by Gitta Sereny
“She was very worried about going to Seaham,” Policewoman Pauline Z. remembers. She took her there on 21 August. “She kept saying ‘Will I be all right there?’ in that funny way she had of saying ‘all right.’ ‘They say you have to scrub floors there and all that,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind that, but will I be all right?’ I never did understand what she meant by ‘all right’ that day.”
The Seaham Remand Home is fifteen miles from Newcastle, by the sea. Standing in the midst of fields, walled in on one side, but with a view of the sea and a lovely beach two minutes away on the other, it still looks like a large comfortable farmhouse, which it was a hundred years ago when Lewis Carroll used it while writing parts of Alice in Wonderland. Now, too, almost the only obvious evidence of its present role is the locked entrance door which can only be opened from the inside, by a member of the staff.
A generously staffed Remand Home catering for girls between fourteen and eighteen, it is a pleasant house with comfortable bedrooms, a big, sunny sitting room giving out onto a garden, and a large, modern kitchen, the hub of communal life where the girls help with the preparation of tea, occasional snacks, and late-night cocoa. They sleep three to five to a room, where each girl has her own chest of drawers, wardrobe space, and cuddly toys on her bed. There are no uniforms, school lessons are given on the premises, and outings for walks or shopping expeditions are in supervised groups. The girls are allowed weekly visits by their families, their correspondence is supervised and the length of their stay on average is about a month.
The matron at the time Mary came there was a former nurse, Miss D.A. A woman in her early forties, tall and tweedy, she had a sonorous voice and laugh, a ruddy complexion, and expansive movements. Totally immersed in her work, she was possessive about her position, ferociously protective of her girls, and somewhat facile in the way she discussed their problems. But she is the type of dedicated social worker on whom the social services have relied for years and without whom they would have collapsed long ago. Like many other people in the months and years to come, Miss A. appeared to feel deeply protective about Mary and was convinced that she, through the relationship she had created between the child and herself, could understand Mary and manage her perfectly well. Although an experienced housemother, she was in the formal sense untrained in dealing with seriously disturbed children. Nonetheless during those tense months she became Mary’s educator, defender, and observer, and her reports on Mary’s behavior and personality were taken very seriously by those who were later to decide her fate.
“She was of course very naughty,” Miss A. said. “She dislikes being ignored and draws attention on herself if it appears to be concentrated on other people. She resents authority and she incites others—weaker girls, though they are frequently older than she—to behave badly. She screams and shouts and there were times when, not getting her own way, she dirtied the floor and furniture.”
Miss A. said that she felt in Mary a desire—a “seeking for punishment.” “One day—on advice from one of the psychiatrists who said it might do her good and certainly wouldn’t hurt—I tanned her backside for her. I don’t know whether in fact it did her any good in the long run, but she was certainly as good as gold afterwards, no more trouble at all.” Miss A. was very impressed with Mary’s intelligence and general knowledge. “And she was very generous. She got a lot of presents from her family—chocolates, fruits, and sweets—she always shared with the other girls and us.”
Miss A. felt a real resentment of what she considered “unfair” or “stupid” treatment of Mary whom she felt she really knew, while others did not. This feeling of defensiveness is one Mary has aroused in a wide variety of people who have been in contact with her. “It is ridiculous,” the matron said, rather plaintively, “how everybody is calling her Mary. Even the child’s parents have been forced into calling her Mary because the newspapers and all the officials did. Her name is May. That’s what she’s been called all her life.”
“You have no idea how funny a child she is,” she said, still chuckling at the memory. “She kept us in fits half of the time. She was a perfectly normal child, you know,” she said, “if one but knew how to handle her. All this hysteria about how dangerous she is. One has to keep a sense of proportion, you know. I used to take her to the hairdresser’s with me and she would sit outside reading a magazine while I was under the drier—good as gold. Of course nobody knew who she was. But—one has to understand the kind of life she’s had! When I took her shopping with me she just couldn’t get enough of the lights, the windows, and the decorations. But then, you see, it was the first time she had ever been Christmas shopping.”
Long before this, in her “newsbooks” at school, and in several conversations with policewomen and since, Mary vividly described a number of shopping expeditions. But Miss A. can be forgiven for obeying her impulse to comfort a pathetic child: people with considerably more experience than she with very gravely disturbed children have been manipulated since into thinking or behaving the way Mary wished them to.
In October and November, Mary was seen on seven different occasions by four psychiatrists: the Home Office Forensic psychiatrist, Dr. David Westbury, who probably wrote the most complete report about her; Dr. Orton, who had been the first to see her at Croydon and with whom she then cooperated slightly more than with the others; Dr. T. M. Cuthbert, consulting psychiatrist of St. Luke’s Hospital, Middlebrough, Teesside; and Dr. Monica Rowbotham of the psychiatric children’s unit at the Fleming Memorial Hospital for Children in Newcastle, with whom somehow, as a woman, Mary appeared to have a different affinity.
With all of them—as on all future occasions with all the other doctors she was to see—her behavior fluctuated constantly between intelligence and indifference, frankness and evasion, pleasantness and sulkiness. With all of them she became totally uncooperative as soon as they touched upon questions she did not wish to answer—in almost every instance anything connected with her mother and her life at home. While she maintained on all these occasions her original story of Norma’s guilt and her own innocence, she was ready enough to talk about the day of the murder of Brian Howe and about life, death, and feelings in abstract terms.
Both to Dr. Orton and Dr. Cuthbert she said that death was so final and murder so common that “it didn’t matter any more.” To Dr. Cuthbert she remarked that “Brian Howe had no mother, so he won’t be missed.” Dr. Orton talked to her of how someone who was strangled would suffer before he died. “Why, if you are dead, you’re dead,” she replied in an interested and logical sort of way, “it doesn’t matter then.”
“I’ve seen a lot of psychopathic children,” Dr. Orton said later, “but I’ve never met one like Mary: as intelligent, as manipulative, or as dangerous. I knew a lot about her family—about her mother—from the Probation people.5 But they were things I couldn’t mention in Court. From Mary I found out nothing about her family at all. She simply refused to answer any questions which touched on the subject.”
“To Mary,” said Dr. Westbury a few months after the trial, “manipulation of people is the primary aim—it is much more important to her than what she actually achieves with it. I went to Seaham four times, but all my findings about her are based on the first two interviews. By the time of my third visit, her mother had told her to say nothing. She doesn’t love in the sense we think of love. She couldn’t answer any of my ‘Why’ questions: the way one gets an answer about this sort of thing from a child is by asking, ‘Why do you like mummy?’ and the child will answer, ‘Because she does this and that for me.’ Finally, after many ‘whys,’ it will turn out it isn’t because of something the mother does, but because she is. Mary couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer any of these questions.” (And again, when Dr. Westbury asked specific questions, the answers to which might have provided a clue to her life at home, anything about her mother, or whether she had seen strange men about the house, she immediately and always said, “I won’t answer” or just, “No,”
or, explicitly, “My Mum said for me not to say anything to you”—almost the same words she used to Dr. Orton and, in the months and even years to come, was to use to other psychiatrists.)
Both Dr. Westbury and Dr. Rowbotham—the only woman psychiatrist she saw and also the only one her mother agreed to speak with, briefly—spoke to her about “friends,” and she phrased her answers to them in a very different way.
She told Dr. Westbury that she had only one friend other than Norma. And she liked those two because, “They are a good laugh and if you shout at them they take it as a joke.” “She told me,” said Dr. Westbury, “that she never worries about anything and is never frightened. ‘I’ve got no feelings,’ she said. She said she liked people who ‘give you a good laugh and don’t blabber too much.’”
To Dr. Rowbotham Mary spoke in somewhat gentler terms; she talked of the strong association there was between her and Norma, and what a close understanding they liad of each other. In talking of the day of Brian’s murder she said, “I was full of laughter that day.”
* * *
1 Words & New Music Adaptation by Stan Kelly. © Copyright 1964 Heathside Music Ltd., London, England. TRO-MELODY TRAILS, INC., New York, controls all publiaction rights for the U.S.A. and Canada. Used by permission.
2 Now Director of Social Services.
3 Now Circuit Judge (February 1973).
4 Queen’s Counsel. This title—or King’s Counsel, as the case may be—actually has nothing to do with the Queen; it is given to senior barristers who have applied to be appointed and have been nominated by the Lord Chancellor. It is by no means an automatically granted distinction: only about ten percent of the barristers who apply are nominated. As it puts them in a different work (and considerably higher fee) category, there are experienced barristers, who, because they are possibly already older and do not wish to change their field or take the risks, may prefer not to apply. In a murder case or other “serious” crime, it is normal procedure for the accused to be defended by a Q.C. and “Junior.”
5 It is interesting to note that “the Probation people” obviously were informed about the home circumstances of this family while the (then) Children’s Department was not—an indication of the dangers inherent in not coordinating the various social services. This situation has now been much improved in Britain, as a result of the 1969 Seebohm Report.
PART TWO
THE TRIAL
A Guilty Mind
AT FIRST IMPRESSION she seemed still full of laughter when the trial started at the Newcastle Assizes at 10:30 A.M. on 5 December 1968.
The Assizes are held in Moothall, an early nineteenth-century two-story natural stone building near the river and the railway line in the center of the city. Begrimed by the smoke of Tyneside factories and the soot of trains, the building is separated from the main thoroughfare by a small square. On the left, a few small shops, a pub—the “Empress”—and an iron fence outside which is space for official parking. A small gate is open, guarded by a policeman. The police constables and policewomen on duty for the trial of the two children had been carefully selected. Not because the trial was expected to arouse great public interest and attract the attention of the world press, but because the Court was determined to create an atmosphere of gentleness and compassion, with a minimum of tension and sensation. Everything was to be done to de-formalize and humanize the proceedings.
And, up to a point, it worked. For the nine days of the trial the room was always quiet, all the police officers considerate, the Court gentle, and—a secondary effect—the British press invariably discreet.
But in his summing up, Mr. Justice Cusack (who himself made every effort to make the unbearable bearable for the two children) was to say, “. . . It is an unhappy thing that the criminal courts for the most part are not concerned with the successful things of life, but are concerned with life’s shadows . . .”
A British Assize Court, with all its awesome formality, is designed to deal with these shadows, to instill fear quite as much as faith in rightful justice, and, however good the intentions to create a different atmosphere and however efficient the organization, the fearful solemnity of a murder trial cannot fail to make itself felt.
Court Two, where the trial REGINA V. MARY FLORA BELL AND NORMA JOYCE BELL took place, is a comparatively small room, with a high ceiling and three galleries—one in the center for the public and one on each side for the Jurors and “Distinguished Visitors”—the latter, in this case, reserved for additional members of the press who would not find space in the usual press seats downstairs.
The walls behind the Judge’s dais were paneled in dark oak. The Jury—in this case five women and seven men—sat on three benches to his right. It was, one might say, a classic jury: the seven men included a sales representative, two managers, a schoolmaster, a photographer, a civil servant, and a wood machinist. Of the five women, two had no occupation (were presumably housewives) one was a shop assistant, one a domestic help, and one a toilet attendant.
Below the Judge sat the Clerk of Assize (the senior Court official next to the Judge) and his assistants, and on the two benches on his left the press and the Court stenographer for whom, during the children’s often whispered testimony, a table was set up next to the witness stand.
The trial was originally scheduled for Court One, where Judge Cusack usually sat. At the last minute it was decided to transfer it to Court Two where, with an adjacent waiting room and lavatory, it would be easier to take proper care of the children. Also, as it had no dock, it would make it possible to make the situation less forbidding for them by seating them near their families and advisors in the second row of the court. They were placed behind their counsel, near their solicitors, and in front of their immediate families who could—and did—lean forward to touch them on occasions. In the same row further left sat several psychiatrists who observed or testified during the trial.
Yet another row of chairs further back across a small gangway from the main section was reserved for more of the children’s relatives—various uncles and aunts, some of whom attended almost every day.
The public and press galleries were full for the first, the sixth, and the last two days, but the expected queues did not materialize. This was one of the most sensational trials of the century, but Newcastle did not like it. Nor did the national press, which treated it with unprecedented restraint while it went on and only gave the briefest reports and commentaries after the verdict. The “quality” papers only reported the beginning and the end, the Sunday “populars” rejected it altogether—in one instance specifically refusing the “Story of Mary Bell’s Life” as offered by her parents—and only the northern dailies reported part of the trial verbatim. It was mentioned off and on in radio and television news broadcasts, but BBC-TV, in consideration of young listeners, prohibited any mention of the subject during the six o’clock news.
And yet, when the case was over, there were few adults in Britain—and many other places in the world—who were not aware that it had taken place, and who by some subtle form of self-persuasion had not arrived at the same conclusion, which was that a “little fiend,” a “monster,” a “bad seed” (terms which were to be used during the trial or later in the press) had been sprung upon the world and had committed these terrible deeds.
On the first day of the trial Mary and Norma were brought into town together. Later this was changed and they were kept somewhat apart.
Mary, it would appear, was chatty that day. “Driving into town,” said Policewoman Margery T., “we followed a ‘wagon’ loaded with sheepskins.”
“How do they get the sheep then?” asked Mary.
Policewoman T. felt an immediate surge of discomfort. “They catch them,” she said curtly.
“But how do they get the skin then?” Mary asked. “Do they have to kill the sheep to get the skins?”
“Yes, they do.”
“Oh, that’s cruel,” said Mary and added, “I couldn’t do that. I couldn�
�t hurt a fly.”
The children were brought into Court by two of the sixteen plainclothes policewomen who were to attend them—Norma during the sessions only, Mary day and night—during the eleven days of the trial.
Norma wore a skirt and a yellow blouse with a frilled collar, and Mary a plain red dress. Both of them, their hair freshly washed, looked pink and rested, pretty and excited, even elated. Shown into the row of seats they were to occupy, both of them ran the last few steps to come level with their families.
Norma’s parents, their faces desperately strained, hugged her tightly and only with difficulty managed a smile to respond to her obvious relief at seeing them. In Mary’s case her mother’s volubility overshadowed the quieter welcome extended by her grandmother and Billy Bell. Both girls waved gaily to other relatives in the back and friends up in the public gallery.
Norma, dark and pretty, had a face and mannerisms slightly younger than her thirteen years. During the days to come she was to be restless, constantly turning from left to right trying to meet the eyes of friends and strangers, smiling tentative and tremulous smiles which readily and often turned into tears. She was given to abrupt movements of head and body, often hid her face and eyes behind her hands, sat with her mouth open and an absent expression in her face, frequently licked her lips, looked wide-eyed, astonished, and afraid, and constantly looked around for approbation, sympathy, reactions. She smiled indiscriminately at the jury, her police escorts, and the public, allowed her face to mirror horror at the words she heard and burrowed into the arms of her escorts, violently shaking her head whenever she thought something dreadful was being said about her. Everyone became very aware of her and it was usually for her benefit that the Judge would interrupt the proceedings. Later, when she gave evidence and was asked direct questions, there was always a—still—pause before she answered, almost as if the question only registered a moment in time after it had been asked. At the same time, there were instances when her voice was curiously adult and articulate.
