The Search for Anne Perry

by Joanne Drayton

  II

  Although prison life improved after Juliet left solitary confinement, conditions at Mt Eden for a lifer were bleak.

  [There were] between thirty-five and forty cells for the women … and we had two five-minute showers a week and two toilets, one had a half-door and the other one was out in the open. We had sanitary towels that you folded up and used and washed, and sometimes your legs would chafe until they bled … And there were rats. They didn’t actually come into the cells. The cells were black stone floor and whitewashed walls [and there were] canvas sheets.32

  Breakfast consisted of lumpy porridge. Food for the evening meals was a rotation of three dishes, which included ‘corned beef hash, and meatballs … and brown bread … tapioca pudding made with water’. There were few vegetables, only two eggs a year, and fruit was severely rationed. ‘You could have fruit once a fortnight — a small bag … which would be a day’s ration today … if you were a lifer [this privilege came] only after you’d served your first year [in prison].’

  Even after she shifted to a cell in the main part of the women’s section, Juliet ‘used to feel nauseated every night for a long, long time: years … just tension I should think, just stress … I used to sit up half the night thinking I was going to throw up … But they put the light out so you have no light on the inside and you just sit there in the dark.’ To cope with the black hole of night, and ‘stay sane’, she would recite poems to herself — ‘to say it over and over — it’s the music of it’ — memorized from the 17 poetry books she had with her. It was ‘the stuff I’ve grown up with’: Byron, Shelley, Keats, Swinburne, Chesterton, Brooke, Flecker, and Edward FitzGerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.33

  At times, feelings of loneliness and isolation almost overwhelmed Juliet. She felt abandoned, and shut away from everything familiar, with no parent or close companion to help her. Every day was a battle, as she told her mother’s close friend, Nancy Sutherland: ‘I’m afraid three quarters of my energy is used in organizing my mental army to fight against misery. The other quarter is dispersed in all sorts of ways. And any talents I might possess I use as ammunition. This isn’t as desperate as it may sound at all but a truth for all that.’34 Rather than give in to self-pity, though, there was a dawning determination to make the most of a terrible situation.

  The difference between surviving and not surviving is accepting that this is something that you’ve brought upon yourself, you’re not being unjustly treated. I don’t think I ever met anybody else that was guilty — everyone else was innocent — it was always someone else’s fault … But [on the other hand] if you beat yourself up [it’s no good] … I never felt that I was wicked, but I accepted that no one else was doing it to me.

  What she told herself then was what she would say to an inmate if she was visiting now: ‘Okay, you are going to make something of this. Now stop whingeing and get on with it.’35 She took responsibility for her actions and came to terms with her sentence, even the fact that it had no definite end, but she never accepted the evil or insane labels. She knew how she was perceived: ‘they had obviously got me tagged as a complete raving monster: I was fifteen and sick’.

  Juliet wanted to find her own way, reach her own conclusions and make a new start. After almost a year at Mt Eden she could write:

  I will never look back but I find it very hard because there seem to be so many people unremittingly trying to bind me down & say ‘you must do this or that or the other’ all of which tightens a net around me & makes me feel panicky. I will make a new character & a good one. I’ve learnt my lesson & I’m sorry & I’ll never lose my head again. I’ll rehabilitate myself, grow into a new person and live — but I must do it myself without being watched over & dictated to. I must do it myself, no one can do it for me or help me. You can’t learn to swim in a bath.

  Sorry to get so worked up about it. It’s something that has been worrying me for a while … if you can see any way of cutting that net or loosening it, tell me. I must leave the past completely behind & remake myself without its surroundings — can you understand that sort of black panic that I’ll always be shut in … It’s like a vast grey parachute that is open behind & above me. If I cut off all the strings I shall really make something of myself, because I’ve learnt the hard way & I know what not to do better than most other people. But 1 string will bring the whole lot along. 1 string alone is enough.36

  Juliet was allowed weekly visitors, who were approved by the prison officials and strictly supervised by wardresses. ‘Any visitors she has will be officials, doctors who take an interest in the case, or official prison visitors,’ the NZ Truth told its readers.37 To a degree this was true: there were few visits of a purely personal nature for Juliet — no family, no contemporary friends, and just few acquaintances of significance came to see her. She cherished visits from family friends. Felicity Maidment visited weekly for a time, Dora Sagar was a regular — and ‘Vivien Dixon came to see me the other day. I was really delighted to see her. She was so nice.’38 Henry had made a point of asking his special friend, Vivien, to visit Juliet. As a matter of procedure, the Anglican Church Army allocated her a prison visitor, named Captain Stanley Banyard.

  In 1975, when historian Russell Stone interviewed the elderly Captain Banyard for his history of Selwyn Village, In the Time of Age, Juliet was the only person Banyard mentioned from his years of prison visiting.

  As soon as he visited her, he was immediately struck by how formidable was the intelligence of this girl. She would have left him standing — he was a well-intentioned, ordinary, humble sort of a person … [Juliet] was dispirited … and immediately he said … ‘there must be a continuation of her education’.

  So Captain Banyard arranged to have School Certificate material made available, and some of these were the books of poetry that Juliet memorized. He was stunned by how effortlessly she passed her examinations.

  [Juliet’s] plight … her sex, I suppose, and her youth, and the isolation that she had to go through, seemed to make such an impression upon [Banyard] that he regarded it as one of the most memorable achievements he had as a prison visitor. He wasn’t prepared to let her languish there. He could see that she was very intelligent and there was going to be a life after imprisonment.39

  The educational opportunities for Juliet at Mt Eden prison were limited, and although she did some study she has no recollection of it: ‘They didn’t have a prison library and there was no education. But I do have gaps in my memory.’ As well as Captain Banyard, there were others anxious to see her education continued. In December 1954, Juliet wrote to Nancy Sutherland outlining her proposed course of study:

  You said in your Xmas card (thank you for it) that you thought it would be a good idea if I did some lessons. You will be pleased to hear that I am. And under proper supervision as well. English, Maths, History, Latin, Italian and Greek. The first five are for school certificate … I have been writing a few essays which they seem to be very pleased with and other things in general (writing that is) so I now have heart again where that is concerned.40

  She had specially assigned tutors for some subjects and took correspondence lessons, apparently passing both School Certificate and University Entrance. However, what Juliet learnt scholastically was clearly less significant to her than the plays and poetry she read and repeated to herself to give her nights music.

  Juliet was allowed to write ‘only once a week and once a fortnight to friends and two pages’.41 Her early prison letters were frenetic with detail, but they settled, and she deeply appreciated people’s responses and contributions. ‘Thank you very much indeed for the cake you sent me and the letter. It was very kind of you indeed and I am more grateful than I can say,’ she wrote to Nancy Sutherland on 6 November 1954. The cake was a sixteenth birthday present that she would not be allowed to eat until Christmas, when food restrictions were relaxed.

  Although her parents wrote to her only intermittently, and restrictions and censors
hip meant there was little scope for intimate exchange, the letters were an important connection for Juliet to the outside world, as was her correspondence with her old headmistress from St Margaret’s College. Juliet had been at the school for only a term before Stephanie Young retired in 1949, but once she went to prison, a correspondence began.

  She wrote to me even after I came back to Britain. All the years in New Zealand, she wrote to me. She was headmistress when I was a new girl … Why did she do that to one lost child? She’s a remarkable woman … she wrote to me until she died.42

  Stephanie Young’s biographer Ruth Fry describes her as ‘a gifted teacher and an educationalist concerned with increasing women’s opportunities’.43 Born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1890, she was one of numerous ‘women graduates of Oxford University who made careers in education’. Her father was an Anglican clergyman and her brother, Guy, a chaplain to the New Zealand forces who was killed at Passchendaele.

  After marrying her brother’s best friend, Charles Le Fanu Young, Stephanie emigrated to New Zealand in 1918. Charles Young took a position at Christ’s College and Stephanie was matron there until her husband died at the age of 26 of complications from being gassed in the First World War. Stephanie, left with a 14-month-old son named Guy, began a 10-year stint teaching history at Christchurch Girls’ High School, then became headmistress of St Margaret’s College in 1931. She would have known the Hulmes through serving on the Canterbury University College Council from 1936 to 1952, and this may have prompted her to write to Juliet, but her motives would have come more from the fact that she was a liberal thinker, a compassionate woman and a devout Christian. And she understood suffering: her much-loved son died of tuberculosis in 1957 while she was still writing to Juliet in prison.

  But all the visits in the world, all the opportunities for study, all the letters, could not take the place of her family. When Nancy Sutherland wrote and asked about her plans for the future, Juliet replied: ‘I should like to go to Italy & most of the Mediterranean and back to England of course because of father & mother & Jonty. I miss them very much indeed of course, particularly father.’44 It was Henry whom she longed to see, so when the news arrived of his remarriage, it was a blow. For a time afterwards Juliet talked of Pauline again and began knitting her a jersey.

  Henry had communicated the news by letter in such a forthright, matter-of-fact kind of way that the prison authorities had sent his first attempt back, explaining that he needed to communicate the news in ‘different’, gentler terms. His second, considerably belated, attempt still shocked her and caused a desperate reaching out for reassurance. But, once again, she composed herself. ‘I hear from mother & father regularly & they both write wonderful letters,’ she told Nancy Sutherland.

  I have also heard from Margery [her father’s new wife] now. She wrote a beautiful letter too. You need never fear I shall be upset or resentful about the marriage. I was shocked of course but I think it is a marvelous thing — in fact the only thing.45

  Although Henry’s actions were deemed to be callous, his intentions were far from that. He explained himself to Nancy Sutherland. ‘I think they felt I have not been sufficiently reassuring to Juliet that [my marriage] would make no difference to my feelings for her! Actually I didn’t wish to make a great to-do about it because I didn’t want to upset her! However there’s no pleasing everyone!’46 In fact, he cared a great deal about Juliet and he wrote regularly to those visiting her and followed her progress.

  In despairing correspondence with Vivien Dixon, he wrote that Juliet seemed from her letters to be ‘completely removed’ and preoccupied with herself and her ‘grandiose ideas’ about poetry and writing. ‘I’m desperately sorry for her but it would be bad for her to sympathise in any way with her present state … Medlicott feels strongly that to encourage this would reduce the slight chances of her recovery.’47 Henry accepted Medlicott’s diagnosis, yet he had not seen or talked to his daughter since before his departure on 3 July 1954. Undoubtedly, his judgment was influenced by Medlicott’s expert opinion and the prevailing pessimism of the doctor’s diagnosis. So when things seemed to be improving, Henry was greatly relieved. In July 1955, he wrote optimistically to Nancy: ‘Juliet is showing considerable signs of improvement — I dare not build up hopes — at least I try to keep myself prepared for all eventualities.’48

  And he was fiercely proud of, and grateful to, Jonathan for his emotional resilience. The boy had settled well in school and adapted to his parents’ separation and subsequent marriages with remarkable balance. ‘One thing only had worried him! — he asked Hilda if we were being divorced — on being told “yes” — he said he was relieved because he has been worried that Hilda might be “living in bigamy”.’49

  There was no contest or conflict between the Hulmes. Hilda agreed that Henry would have custody of Jonathan, ‘though naturally she will want to see a lot of him, and I would not wish otherwise’. Henry saw Hilda (now called Marion) and Bill regularly, especially in the early months after their return, and felt deeply for ‘the terrific strain’ both of them had been through.50 ‘She has had a hell of a time & feels Juliet’s loss terribly.’51

  Juliet made friends and allies among her fellow prisoners. ‘You take your friends where you can find them. You have to learn how to survive.’

  I was bullied quite a lot to begin with, but I very quickly learned if I succumbed to it someone else would step in bigger and stronger than I was to defend me … There was one big Maori girl who used to swear at me up and down, and one day I finally lost my temper and I turned round and gave her a real mouthful back, and we became quite good friends after that … There is hardly ever anyone else to look out for you except the friends you make.52

  Although Juliet was occasionally propositioned by lesbians and women prisoners seeking domination, comfort or affection, she was not deeply disturbed. ‘I was bothered a few times in prison … nobody ever did anything to me. Somebody grabbed me and kissed me once … [but] I was never injured and I was never assaulted … not [like] the sort of thing you see in fiction going on in prison [today].’53

  What she felt hardest to cope with was the intellectual isolation, the lack of the intelligent companionship she had got in abundance from Pauline. She missed having a talented friend to talk to, to plan with and to create — a kind of cerebral soul mate. Mt Eden was an endless grey hell of ignorance and sameness. There was no one her age, no one with her background or intelligence and no end in sight.

  That was the hardest thing. You can’t tick the days off to anything, because you have no idea … The tension of waiting and hoping … The loneliness of no intellectual companionship … a lot of years without it … Fifteen until twenty-one with none … the intellectual loneliness of being in a place like that was hard.54

  The three other women serving life sentences for murder at Mt Eden Prison at the time were Phyllis Freeman, Pansy Louise Frances Haskell, and Edna May Wilson, all decades older than Juliet. Phyllis Freeman, aged 38, was a domestic worker convicted of murdering Joyce Morrison at Enfield. The killing had taken place in 1942, but the trial did not occur until six years later, in 1948, when the body of Joyce Morrison was exhumed and experts determined the cause of death as strychnine poisoning. Pansy Haskell, 55 years old, was found guilty of murdering her lover’s wife, Gladys Rusden. It seems the provocation for Rusden’s violent end was that she refused to divorce her husband. Her battered body was found at the couple’s One Tree Hill home in Auckland on 5 June 1947. Haskell was charged and convicted after a retrial lasting nine days.

  But the strangest and perhaps most touching tale belonged to Edna Wilson, a 46-year-old laundress. She was sentenced to death for the murder in Napier of Harriet Sarah Player, aged 81, and Sarah Eliza Armitage, aged 72, on 8 September 1953. The motive for the murders was theft. Some years before, Edna Wilson had started the Hawke’s Bay Tailwaggers Club, a society for the care and protection of unwanted and injured animals. Hard times had meant a shortfall
of club funds, which she intended to replace with the money she stole from her elderly victims. When the Tailwaggers books were scrutinized by the court, it was revealed that ‘most of the club’s money and her own wages were spent on caring for animals’.55 Wilson’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

  Generally, women in prison at this time had little secondary education, occupied unskilled jobs, and came from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and many were Maori.

  Among the prisoners who made a special impression on Juliet was a woman she came to realize was ‘very sub-normal’. It was the worst thing she experienced in prison. The sense of desperation and injustice, and her powerlessness to help, had an enormous impact.

  There was a young woman there … I can still remember her face … You’ll see she crops up in my books every now and again. She was a very weak personality, she did all sorts of [negative] things, but she had one core of self-respect and pride in her — she never lied. She took things that didn’t belong to her … and she slept around, but she didn’t lie. It was her raison d’être. And they accused her of stealing something and she said ‘No’, and they didn’t believe her. She refused to admit it, because as far as she was concerned she hadn’t. And I believed her. They finally got her to the point where she got hysterical, and then they put her down in solitary confinement … She was force-fed eventually, and it killed her … I can still remember hearing, that … They killed her because they didn’t believe her … I’ve never, forgotten … What they did to her was brutal … psychologically they tortured her to death.56

  The other terrible occurrences that rocked the numbing repetition of Juliet’s prison life were the hangings. The first man condemned, after the death penalty was restored in 1950, was Malcolm McSherry. He was quickly reprieved, but there was a growing intolerance of clemency and a belief that if hanging were to operate as a proper deterrent, then examples must be made. All the eight hangings that occurred between 1951 and 1957 took place at Mt Eden.