Hellbent: Ces Waters & Me

by Margaret Wentworth

  I asked an orderly daily for news of the outcome of Dennis’s trial. One night he smirked, ‘Your mate, Murtagh … ‘ and passed a finger across his throat. Dennis was in the condemned cell, isolated from the rest of us, but we sent encouraging messages via the cookhouse. ‘Chin up … ‘ and ‘It’s not over yet … ‘ An appeal was lodged by Rose Heilbron, who became the first female judge in England, arguing that the words ‘unless you are satisfied’ were inadequate and misleading—`beyond reasonable doubt’ was required. Dennis and Kenneth walked out free men. For months Dennis woke saturated, nightmares recalling the hangman’s preparations tempering his arrogance of yore. But The Brick continued in villainy—he couldn’t stand becoming The Marshmallow.

  Ronnie Lee was 18, convicted of killing his 14-year-old girlfriend, and most inmates shunned him. He was shy, evasive, blushed easily but eventually loosened up to me, and told me what had happened. He’d known her since she was 13 and loved her. They went to his father’s timber mill one night to make love. She began making strange noises. ‘Did you have your hands round her throat?’ I asked. ‘No, round her body, in an embrace,’ he said with a dirty look. She started twitching. He jumped up, biting his nails, hoping she’d come out of it. The noises stopped; she was plainly dead. In panic Ronny set fire to some wood and ran. He was charged and when a forensic expert claimed a circular saw had been used to cut her body up, the press went wild. Another forensic expert pointed out the bones would’ve fallen apart in the heat and there were no saw marks. But the jury found him guilty of murder, later reduced to manslaughter. I believed him—an exaggeration would make him blush. When he was transferred he gave me his tobacco tin, a big gift when you’re doing bird.

  I befriended several German prisoners: SS trooper George Liefermann, a U-boat commander and a senior Luftwaffe officer. They’d planned a mass breakout from a Wiltshire POW camp for Christmas 1944, when the guards would be most relaxed. Then they would take over a tank depot and barracks nearby, and descend on London while the Allies were busy on the Continent, fantastically. Their plan was foiled, probably by careless talk really, but a scapegoat was needed. Feldwebel Wolfgang Rosterg had expressed anti-Nazi sentiments and openly sided with the Allies, so he was tried, found guilty, bashed and hanged. A British military court tried eight POWs for murder. Six were sentenced to death. Liefermann felt a gross injustice had been done—the Germans should’ve been left to sort it out internally. After all, they argued, when RAF prisoners in Germany planned an escape which was betrayed by a British officer, the Germans didn’t interfere when the traitor was tried and executed. The Germans rioted and were split up, sent to prisons all over the UK. Once George showed me a newspaper photo of Hermann Goring eating out of a tin. ‘Why do you treat our leaders like that? We treat your leaders with respect.’ I felt he had a good point.

  Strangeways had limited access to news, 30 minutes of BBC radio at 7 am while we ate, and readings from the newspaper, including soccer results, from the chaplain on Sundays. All those people gassed in concentration camps we heard about in 1945, just seemed part of the violence and injustice I was accustomed to.

  The screws were a mixed bunch, but many were profiteering smugglers or sadists. But Mr Stevens stood out. He overlooked petty infringements and applied patience and intelligence to his job. An inmate serving 14 days lost his temper, belted a warder and got three years. After being sentenced, he became unhinged, smashed his cell, bashed his fist on the wall until his knuckles ran with blood, and yelled, ‘Come on, you dirty bastards, I’ll kill you!’ The warders wanted to jump into the fray, but Stevens said he’d tell them when to go in. About 20 minutes later things got quiet. The warders entered and found a non-aggressive shell of a man. Stevens gently led him away.

  The highlight of prison life was short precious contact with those outside. Sylvia remarried after a short passionate affair with Hughie Buller, who she met in a pub. The name augured badly. Buller was a wet cold destitute West Indian hustler sheltering from the rain when I took pity on him and bought him a hot meal years before. Our chat left me with the impression he was a self-indulgent user of people, not the caring husband Sylvia needed.

  Months of imprisonment shrank my mental horizons until The Prison was_ the totality of my world. It was difficult to picture Manchester after a while; when I tried, my mind went blank until D wing, B yard, the workshops, coke pile, boilerhouse, execution shed—all the Strangeways places—flooded back.

  V-E Day came and went. There was extra bread, jam and cheese that night in Strangeways, and Ces remained inside. Then he got a sentence reduction for good behaviour. About a month after the liberation of Europe, Ces too was free. Outside the gates there was no Peggy to greet him. Her parents had prevailed and Ces and Peggy were not to meet again for seven years. Just some soldiers…

  I was horrified when they introduced themselves as my military escort. Although the war had ended, I had to go back to the army. The system was that all 18 year olds served two years. I was not impressed. I was taken to some barracks in Bradford, and given compassionate leave as soon as I arrived because I’d just come out of prison. I overstayed that leave and slipped back into the underworld scene.

  Warehouses were ‘screwed’ in the main, but a parked car full of gear in Manchester’s Piccadilly proved ‘an irresistible temptation’. Joe Lyons and Ces broke into it and Ces was in a tight park when a policeman recognised him. Joe panicked and the excitement made Ces reckless. He bulldozed the car back and forward to create space to leave the curb, mangling metal and making a din. The policeman was able to jump on the running board as Ces took off. Ces lost control and crashed the car. The policeman fell off, and in the general Keystone Cops mayhem that followed, picked himself up and arrested the pair trapped in a tangle of arms and legs trying to get out of the vehicle. Judge Goldie presided once more. As well as the car theft there were, as usual for career thieves, a couple of other offences to be heard—a ring snatch from a jewellery store and a warehouse job. Goldie sentenced him to another six months in Strangeways.

  `I told you you’d be back.’ The screw predicted my return just eight weeks before. Yes, I was back with The Brick, Johnny and a new bunch of Brickcroft Wallers identical to the last lot.

  Just before my release from this second term I got terrible news. Tony, coming home from work, ‘turned the corner to see his son Tony jump on a moving truck, lose his footing, fall on the road and under the back wheels.

  On release another military escort took me to barracks. Next day I returned to Manchester for 14 days leave, just in time for young Tony’s funeral. Mum and I stood before the white coffin draped in purple and a shaft of light fell on my nine-year-old nephew’s face. Tony’s broken hoarse voice said to his second son, ‘You must be careful, Bobby. You don’t want to end up like that, do you?’ Bobby shook his innocent little head, promised he wouldn’t.

  Meanwhile, I wasn’t about to end up in the army either.

  The Royal Army hadn’t forgotten Private Cecil Waters.

  The army soon apprehended me and threw me into Preston Barracks, 40 kilometres from Manchester. My groin was giving me a familiar hell so I went to their clinic. Gonorrhoea. So he sent me to the hospital dormitory for a course of penicillin injections. Johnny Booth, a mate of Bill’s, was in the next bed. Same problem. Each day an orderly we called ‘Dracula’ would painfully jab a needle in our buttocks if he was in a bad mood. Or so skilfully we wouldn’t feel a thing if he was in a good one. We watched Dracula puncture the spines of the syphilis patients with a needle thicker than a pen and draw out fluid for analysis, enjoying every excruciating moment.

  The course of penicillin ended and I made a dash for freedom before the authorities transferred me back to barracks. While my guard waited outside I dropped from a toilet window to a pile of coal and fled to the road. My hospital blues approximated the dress of soldiers wounded in action, so when the kind lady who stopped for me asked what happened, I told her about the tank crew in the Western De
sert and how divebombers … When she dropped me off she pressed five bob into the hand of the war hero.

  For Ces, it was back to warehouse screws and goods yard robbing, much of it with Forsythe Williams. But Ces had reason not to trust Williams as he once had, and retaliated by lying to him about what his fences paid, sure Williams was doing likewise. He was quasi-permanently on the run from local and military police, spending much time with his sister Janie, whose house was safer than their mother’s. But he risked his mother’s place from time to time, often finding local people down on their luck staying overnight and having to share his bed with whoever was the recipient of his mother’s kindness. One night he slipped beneath the covers with a scruffy knockabout called Jack Wall.

  About 7 am there was a bang on the front door. I peeked out. The rear, cemetery and front were covered by police and I was trapped. I pushed my way up the old chimney, the type skinny boys used to clean with handbrushes. It was easygoing at first but got narrower and sootier. I’d heard stories of sweeps getting jammed; on the other hand, the last of them wasn’t to die until 1949, aged 104. Below, muffled voices indicated Jack Wall was being questioned. In a short lull I imagined Wall winking at the chimney. Sure enough, I was dragged back into the room by .the ankle. Wagstaff ruffled my hair, ‘You silly bastard, you could’ve suffocated.’ Such a caring man. I got 15 months for B & E. At the same session Dennis Murtagh got 10 on separate charges. We were both sent to Walton Prison in Liverpool.

  Walton needn’t detain us long. He and Dennis were in YP [Young Persons] Wing, and received tougher treatment than the old lags, dug and filled holes the point of which was that they were pointless, and at one stage caused a one-man riot and a phoney hunger-strike (prisoners lowered food to him on a string) which saw him doing solitary confinement once more. He met Herbert Scale, an Anglo-German housebreaker, who he called Burbie. Important things happened outside.

  Tony’s son Bobby had been walking along the footpath when he came to a workmen’s site. A workman’s bucket accidentally tipped over him, spilling scorching hot tar all over his head and body. Bobby was severely scalded and for two agonising weeks battled on in hospital. There was media coverage and people sent gifts from all over England. Bobby began to recover and wrote via a nurse: ‘I am doing all right … My face is fine and I have only to worry about my hands and legs … They gave me gas and took some skin off the tops of my arms … I felt a bit sore at first but am all right now … Goodbye for now and I will see you soon, your loving son, Bob.

  Bobby developed complications and died soon afterwards. Two sons killed in less than a year should be enough to crack even the hardest rock. Tony wasn’t able to come to terms with-his grief by expressing emotion. Instead, he became even more absorbed in thievery and ended up doing a lot of time. I was very upset by the news of Bobby’s accident and death; my whole family had gone into mourning. I couldn’t attend his funeral and personally give Tony’s family my sincere condolences.

  Ces was released in mid-1947, taken direct to a barracks in Bury, Lancashire, psychiatrically examined and given—amazingly—two weeks’ compassionate leave. He re-united with Dennis The Brick and Johnny Booth, Ces’s wardmate in the prison hospital. All three were on the run from the army and they thieved together. At 32, Johnny was diagnosed with a syphilis that had reached his brain. Within three years, he was dead.

  I was introduced to Doreen McCarthy at a dance hall. Attractive, splendid company, good humoured, exuding sexuality, her vulgar laugh set my spine a-tingle. I was a wise 20 year old who didn’t put too much credence in her claims to virginity but when I got her to a friend’s place I used a slice of margarine and took it.

  I was on the run and she was a survivor. She’d flirt with men or steal for money, sit on stolen gear, she’d come along on jobs without hesitation, all without conscience. I dyed her hair blonde and she loved the Marilyn Monroe image. Her favorite colour and mine was red, and she became ‘the Blonde in Red’. I gave her inner strength and she said, ‘With you I’ll never fear the hour before dawn.’ We found a bathroom for rent—an uncomfortable cramped love nest, but we adapted—and visited relatives and friends, ate in cafes, saw James Cagney films like The Roaring Twenties at the Gaiety Cinema and took coffee at Jack’s in The Dilly.

  I got a team together to rob a goods yard. Sylvia and Burbie smooched in a doorway, their cover as lookouts. The driver arrived when he was meant to, but brought along an unannounced Dilly thug who I presumed to be the driver’s responsibility. There wasn’t a hitch until we split up the earnings. The driver got his whack and the thug demanded one too. I refused. The argument wasn’t resolved.

  The thug and two mates found me at Jack’s Coffee Stall one wet night a few days later and left me half-conscious in the gutter, cut about and with thick bruised lips. Doreen, who’d been on an errand, returned looking shocked. I crawled painfully to my knees, spread my arms and launched into Al Jolson’s ‘Mammy’. She hugged my wet bloodied head and cried, ‘That’s why I love you, because you’re bleeding barmy.’

  A meeting with his father’s old friend and partner Jock McAvoy, mechanic and boxing champion, by chance at a motor auction, wrought some change in him. McAvoy, only 39, the once magnificent athlete (and honest man) Ces had so much admired, had polio and was later confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

  Dad paid me an unexpected visit. He’d heard on the grapevine that Dennis had given himself up and returned to barracks. Dad reckoned it’d be best if I did too. It was curious that dad was concerned with my welfare. I treated his advice with suspicion. But it sounded sensible, so I let him drive me back to Wellington Barracks to face the music head on. I was sent to the guardhouse, which consisted of one large association room lined with bunks. Dennis was there too. The CO said that if we behaved ourselves, he’d see what he could do for us. We began behaving like model soldiers and didn’t put a foot wrong.

  It didn’t last. Ces explained: ‘It was very boring’. After two weeks they walked out. But they were not long back in Manchester before the MPs had Ces in a high-security area. Ces worked on escaping. There was some rotten stonework …

  … so, when Doreen visited, I asked her to get rope, a small chisel and a hammer. At a pre-arranged time that night I passed a string out the window and she tied the tools to it. Two hours later she was to return with a car. My arms ached and sweat poured off me. I’d made some progress but time was running out. A large cannon they’d told me to polish sat in the corner, so I used it as a battering ram. The stone crumbled and the bars fell out with a dull clank with minutes to spare. I saw the parked taxi with the blonde passenger, got in and we roared off.

  Burbie and I were tropical in Manchester and went to Scotland to stay with Diana to cool off. We robbed a shop within days. When we returned to Manchester police were waiting for us. I suspected Diana dobbed us in again—only she knew what we’d done. Burbie and I tossed a coin to see who’d plead guilty—no sense in both going down. Burbie lost and did a few months. I was released through lack of evidence.

  Six weeks later the army threw me in the cooler. They never learned. I pretended to reform intending to raise Cain. I volunteered to look after the Lancashire Fusiliers’ Crimean War cannon they doted on, and painted it green. I ran naked and noisy into an important passing-out parade. I threw everybody out of a guardhouse and defended it against all comers. When they poked a firehose through to flush me out, I pulled it in and drenched them instead.

  The army gave Ces 28 days detention at Sowerby Bridge Prison. Sowerby is the worst the British Army can offer its recalcitrants. ‘We tame lions here,’ were the first words Ces heard there. They talked to him, strait-jacketed him, insulted him, gave him porridge without a spoon, bashed him, booted him, stripped him, tainted his food with laxatives. They even asked the chaplain if he could do anything with Ces. Ces spat, bit, kicked, showed the brown-eye, pretty much everything he could—except swear. He explains his thinking.

  I thought about why
I always lashed out at authority. My reaction was not that of a guilty person but someone who’d been hurt and wanted to strike back. I needed some sort of retribution and revenge. When I was in an institution like a prison, civil or military, I felt hundreds of eyes on me; I was on show and had a duty to myself and those of my district to misbehave and make life hell for the authorities. I knew there were people in command of jails, governments and courtrooms who were close to criminals themselves. These men were going to try and enforce their rules and regulations and inflict me with their punishments. What I intended to do right from the beginning was to let them know they couldn’t punish me because I was beyond pain. When they knew they couldn’t hurt me, what could they do? This was the sole reason why I would set out from the beginning to say, ‘Do your worst!’

  Eventually, Ces was taken back to Wellington Barracks for the usual compassionate leave, which he of course overstayed and the MPs pulled him again. In the guardhouse he learned of his new army status—unfit for military service—and he was only to hang about for a few days working in the cookhouse and be discharged. He recalled the Epsom Salts trick of Sowerby and, on his last day, he dosed the soup with nearly a kilogram of the laxative, warning his mates not to touch it. Then he nailed lavatory doors up with 3-inch nails moments before he left the officer corps of the Lancashire Fusiliers to his poisoned drop. The nails proved firm. Ones with warning rushed to town to knock on doors and ask to use the ‘loo. The barracks came to a standstill, but someone took a phone call from a Private Waters, who asked how things were going. Recalling this, Ces pointed out that the Fusiliers had won eight Victoria Crosses in World War 1 but `here’s one lone rebel reducing the intestinal fortitude of all those fine men before breakfast. It was one of my most glorious victories.’