are you doing that for?’

  ‘Ms Kenny,’ he said, in his croaky alien voice, ‘fuck off and leave me alone, please.’

  ‘Press the bell if you need anything,’ she said.

  In the prison itself, that wouldn’t have happened. This guy would have been wrapped up, restrained and carted off. But he was not a normal prisoner and wouldn’t have coped on an average wing. He refused treatment and the injuries, though horrible, weren’t life threatening. Nothing more could have been done.

  Later on, though, he decided these cuts weren’t enough and decided to rub shit in them. So he piled one up and did just that, still refusing medical treatment. KK gave him the disclaimer, ‘Thomas, if you get septicaemia it can kill you.’

  ‘Yeah, all right Ms Kenny. Fuck off and leave me alone, please.’

  So we left him again and three days later these wounds were festering. We got a specialist in from Wythenshawe, and I eventually persuaded Riley to have a word with the doctor.

  ‘I’m not having any treatment, though, Mr Samworth.’

  Out he came. Riley’s arm was dripping with clear fluid, and the wounds were full of pus. One officer on overtime threw a whitey, spewed and went off sick. We never saw him again.

  ‘Thomas,’ said the specialist. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  ‘Quack, quack, quack,’ went Riley, like Penguin out of Batman.

  The doctor told him his arms needed plastic surgery. ‘Do you mind if I take some pictures to show my friends?’

  ‘Crack on,’ Riley said, ‘but you’re not giving me any surgery.’

  The doc asked if he was on antibiotics.

  ‘Nah. Don’t want any.’

  Thee, me, anyone else, excrement gets in a small cut and there’s a good chance we’d get blood poisoning. Possibly die. Not Thomas Riley. Three weeks later, despite the fact he’d been picking at the scabs non-stop, apart from six huge scars he’d completely healed.

  Then there was the time he cut his throat.

  By that stage he wanted out of Strangeways, fancied a spell in hospital I expect, so a doctor and the nursing staff discussed shifting him to Rampton in Nottinghamshire. The doc gave Riley a few home truths, told him what they’d do with him and forecast that he would have to comply with treatment. ‘No, I won’t,’ he said, backing himself.

  Prisoners are given plastic cutlery to eat their meals with, including a knife that with enough force might jab someone’s ribs, but which you’d struggle to slice a loaf with. Anyway, Riley had another temper tantrum, arms like windmills, chucking stuff around his cell. Again, I stood at the door when he started to hack at his neck. In under a minute he was an absolute mess.

  KK was on the scene again, mopping it up. It was gruesome. He’d somehow managed to make a considerable wound, and you could see his veins. However, it didn’t bleed a lot, weirdly, and thankfully he didn’t rub shite in it.

  This time, he let her clean it and put a plaster on. Could he have died? Quite definitely he could. Half an inch either way, that would have been that. He’d have severed a major artery. As it was, he was parcelled off to Rampton and lived to croak another day.

  You might recall that I’d agreed to come to healthcare on a promise that if, after one year, I wanted out I could move anywhere in the prison I fancied. And I dare say, with the likes of Riley to contend with, you might be wondering why I didn’t take the governor who made it up on his offer. Well, the truth is that I was building some great relationships.

  In terms of how the place was run, it was a transition period. The original eight-manager system was on its way out and the wing had a buzz about it, a real sense of camaraderie among a much smaller and tighter-knit group of staff.

  The thought of whether to enforce it and bugger off did cross my mind, however. Especially when, one day, I saw the governor who made the promise – the guy who’d done a report on me every week in training – coming down the steps in the bottom jail.

  ‘All right, guv,’ I said.

  ‘Are you all right, Mr Samworth?’ He always called me Mr Samworth.

  ‘I am guv, yeah.’ And then I went, ‘Can I . . .’

  He stopped me with a smirk and a glint in his eye. ‘If you want to move anywhere in this jail, Mr Samworth, just come and see me.’

  As a standing joke, whenever we bumped into each other and exchanged pleasantries from that moment on, we’d go through the exact same routine.

  ‘All right, guv,’ I’d nod. ‘Can I . . .’

  ‘If you want to move anywhere in this jail, Mr Samworth, just come and see me.’

  Dea
ths are an occupational hazard in prison, but when I came to healthcare I’d been warned about the bodies. Inmates were usually on some sort of watch. Some of the deaths from that period will haunt me forever.

  Early in my time there I was redirected with a fellow officer to Hope Hospital, Salford, for a bed watch – a prisoner so sick he was having to be cared for on the out, but still needed a prison officer at his bedside. The night staff needed to be relieved and although I wasn’t keen at first it got us out of jail, so what the hell. It was a hospital I’d been to many times at Forest Bank.

  When we arrived, I asked the two Strangeways staff if this guy they’d been supervising, Quiggers, a VP who’d been on healthcare, was going to die. ‘Nah, he’s just poorly,’ they said, before buggering off for their breakfast. It had been a long evening.

  Immediately they’d gone there was a high-pitched continuous beep.

  ‘What the—?’

  Sure enough, this Quiggers had flat-lined. A nurse confirmed his demise. There was to be no resuscitation attempt. Prisoners can now sign a DNR form – do not resuscitate – to say they don’t want it. Quiggers had cancer, made a decision that enough was enough and passed away. I called Strangeways’ security. They said they’d get the police to come and take the body off us. ‘But when they do,’ the lad on the other end said, ‘they will need to write you a receipt.’

  I thought he was taking the piss but, no, they really did. When two bobbies rocked up, they looked about sixteen, but they do nowadays, don’t they? They were sheepish too and as unsure as we were about the procedure. That was how our ex-inmate came to be signed, sealed and delivered. Imagine that, a human life reduced to the sort of slip of paper they give you for a few gallons of petrol or your weekly shop.

  Alan Taylor was another lad we had on healthcare, about three times in all. He’d been in the army and after leaving ended up on the streets. His offences were nothing – petty crime, public disturbances, smashing windows and robbing bottles of vodka, that sort of caper. He wasn’t your usual prisoner, clearly no idiot, but something had gone awry. The detox wing had been concerned about him. He’d gone on an ACCT and then come to us. His dad was named Mulgrew. We’d had two of his sons in prison already and Alan Taylor was another one. Mulgrew was one of Britain’s most prolific paedophiles. He’d abused his own half a dozen kids and passed them around. Had this been America, he’d have got twenty-odd years for his first crimes. Our system let him out to reoffend time after time. The sex offenders’ treatment programme doesn’t work – read the fable of the scorpion and frog.