One of Your Own

by Carol Ann Lee

  In February 1968, Myra left Holloway to spend a week in Risley, a special privilege granted on compassionate grounds to allow Gran to visit her. Ellen Maybury died in March. The press reported the temporary transfer and the ensuing public outcry led to Myra’s reclassification as a Category A prisoner, branding her an inmate whose escape would be extremely dangerous to the public, police or national security.

  She was still desperate to see Ian and recruited the help of another visitor, Frank Pakenham, 7th Earl of Longford, to whom she was introduced via Lady Tree. A Labour Cabinet minister and staunch Catholic, Longford was a passionate campaigner for penal reform and an indefatigable prison visitor. Happily married to Elizabeth Harman, with whom he had eight children, his visits to Myra coincided with the dwindling of her appointments with Lady Tree, who recalls: ‘I went off her and [Myra] went off me. I was having a minor change of lifestyle, my children were growing up. I said I don’t think I shall have time. We’d come to the end of the road.’23

  Longford was immediately drawn to Myra and blamed Ian unequivocally for her downfall: ‘She was totally unlike that picture of her with blonde hair and staring eyes that appears in all the papers. She was a quiet, dark woman . . . Many people have done terrible things. The point about Myra is that she was a good Catholic girl before she met Brady . . . She fell under his spell . . .’24 He gave her a few of the books he had written, published by Sidgwick & Jackson, of which he was chairman. Their subsequent friendship might have begun and ended on Myra’s part with less than charitable intent, but for many years they remained loyal to each other, until she came to realise that his stalwart vocal support was damaging her bid for freedom.

  Soon after their introduction, he visited Ian and announced that he had no doubt that the couple could be paroled ‘in a good many years’.25 He urged Myra to consider returning to Catholicism; she wrote to her mother: ‘I doubt I’ll “see the light” again, but who knows?’26

  Myra began to form friendships with other inmates, her closest during her early days in Holloway with twenty-two-year-old Carole Callaghan, who was serving a six-year sentence for attempted armed robbery. She nicknamed Carole ‘Eccles’ after Spike Milligan’s Goons character. They shared a love of philosophy and English literature, listened to classical music together and studied French. At night they stood at the windows of their adjoining cells, talking for hours and looking out at Holloway Road, where lit buses rattled by and revellers spilled from Holloway Castle pub. They shared a similar sense of humour; Carole recalls laughing as she caught sight of Myra one day, balancing a dish in each hand as she went down the stairs singing ‘Swanee River’ at the top of her voice. Carole was married, but also had lesbian relationships in prison. She viewed Myra’s girlfriends as minions: ‘Not only would [the girlfriend] be useful sexually but she would also preen and polish Myra’s cell, wash and iron her clothes, and generally be servile.’27 The two of them occasionally peeped in at cell 18, the old execution chamber where five women, including Edith Thompson and Ruth Ellis, were hanged. The scaffold had gone, but the drop was there.

  In June 1968, as part of a government experiment, Holloway inmates were allowed to wear their own clothes, which eventually led to the abolition of prison uniform for women. Myra’s interest in fashion resurfaced; she asked her visitors to bring her clothes, using what she and Carole termed her ‘Baby Jane’ voice. Her weight had gone up by three stone to a size sixteen since her imprisonment. She didn’t smoke – although she did try cannabis, which was stitched into the bellies of dead pigeons thrown over the wall to inmates from associates outside – but spent most of her earnings on sweets. Unlike the majority of prisoners, who depended on medication, Myra survived without pills, other than the ones she took for chronic insomnia, which plagued her until the end of her life (she was unable to sleep in the dark and permission was granted for her to leave the light on in her cell). She learned tapestry from a Royal College of Needlework tutor and discovered a latent gift for it. With two other inmates, she created an intricate carpet, working to a commission from the Polish Embassy, and recalled secretly slipping a Rizla paper inside the hem, reading, ‘Myra Hindley made this carpet.’

  In January 1969, the prison authorities discussed resentment among staff towards Longford’s visits to Myra. One memo observed: ‘The already existing feelings of superiority in this very dominating woman are being augmented by his encouragement.’28 Another memo echoed: ‘Myra is a forceful, dominating woman at any time and is adept at manipulating any circumstance to her advantage.’29 Longford’s request for private visits with her was refused, although he continued to see her at three-monthly intervals.

  Myra begged her mother for family news, although she and Maureen were not yet reconciled, despite her sister sending letters and photos of her three small sons: Paul, David and John. That summer, Dave was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for knifing a neighbour, William Lees, who had twice attacked him, once with a gang of people and again alone. The judge accepted that since the Moors trial he had been ‘subjected to a great deal of open and sustained hostility’.30 In prison, Dave opted for Rule 43; still only 21 years old, he slashed his wrists soon after his arrival.

  Afterwards, he began to think about his life and the father he wanted to be. Maureen left him, unable to cope, and asked the social services to take their sons into care while she tried to find herself a home and work. A job in a department store ended because the other staff refused to work with Myra Hindley’s sister. Maureen recalled: ‘I learned to stick my nose in the air and close my ears to them. You’ve got to make up your mind that you are going to stay firm, no matter what you feel inside. You must act hard on the outside and say, “Look, I don’t care what you say, I’m not budging.”’31 She wrote again to Myra, and asked for a visiting order, but was informed that her sister didn’t wish to see her.

  Myra still hoped to be reunited with Ian, writing to her mother: ‘I’ve been in prison for three years now, Mam, and I haven’t seen Neddy for two and a half of them, which I think is awful, thinking how many other prisoners have been granted this privilege.’32 In Durham, following the refusal of his petition to see her, Ian’s anger exploded. He flung scalding tea at fellow child-murderer Raymond Morris, which resulted in the loss of 28 days’ privileges, including cigarettes. He then went on hunger strike, and there followed further fights with Morris. In a calmer period, Ian declared, ‘I realised that, in a way, I was attacking myself. I could see a reflection of me in the Cannock Chase killer.’33

  When the maximum-security status of Holloway’s E Wing was relaxed in autumn 1969, more prisoners arrived on the wing, although there were never more than 20 inmates at a time. Myra was nervous of the influx but worked quietly in the tapestry room and had her meals in her cell. She wrote to Longford that November: ‘I have completely accepted the possibility that I may never be released. Or at least if I am, I will be much older than I am now.’34 She began thinking about Catholicism and spoke to the prison chaplain, Father William Kahle, whose parents had emigrated to Britain to escape Nazi persecution. He recalls, ‘I was asked to see her because I was a Roman Catholic and a German with a lot of knowledge of a cruel people.’35

  Dorothy Wing, Holloway’s governor since 1967, strongly supported Myra’s renewed interest in religion, feeling that she would either kill herself or become irreparably hardened to prison life otherwise. Wing bonded with Myra over a passion for nineteenth-century poetry. She believed in giving prisoners as much freedom as possible and allowed them to furnish their cells as they wished. Encouraged by Wing, Myra told Father William that she would like to attend Mass and wrote to Longford: ‘I’m still desperately trying to make my peace with God and to prove myself worthy of being a Christian . . .’36 Her friend Carole told her that a burst of religious fervour would boost her parole chances; Ian wrote that he hoped she wouldn’t be disillusioned by the process.

  Their relationship was under strain, not only from their separation and her leaning
s towards Catholicism, but also from the thinly veiled threats in his letters concerning the ‘scenic’ photographs. An issue ever since their imprisonment, their desperation to retrieve the photographs first surfaced in Myra’s letters to her mother in June 1966. She wrote that Fitzpatrick, their solicitor, had a list of photographs to send on when he managed to reclaim them. Three months later she wrote again to her mother, asking her to phone Fitzpatrick to ensure the photographs were returned. A year later, she complained that their solicitor was still trying to get the photographs – and tapes – sent back and had written to the Director of Public Prosecutions. In August 1968, Fitzpatrick finally succeeded in gaining possession of the photographs, negatives, slides and tartan album and passed them on to Nellie. The police took copies of everything before handing it back.

  Although there was a great quantity of material, Myra asked her mother to have three specific slides developed and sent on to Ian. A week later, she wrote again about the slides, but Nellie hadn’t sent them, her suspicions roused by the insistent tone of Myra’s requests. Fitzpatrick informed Myra and Ian that he had been offered a large fee for the tartan album from the press; Myra was against the publicity that would arise from the sale, while Ian suggested that the money might prove useful upon her release. He was unconcerned about the album – the photographs that held special significance were the three slides of Myra that he knew Nellie had. But he grew agitated when the slides didn’t arrive. By the end of 1969, Myra wrote to her mother: ‘He keeps asking why he hasn’t received them yet. In his last letter he said he’ll have to send someone round for them . . .’37

  23

  What is life for? To die? Then why not kill myself at once? No, I am afraid. To wait for death until it comes, I fear that even more. Then I must live. But what for? In order to die. I cannot escape that circle . . .

  Myra Hindley, personal essay, ‘The Intimate Revelations of Myra Hindley in Prison for Life’, 1975

  The photographs still occupied Myra’s thoughts at the beginning of the year. She wrote to her mother, demanding to know why they hadn’t been sent, adding that she was having to ward off Ian’s threats. Eventually, Nellie did send the slides, but Ian continued to pester Myra for other photographs. Months later she admitted to her mother that she was sick of the whole thing and just wanted them all sent on to Ian, telling Nellie not to make things difficult for her, adding that she was ‘sorry (in more ways than one) to have to mention the slides and photos yet again’.1 But still Nellie didn’t send the rest of the collection: her suspicions remained strong enough for her to take a rare stance against her daughter.

  In January 1970, Myra attended Mass for the first time since she’d been a teenager and wrote to Longford: ‘I wish I could put complete trust in God, but I’m frightened to do so, for my faith is full of doubt and despair that I’ll never be good enough to merit complete forgiveness. I don’t think I could adequately express just how much it means to me to have been to confession and to have received holy communion. It is a terrifyingly beautiful thing – terrifying because I have taken a step which has taken me onto the threshold of a completely new way of life which demands much more from me than my previous one, and beautiful because I feel spiritually reborn. I made such a mess of my old life and I thank God for this second chance.’2 She reassured Ian that she hadn’t revealed anything of substance in her confession. He became openly scornful of her return to the Church, asking, ‘What colour hair-shirt are you wearing?’3 She reflected, ‘Ian, like so many other people, considered my returning to the Church simply as a means of “working my ticket” . . . I realise it is something I will always have to contend with, but as long as God knows, it matters little what anyone else thinks.’4

  That summer Myra sank into a deep depression as her last birthday in her twenties approached. She grew nostalgic, listening to the music she and Ian loved, and pressed a fellow Mancunian inmate to ask relatives for photographs of the house on Wardle Brook Avenue. When they arrived, she grew maudlin, appalled at the neglected state of the house, which the council were finding difficult to rent out. To lift her spirits, she began searching for a new crush. Her friend Carole told her about a new officer, small and slim, with short, dark hair. Tricia Cairns was the officer in question; like Myra, she had been brought up in Gorton. During the months of the Moors investigation and trial, she had been a Carmelite nun in Salford but left the convent following a crisis of faith and joined the Prison Service, working in Bullwood Hall, where she met her partner, a fellow prison officer, before they were transferred to Holloway. Due to a shortage of staff accommodation at Holloway, they lived in a subsidised flat in Earls Court. Myra enlisted Carole’s help in writing a letter to Tricia; her friend recalls a few lines: ‘Is it too much to hope that one day we may sit in the sunshine together enjoying a glass of wine . . . it gives me hope just being able to see you, and when you’re not on duty the day drags by . . .’5 On Myra’s 29th birthday, Tricia presented her with a Rachmaninov record and their affair began; she remained part of Myra’s life until the end. Discovering that Tricia hailed from Gorton cemented the relationship between them. Carole loitered outside Myra’s door to allow the two women to conduct their relationship in private, while Myra’s then favourite song, ‘We’ve Only Just Begun’, played. If anyone approached, Carole started singing ‘To Be a Pilgrim’ loudly; she also wrote poems, which Myra then handed to her lover, pretending they were her own.

  Myra’s love for Ian had died. Not wanting to reply to his letters any more, she asked Carole to write, pretending to be her; the ruse worked. The strain of wanting to cut the ties with Ian and conducting a secret affair with a prison officer told on her own mental health, and in December 1970 she wrote to Longford that she was having difficulty ‘keeping my head above the waterline . . . I have rampant “gate fever” . . . my spirit has left me and is hovering restlessly on the other side of the wall.’6 Her friends rallied round, among them Dr Rachel Pinney, a Quaker doctor in her sixties who had lived in a commune and was serving time for kidnapping a fourteen-year-old boy whom she had judged at risk from his troubled mother. She recalled how her friendship with Myra began: ‘Myra was sitting in the corridor with her head in her hands. I went up to her and said, “I’m your friend, do you mind if I talk to you?” She said, “No, of course not. I wish you had approached me the last time you were here. I never speak to people first in case they spit at me.” So then we sat and talked for half an hour.’7

  All the women in Myra’s circle believed she had acted under the spell of a wicked man; after her release, Rachel set about trying to prove Myra’s innocence by spending a year in Manchester, researching a book about her until Myra got word to her to stop. The law then forbade ex-prisoners from writing to their old inmates, but Rachel maintained contact with Myra through Honor Butlin, a wealthy Quaker widow who often visited Myra and sent her bouquets. It was Rachel who brought Myra back into touch with her paternal grandmother, Nana Hindley, who visited her in Holloway. By then, Myra’s mother had been reconciled with Maureen, who recalled, ‘It was just as if we’d never been parted. After all, your mum’s your mum! We talked about everything.’8 She moved in with Nellie and Bill but lost custody of her sons to Dave, who was working hard at building a new life for himself and his children. He lived with his cancer-ridden father but found lasting happiness with a feisty, kind-hearted teenager named Mary, the daughter of his father’s best friend.

  Although Myra wanted nothing to do with Maureen, her thoughts dwelled increasingly on the past; she wrote to her cousin Glenys about Michael Higgins and places she had known in Gorton. Glenys was aware of the relationship with Tricia and acted as a go-between for the two women. Myra sent long coded letters to Tricia via Glenys; when Carole left Holloway in early 1971, Glenys then forwarded the letters on to her. Tricia visited Carole’s flat to decipher the letters away from the home she shared with her partner. The same process worked in reverse.9 Pat Ali, an illiterate prisoner, acted as a local messenger between M
yra and Tricia but complained about them to a board of visiting magistrates. She was disbelieved and lost six months’ remission for ‘malicious allegations’. Despite the intensity of their relationship, neither Myra nor Tricia were faithful; both had several lovers. After falling for Tricia, Myra’s weight dropped from twelve stone to eight, largely due to the cigarettes she bought in order to bribe fellow inmates to pass messages to Tricia. She also worried about eating the prison food, which was often contaminated with urine from the prisoners who prepared it.

  When Carole left Holloway, Myra was forced to write to Ian herself again. He sent her a coded message to ask if she wanted to end their relationship. Myra later claimed that she found it difficult to do so because she didn’t want him to feel alone.10 She recalled, ‘He wrote back to me and said he had waited for my letter to arrive so he would know where his fate lay, because if my answer had been yes, that I wanted to finish with him, he would do what he had originally planned.’11 Hinting that her feelings for him had changed nonetheless, she sent him a poem about the maturation of love by Wordsworth.