Veronica's Bird

by Veronica Bird

  After the practical work at Holloway, we were involved in written work, alternating with fitness training. We became skilled in how to control and restrain a prisoner, the care one had to take at the main gate and what to do on night duty if a prisoner became ill. The course was wide, and deep and very professional. Two weeks before the end I was called into a tutor’s office.

  ‘Veronica. You are to be posted to Pucklechurch when you leave here. It’s about eleven miles from Bristol and will take you half an hour to get there from the city centre.’ He had forgotten I didn’t have a car. ‘It’s a small, happy prison and I think you are going to like it there.’ He paused and looked up to see if I was paying attention. I was. ‘I’m sending you there with Elaine. I want you to look after her.’

  It was my turn to query. ‘How do you mean Sir?’

  ‘In confidence, Veronica, you must know that Elaine now has the results of her check-up at Pinderfields hospital and she has been told she has an inoperable brain tumour. There’s nothing she can do about it but, of course, neither can we. She is to take leave to tell her rather elderly parents the sad news, and will then come on to Pucklechurch.’

  I hesitated. I knew Elaine had gone to the hospital following her collapse at Wakefield one day but had not heard the result. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that Sir.’

  ‘We have allocated a room for her next to yours, so you can keep an eye out on her. It is the least we can do.’

  And so, I said goodbye to Wakefield, a fully-fledged prison officer in my new uniform, though no doubt I would be carefully watched for some time as I shoe-horned myself into the routine.

  Pucklechurch was a community (now Ashfield Prison) and community was, strangely, the right word to use. There were only twenty-eight women prisoners imprisoned on the site of a Second World War RAF balloon site. Building had commenced in 1963 and was duly opened in 1967 so both the prison and I were very new together when I arrived in 1968. The place was designed to take both male and female inmates on remand with the male units larger than those for the women simply because of the greater numbers.

  While I am quite comfortable to write that when I was at Pucklechurch, it felt and was a happy prison to work in, by 1990, only twenty-two years later a vicious riot destroyed many of the buildings. It is the nature of the beast that tensions can arise out of almost nothing and, when fired up, it is very difficult to stop the destruction. It happens so quickly.

  I still remember my first day in my first job in the Prison Service. I had already been given my uniform for the passing out parade at Wakefield and I was very proud to wear it. In 1968, it was of a much higher quality of design and material and trouser suits had not even been invented for women. So, we wore a skirt in royal blue, a blouse without a tie so we could not be strangled (though men wore a tie, it was a pulloff type) I was given the option of being given shoes or take an allowance to buy my own, which of course I did, as I presumed I could save money that way. Not soon after I joined, all shoes were provided by way of an allowance and I settled for a court shoe with a low heel. This would, we were told, save on the administration costs of sorting out all our shoes sizes and trying them on. So proud of the outfit, I spent a great deal of time making myself smart in front of just about everyone; finally, this was recognised and I became a model for new uniform designs. (yes, but not on a cat walk).

  I had travelled the day earlier with a rail warrant to Bristol. It was followed by a taxi for the last ten miles where I was met at the prison and shown around before being taken to my accommodation – well, a bare room in fact. I unpacked my worldly goods comprising a dress, a skirt and three blouses which took about two minutes. I had been advised to buy some food in the village at the only shop, as there were no meals set aside for me at the prison until the next day. This I dealt with, carrying my supper back to a cheerless room, but looking forward to the morning.

  Day dawned as I walked across a grassed square to the main gate to be duly signed in to a register. I could see this grass from my window and further across to the prison itself. They spelt out the boundaries of my life quite clearly; during my time-off they connected back to the prison. This was my world.

  Below, you can find a typical day, though it did take some time to learn all the ropes. Unlike another prison such as Holloway which was so much bigger, Pucklechurch was small enough for me to have to carry out any and all duties required of me. This was not to be a place for specialism.

  06.50 Check in at the main gate

  06.50–07.00 Discuss any issues arising from the night before

  07.00–07.30 Unlock cells, prisoner slop out. Wash.

  07.30–07.50 Supervise prisoners breakfast

  07.50–08.00 Lock prisoners up

  08.00–08.30 Staff breakfast

  08.30–11.00 Unlock cells. Prisoners to workshops or laundry

  11.00–12.00 Prisoners to exercise yard. I supervise

  12.30–13.30 Prisoners locked up. Staff to lunch

  13.30–15.30 Supervise visiting families

  16.00 Prisoners to tea then locked up

  1830–20.30 Prisoners unlocked and to Association. I supervise. Prisoners locked-up.

  20.50 Night staff arrive

  21.00 Sign out at main gate

  OR: I might escort prisoners all around the country to attend Court or transfer to other prisons when I would get back by 2000 for supper.

  Each night during the week, one prison officer would have to sleep in, in case of emergencies. It could be a long day but I didn’t mind. I was going nowhere. I was safe, watered, fed, housed and making friends. Because I became known as dependable I received good reports. It would help me in my promotion prospects in the future.

  Pucklechurch was a small village in 1968, now expanded out of all recognition. The builders started construction in 1963 and took four years to complete with the surrounding village growing alongside so it could accommodate the prison officers housing. They needed to be close to the prison in case of emergencies. It had been built to take young male offenders under the age of twenty-one but now the site was shared with a woman’s unit. Arriving prisoners, having been checked in at Reception, would walk down a magnolia painted corridor carrying their bundles to the cell block of fourteen cells, seven either side facing each other. There were a further fourteen cells called the hospital unit. An area contained a sluice for chamber pots and basins where an enterprising Architect had located the office, correctly as it turned out, on the opposite side where it was engulfed, trapping the appalling smells. But the office was there for a reason. If there were going to be any fights this is probably the place where they would brew. There is nothing worse than a grumpy prisoner who has had a bad night holding a chamber pot in a queue which seems especially slow that morning. Apart from a pint of urine dumped on you, accidentally on purpose, the pot itself could give you a very nasty blow, but officers in the office could arrive very quickly to sort it out. Early mornings were the worst time of the day for us.

  With space at a premium, a portacabin was craned into the site but it had no bars on the windows and the walls and floor were flimsy to say the least. I imagined on more than one occasion the idea of prisoners, at the dead of night, digging down through the floor to the space below as if they were P.O.W.s’ in a German Prisoner of war camp. No-one would have been the wiser – until roll-call the next day. Luckily my fantasies were proved to be groundless while I was there but there was one escape through the floor after I had left.

  Close-by was the dining room, a multi-purpose space with a highly-polished wood block floor. It became a church for Church of England use on Sunday morning and after lunch the Roman Catholics would use it. As the boys came over on Sundays to attend a service from the male units they would be put in the front so they would find it difficult to ogle at the women, most of whom were under twenty-eight years old, but kept at the back of the room. The girls were able to watch the boys enter the room, to judge if there were any new arrivals better looking
than the others. By evening, after supper, it became the Association area where they could engage in Bingo or play board games or just chat. The tables they played on were metal framed with Formica easy-clean tops but were dangerous missiles in a riot as were the wooden stacking chairs. Just these items of furniture could batter a room into pieces.

  These fights and arguments came, seemingly in waves. A week of total calm could be followed by days of screaming arguments as prisoners would fight over a particular chair in a particular position – ‘armchair syndrome’ we called it. Having been to some extent, institutionalised at Ackworth to living in close contact with many, often noisy girls, the new environment sat more easily on my shoulders than some of the new arrivals having had less of a Spartan regime in their young lives. I found I accepted the status quo and got on and dealt with the issues one by one as they arose.

  At meal times, prisoners would sit at these tables waiting for me or another staff member to call them, table by table, to the servery where women doled out the food into metal trays with depressions to contain separate foods. It often produced cold, glutinous dishes and was unappetising to many. The food had previously been cooked in the male kitchen, carried over to us and left at our back door thus further cooling the meal.

  Whether it was at mealtimes, or cleaning out cells, escorting them around Britain or watching them in the exercise yard, the most difficult issues were always with the high proportion of psychologically disturbed women. A psychologist said at the time, and this was in nineteen sixty-eight, she believed that up to eighty percent of our female inmates were mentally unbalanced to some degree or other, a percentage you might want to argue over when you have more time. But, these irrational moments could manifest themselves often without warning. One such woman had an issue every time she saw glass and wanted to smash it into pieces. This meant whenever we had to move her we would have to go to the laborious task of locking up all the rest of the prisoners as it needed three or four prison officers to keep her under control from damaging herself or another prisoner. Another woman smashed an arm through a pane of glass so hard she cut her wrist very badly. I was detailed to escort her to the hospital, a task I loathed as I hated the sight of blood. Luckily, the surgeon probably recognised my fear and talked through the operation describing the layers of skin, the torn tendons, while I concentrated on the sky, the grass and the trees I could see, anything to keep me from looking at the gory mess. The prisoner might have been unable to use her hand again but for the skill of the surgeon. The woman recovered completely and was able to return to her cell in due course. I ask you, should such people be locked up? Is there not something better that could be done?

  Writing of unpleasant and painful experiences, many of the women were heavily tattooed. To try and get them going for interviews for jobs when they got outside, they were encouraged to have the tattoos removed, at least on the hands and wrists. There were, however, no lasers in those days and scouring was the only way of removing the purple and blue marks. Scouring meant extremely painful treatment, so bad for some they had to take to their beds. Painkillers were few and far between and for obvious reasons could not be handed out like sweets.

  In my daily roster described above, I mentioned the need to travel around the country. Pucklechurch had twenty-eight staff in the woman’s wing and a further ten nursing staff, so the staff to prisoner ratio was above 1:1 and significantly better than crew to passengers on a so-called luxury cruise ship. Despite this it still meant I had to take what I considered valuable time out each week to escort prisoners around the country to attend Court. As we were at the whim of late running cases and judges summing up, I had to spend many hours, usually in a cell knitting or writing letters, of which I wrote many, to pass the hours. It was a waste of time but the system did not have the flexibility to change until, at last, these duties were contracted out to companies such as Serco, G4S and GeoAmey took this time-consuming task away from us, allowing the prison to get on with one of its tasks of training prisoners for life after sentence.

  I had arrived feeling I wanted to get on with my job while knowing I had to keep an eye out on Elaine. She had had a painful reunion with her parents to tell them there was nothing they could do, and returned to work as best she could. But, it could not last and three months later she resigned and died shortly afterwards. It was a sad time for me for I felt so helpless, not being able to do anything to relieve her distress. It was an uncomfortable edge to my new horizon and the incident sobered me up for a time.

  I try to summon up my feelings of that early time in my career, the year of 1968. Those two London thugs, the Kray Twins, were at last arrested and Enoch Powell made his notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech the day before Edward Heath sacked him from his shadow cabinet. The floods in the southwest of England made no difference to the home-coming of Sir Alec Rose returning from his round the world sailing nonstop which made banner headlines at the time. Coal mining came to an end in the Black Country as Baggeridge Colliery closed after three hundred years. I was not home to hear what my father would have thought of the news but could imagine his surly retort against all governments, if asked.

  Back in Pucklechurch, you might have noticed, if you picked up an AA roadmap, that the site is almost eleven miles due east of Bristol and I mention this location for a particular reason. In nineteen sixty-nine on a May morning with nine months of my time at Pucklechurch under my belt, I brought all twenty-eight women prisoners together and with help, escorted them down to the exercise yard. It might have been any old exercise but, that exact day, Test Pilot Brian Trubshaw flew Concorde on his first British test flight over the prison at eleven in the morning. I don’t suppose he had singled out the prison as an item in his planned trip nor even to use it as a turning marker as they still do around Windsor Castle, but to the women it was a day to remember as the wonderfully sleek aircraft flew over in seconds, but the roar of its engines was enough to vibrate your rib cage. It caused much chatter and animated faces during that lunchtime. It was a break from the stifling regime which prison life holds for everyone and I was not unaware of how well received my action was that morning.

  This notion stayed with me. I had joined the Service to help those less fortunate than myself. With just a small effort, I had been able to give my charges an insight, however insignificant it appeared to others, into another, better life, one where hopelessness could be replaced by hope, where despair could be traded for confidence. There was a chance I could make a difference with, at least, some of the prisoners, a difference which they could hold up to the light and see there was always an alternative to back-to-back confinement.

  These impressions would often run through my mind while I was on night duty. I would leave my colleague on the main reception desk, so I could stroll on my rounds. The lights were always turned off at ten along with all radios, leaving just the emergency lighting to illuminate my path. It was spooky at times, listening to the women asleep, or crying out in a nightmare. Some must have had worse dreams than others, if they had possibly killed someone. The brand, a ‘murderer ‘was a hard one to accept at times, thoughts likely to surface from the slime in the darkest hours of the night.

  Psychiatric reports and self-harm accounts meant I had to inspect a specific cell every fifteen minutes, the suicide watch as it was known. Having seen all was well, it was back to the other prisoners who needed a check every hour. In those early days of mine we had a small key to turn in a box – the pegging system – to ensure we checked everywhere we were instructed to cover. Today, it is the digital age which means the Prison Officer has a tracker attached so his or her whereabouts can be checked by an oppo in reception.

  A problem which could arise in the night-time was when a prisoner might fall ill. Night staff did not carry keys, so if they found a prisoner seriously ill or saw a fire for example, they had to open a sealed package to obtain keys, such an action had to be carefully explained the next day in a report. Cautious judgements always had
to be made when a cell needed to be opened in the night, for it was very dangerous to do so on one’s own. Breaking the key seal meant a good explanation had to be forthcoming. In Pucklechurch and Risley it was somewhat easier for we could call over a male officer as back-up to help out if trouble was brewing, or I had to escort a prisoner to hospital, which could leave the remaining night staff without a back-up member. As further help, there were always nurses on call.

  This danger of fire in prison never went away. It might be hard to understand how a fire could take hold in a cell built of concrete and steel. But, these cells often held seriously disturbed women. Smoking was everywhere, so matches were readily available. Put the two together and fires were not an abnormal event.

  I was walking down a corridor where the cells were separated into two banks when I saw smoke curling from under an inmate’s door which held a pregnant woman. It was undoubtedly a cry for help but at this moment all I could think of was to get her out of her cell and go for the nearest fire extinguisher.

  ‘Fire! Fire!’ came the familiar cry from my own lips, this time as I pulled the woman through the smoky opening while searching for an extinguisher. As luck, would have it, another prison officer was close by and hearing me, dashed forward. She was, let us be kind, a bulky woman, a woman from Wales no less, formidable in size though perhaps, less well trained in fire-fighting. Well, thinking about it now, not trained at all.

  ‘Bang the knob down…on the floor!’ I yelled at her. The volume of my voice rose a smidgen with frustration but, in the end, it did communicate to my compact colleague who threw the offending instrument at the floor, eyes closed, knob first which started the water coming, good and proper. Regrettably, I had failed to tell her to keep tight hold of the extinguisher during this operation.