Veronica's Bird

by Veronica Bird

  After discussion, more training, I suppose, I agreed to return to the market where, by a million to one chance the same cheeky woman had returned to try her luck again. This time there was no mistake, and we closed in and the woman was arrested. We found several other purses on her. It was my first arrest and on my first day; that could look good on any future c.v.

  Two weeks of induction followed where I came to terms with strange machines such as a telephone switchboard and general duties in an office. I also spent time, up to ten in the evening – we were not allowed as women to work later – checking all the shop door locks, before being driven home by a male colleague when my shift was up.

  At the end of this I went to the National Police Training Centre at Bruche, in Warrington. Much later, there was a national sized scandal centring on racism within the Force at the Centre, when ten officers had to resign and twelve more were disciplined. When I was there, however, there were no signs of such issues amongst us.

  I was there to learn how to be a copper over a thirteen-week period. A five-day week meant there were no lectures or courses over the weekends and my fellow trainees disappeared home. I remained, swotting hard to keep up with the others, being given a sandwich on Saturdays and able to partake of the Sunday buffet in the evening when the weekenders from further away returned ready for the Monday.

  There were lectures in theft, traffic, sexual attacks and police law and for the first time in my life I came top in the results. I was twenty-one. Mind you, I had been lucky, for I had read up on Judges Rules and I was given a question directly on the subject. There were also fitness tests and we had to gain life-savers certificates. At the end of it all we had a memorable black-tie dinner where I bought a long (they were all long in those days) white ball gown costing three pounds, (£42.50 in today’s greenbacks) which I don’t think I ever wore again. All students made a small donation which went towards the purchasing of the cut-glass, the silver and the candelabra. Over time there arose a magnificent array of dinner ware and silver for these special evenings. We had a passing out parade to demonstrate our well-rehearsed skills in drilling, with parents clapping enthusiastically as we marched by, eyes right. None of my family attended, what is called par for the course.

  Passing out meant I could concentrate on my new career. I was aware women could not go further than as a Sergeant and the Equal Pay Act only came into force in 1970 when I had moved on to a different service. I became skilled in knowing what to do in motor accidents, Point Duty and marvelled at the professionalism of the Force. Today there are great changes in the way Police are trained, as all lectures are videoed, allowing students to return later to a booth where they can replay the lecture as many times as they wish. Now that would have suited Veronica, very nicely.

  We were advised, admittedly with a smile on our lecturer’s face, that comfortable as we were in our new knowledge, this training period would be the happiest time of our career. His words turned out to be quite true, and it was with colleagues who never minded that you were a woman. We all helped each other.

  So, having graduated and at last a WPC, I began to walk the beat in my uniform, monitor cycle proficiency tests and chase shop lifters and prostitutes but, maintained my naiveté. I was so naïve I did not know I was naïve. In many ways, I had been sheltered, cut off from the real world beyond Doncaster Road, and Ackworth. There was no-one to answer my questions when they arose. I had been told to be good, I was. I had been told to keep quiet and keep out of the way. I did. Further than that remained a secret. Until, that is, one day I arrested a prostitute and brought her as I was instructed, into the Station, where the woman was asked to empty her bag on the sergeant’s desk. Out spilled, among other things some square flat packets.

  ‘Hullo,’ said the sergeant to me,’ thankfully, he did not say, ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘what are these?’ He directed his comments towards me as much in conversation as asking a direct question.

  ‘I don’t know Sergeant,’ I replied mystified. I had never seen a condom nor had any idea what you did with them. The sergeant gave an exaggerated sniff, eyes cast, as it were, towards heaven.

  ‘And what might this be?’ he asked. This time his face was more serious and it demanded a reply.

  ‘Don’t know Sergeant. Could be a nail file I suppose.’

  The Sergeant sniffed again as he glanced sideways at me. ‘This is a tool used by abortionists. You have found one of the nasty people in this world. This case will now have to go to CID. It’s a crime.’

  So, I learned and was kept busy. I arrested one shop lifter who had already stacked three large bags outside the shop when I caught her with a fourth. Unable to march her, and her stolen goods to the Station, I called for help. On arrival, the CID recognised the woman and knew of her family who were all crooks. They made the decision to raid their house straight away. It turned out to be an Aladdin’s Cave stuffed with random stolen goods from soap powder to food. Her sons had been stealing in the market to add to the pile.

  While the pay was a great deal better than being a nanny, eleven pounds a week (£201.0 per week in today’s money) it had to go on accommodation and all the other usual costs of living. It was not going to make me rich I realised, as our queue formed up quietly while the Sergeant received our signatures, handed out pay packets in those familiar brown envelopes with the notes, such as they were, sticking out of the end flap, Because I needed more cash to save for the future, if my career was ever to change as I had planned, I opted for every single chance to earn overtime like weekends; Bank Holidays were nice and Election Days at a Polling Station from seven in the morning to ten at night were even nicer. These were big treats for me, which, re-reading this seems a bit sad to note I had written it down as if they were luxuries in my life.

  But, I had a job, nice colleagues to work for, interesting work, paid if poorly; and an all-important roof over my head. I was becoming more settled as I began to see a future spreading out on a calm sea with a clear horizon. I was also, away from Fred and Joan. I had enough to eat, I wore a uniform so I was never cold. What possibly could go wrong?

  There is an old adage which goes: ‘everyone is given the same chances in life’. In nineteen sixty-eight it did not seem that way to me. Some people maintain their good luck all their life. Others have an up and down sort of life, not bad if the ups outweigh the downs. I had chances too, just out of reach of my fingertips to grab; they just slipped away as if they were pieces of soap in the bath.

  One night I was playing cards with three friends. I was concentrating hard, annoyed only because I was being disturbed at the extreme edge of my eye by some movement or other. It was coming from the window. I threw out a ten of diamonds and looked up. I should have known what or rather who framed the glass as he peered at my friends attempting to see if he recognised any of them. It was Fred. Prying, peeping Fred. It was outrageous and frightening for I could see he was never going to stop stalking me. I should have known for he was a close friend of the Chief Superintendent of Doncaster Police. A few words in his ear would soon have elicited enough clues for the address. It made him come looking. He slunk off like a fox in a car’s headlights, when he saw me peering through the window.

  It was quite hopeless. What on God’s earth could I do? I could try to emigrate to Canada, as had some of my friends, but I had no qualifications other than as a nanny and how could I raise the fare to cross the Atlantic even if I was offered a worthwhile post? Surely there was somewhere in the world I could go, safe from his eyes where I could get on with my life, but where? And how? And more importantly, when?

  I rose from the card table, surprising my friends and stormed to the door, but he had left as he had arrived, skulking away into the darkness. My family could never understand why I did not like my life to be under Fred’s microscope every day. They considered me to be a snob believing Fred was not only funny but generous and had no idea of what he was like away from the family.

  I was trapped, desperate and very u
nhappy having been in the police force for four wasted years.

  PART TWO

  CLIMBING

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAMBER POTS AND CHAOS

  Do you remember those iconic images of the Ascent of Man? You might not even have heard, or wanted to know the name of the man, Professor Clark Howell, who first displayed a series of apes and men in one horizontal banner. On the far left was an image of a knuckle-dragging ape with a low forehead and bone swellings over the eyes. Through a series of transformations, the ape begins to stand so, by the time of the far-right illustration, having travelled past the extinct Homo Erectus, we arrive at Homo Sapiens, upright and not too hairy and quite a bit brighter.

  I saw my past life as that shuffling ape with my hopes and aspirations focussed on getting, at least to Homo Erectus even if it was going to take a great deal of effort to travel along the line of progression; it was all a question of straining one’s back to make it move to the vertical, like the rest of the tribe; painful but possible.

  It was a short while later, when Fred’s presence had made itself known to me in Doncaster, that I found myself talking to a woman in a shop. She was wearing the uniform of the Prison Service, quite a rarity in those days of nineteen sixty-eight. She knew me for what I was, for I was in my Police uniform. As we chatted, allowing other shoppers to swirl past, making comparisons in the two Services, it became apparent she was much better paid than me and her wage was all found, for it appeared everything else was paid, such as accommodation, furniture and bedding.

  An idea formed like a speech bubble above my head, though I didn’t pass it on. If I was to become a Prison Officer, there was no way Fred could come and interfere. He would be locked out behind secure gates – and I would be, literally locked in – and he would have no chance of being able to see what I was doing or who I was seeing. And, Prison Officers and Police Officers must have many similar skills. This fact was supported by my new friend in the shop. I realised I could be backing myself into a corner if Fred managed to ingratiate himself into Leeds prison but at the time it was an alternative and an attractive solution to the ever-present subject under discussion. I had argued that I was running away from the problem, which I knew was perfectly true, but when one is on one’s own, the alternatives are reduced; the upside was, there were good chances of fast promotion within the Service. My time at Ackworth had shown I could lead a team as Captain in most sports. I could do it here.

  The woman was still talking and broke into my thoughts. ‘And you would get in very easily. The Service is very …. keen (she might have been going to say, desperate, but was too polite) to have more female officers. There’s a great shortage.’

  We said goodbye and I thanked the woman, not realising my career path had just changed for ever, and walked back to the Station.

  This would turn out to be the real tipping point in my life. I thought it had happened last time but, in retrospect I had already made the break from Barnsley; this was to make it permanent and not as a nanny nor as a police officer though I had enjoyed both. It would mean another exam, another interview, but I had passed out of police training, top of my class. This surely could not be more difficult?

  Such a move could enable me to drop any nascent ideas of emigrating to Canada or anywhere else in the world. I could save money without having to pay out on an expensive Atlantic crossing and I would be able to hold onto my ever-widening circle of friends. To make the decision to change was, all at once, not difficult, and I had nothing to lose. If the interview for the Prison Service went horrendously wrong there was still my current job which I could continue.

  Within a few days, I had filled in an application form to join Her Majesty’s Prison Service. Again, the response was quick, almost eager I sensed, as I sat down to another, by now familiar exam, this time at Askham Grange, just outside York. Askham Grange to all intents and purposes was a stately home, built in eighteen eighty-six for a Knight of the Realm. It certainly looked like it with its sweeping staircase and sunken garden, a ballroom with a swimming pool below the sprung floor, stone fireplaces and surrounded by an old kitchen garden wall in brick. New ideas in the prison service proposed that prisoners should be gradually freed up, gearing them to come to terms with the world outside the walls which had contained them for so long. as they came towards the end of their term. Institutionalised as so many were, the plan was to merge them carefully back into society without too many snorts of rage from the uninformed public. Three meals a day, a heated cell, no work pressures and a radio to listen to was as good as it gets to many. Mary Bell, an infamous killer who strangled two young boys when she was eleven years old, ended her sentence here for this very reason. What I did not know at the time was that within five years, the youngest Governor in the Prison Service, at twenty-eight, took over here; and she was a woman, Susan McCormick.

  There were only four of us up for this exam, no doubt reflecting the unattractiveness of the job to women. I was to be tested upon English and Maths as I had done for the Police; similarly, I was comfortable with both. I must have passed, for I was asked to stay on for the afternoon to attend the interview. There I met a Chief Officer, the Head of Administration and a Governor. The three of them sat in line in the Governor’s beautiful office and asked if I wanted to specialise in catering or perhaps in nursing as a hospital officer. Promotion possibilities were endless due to the shortage of staff. They were there to grab hold of.

  ‘Why, Miss Bird, do you want to enter the Prison Service?’

  ‘I want to help other people in difficult situations,’ I replied with some fervour. I believed in the idea.

  I had had considerable experience in looking after children and was aware of the mother and baby units in prisons. I also had four years in the police force which had to add up to something useful.

  ‘Quite so,’ they concurred after I had told them everything about my short life. They studied the diminutive figure in front of them, one sucking his biro as if to draw some sense into his words. ‘And, could you stand up to the harsh environment of the prison regime. Some of these women can be very tough.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’ I was as clear with that as I could be. A woman prisoner could be no harder on me than my father had been and this time I could resist the blows on my body. I would be trained to do so.

  Following the interview, I felt sticky on my back from the strain of answering questions. I wanted to be believed. The next department I was being sent was to attend a stiff medical but this was no problem bearing in mind all the sacks of potatoes and carrots I had lifted onto lorries and my sports career at Ackworth had kept me supple. The Board would not accept overweight women applicants; they also had to be a minimum of five feet three inches, which I was able to clear by two and a half inches. Another question was thrown at me across the table, one which I hoped would be raised. I was ready for this one.

  ‘Are you, Miss Bird, prepared to move away from home? Promotion comes faster if you are totally flexible on this score. Is there anywhere you would not want to be?’

  ‘No, er yes. I would like to be far away from Barnsley, oh, and London. Anywhere else I would be happy with. But, essentially, I will go anywhere in the country if I am wanted. I have no ties. None at all.’

  Fred lived in Barnsley and visited London each week; Holloway was a short journey by tube.

  A few days later, I received a letter in my room in Doncaster which stated, unequivocally that I had been accepted into Her Majesty’s Prison Service. It was nineteen sixty-eight and I was twenty-five years of age.

  *

  I informed my boss of my decision to accept the post which raised a few eyebrows, as if to say, ‘you’ll be back,’ and took a train to Risley via Warrington which I knew from my police training days.

  Grisley Risley as it was known to some lags was a new (1964) prison purpose-built remand centre for both male and female inmates. Its architectural outline was very different from the forbidding Victorian structures which
our great grandparents had liked to justify, many of which were still operating. Much of the building work at Risley below ground was in concrete which had contracted ‘concrete cancer’ meaning whole areas of the prison had to be rebuilt.

  I arrived at the main gate and was met by a lady called Mo who took me straight away, to the female wing to show me around. This was on two storeys and contained twenty-five cells each with just one prisoner. I soon noticed that many of the inmates were mentally disturbed. How did I know this so soon? My first images were appalling. I had landed in hell. This could have been Dante’s first vision before he painted his Apocalypse. Prisoners were screaming at the top of their voices, banging on the doors, howling like wolves. The stench was horrendous as the women queued up with their full chamber pots whose contents were to be dumped into the sluice. It was as if Bedlam itself was taking a peak at me.

  The first and foremost impression was not the ideal image of prison life I had drummed up in my mind. There was an abrupt belief this was a very long way from my idea of what a prison should be, and my heart sank as I realised the foolish and trite words I had uttered to the Chief Officer at Askham Grange when I had suggested I wanted to help those more unfortunate than myself.

  Having determined the layout and limits of my new world, I was driven three miles to my accommodation leaving me more dismayed because I had no transport. I was left at the door with my tiny case and told to report the next day.