Author:
david bryans (memories)
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Date Posted: 17:28:08 11/25/16 Fri
j36976 that was me for about nine weeks i guess the j stood for junior. i was only told that number once and i have never forgotten it, it's been burnt onto my soul. there was a smell to Whatton, like a communal carbolic stench. even now i can be walking somewhere and get a whiff of the same smell, even after forty years it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. i remember being put into a single cell for the first week this was done probably to assess what kind of person i was, i.e suicidal, violent, this also gave you time to adjust to prison life before being introduced into the dorms. i remember on the second or third day standing in a quite bare room waiting for my routine check up with the prison doctor, he was in another room, i could see his shadow on the floor through the doorway he was throwing darts into a dart board, he spoke to me while still throwing the darts, "stand on the scales for me" try as i might i could not see any scales, again he asked me to "stand on the scales" i did another sweep of the room still no scales. in came the doctor "are you stupid boy" then he realized the scales were not out and were still behind two cupboard doors. the doctor was wearing a half length white hospital shirt the kind that as a pocket that runs the width of the front just like the ones you see in horror films where mad scientists run mental institutions, he had a sunken face with a mop of dark hair going grey at the sides which he swept right back, very scary. the prison uniform consisted of grey socks, brown women's flat slip on shoes,grey drainpipe trousers along with a duck egg coloured shirt topped of with a mustard zip up jacket.there was also a grading system with ties, the first colour which everyone started with was blue, this could be upgraded to red maybe half way through your sentence if you towed the line, and in your last week if you were really lucky a green tie, this tie gave you the chance to go into a smaller dorm dorm 5 which had in it a telly that you could watch until late. it was said that if you still had the blue tie in your final week you would not be released but this may have been a myth. i managed to work in the cage taking the clothes and giving out gym kits and vice versa this got me the red tie and later on the green tie, my only other duty was to take a couple of fresh tea towels each morning to the prison officers mess, yes i had a cushy job. when taking a shower or washing a screw would check to see if your soap was wet, the boys who used it on their faces had the biggest yellow spots so most boys used the soap on the hands and just water on the face. there was two things that really got to me in Whatton, the first was the beatings, i really don't think i deserved any that i got, if you forgot to say sir, forgot to walk on the left, and getting caught speaking when told not to, serious crimes that could undermine the prison system and the second the hair cut. Mr Mackingtosh would grab the electric shears and dished out a really bad short back and sides not unlike biffo from the bash street kids. if anyone got cocky and asked for a certain style they got an even shorter short back and sides, why they did this god knows, they may have done it as a form of punishment to humiliate us even further although when asked we were told it was to keep down the risk of contracting head lice, seems that head lice don't go much for bad hair cuts. for me it only hindered my chances of gaining employment when i was released. i hid away away even from my girlfriend for months until it had grown back to what it was like before. i remember being allowed out of Whatton for a few hours to attend the local swimming baths at Bingham. there was maybe a dozen of us sat in a transit van all waiting to go through the prison gate so we could cheer. when we arrived at the baths we all stood in a car park that was surrounded by a six foot wire fence with a barbed wire top. one part of the fence had been mended, you could see where a hole had once been. years before a friend of mine always said he did a runner from Whatton when he was taken to the swimming baths. he said he ran and jumped through a fence and had hide in a shed that was on a nearby allotment, although we used to look up to him and gave him respect for having the bottle to do it, deep down we didn't really believe that he did it. the officer who was with us said don't try anything stupid you won't reach the fence, then he pointed to the part of the fence that had been mended and told us that one time while waiting to go in the swimming baths a lad among the group spotted that little hole in the fence and just ran and dived clean through it, he never even touched the sides and within seconds was gone. the fence did in fact have allotments on the other side so maybe my friend was telling the truth. the prison shop as i recall was where you could spend your ninety pence weekly allowance. i might be wrong but i think i spent 20 pence on two letters and the rest on sweets as you could not get tobacco. the man who ran the prison shop reminded me a little of big daddy the wrestler. he wore a long white overall and was always telling you how much you had left after each item you brought, if you were taking too long he would threaten to leave you until the following week. anyone who spent their money on sweets had to walk around with bulging pockets, with a couple of hundred thieves around, nowhere was safe to stash your treats. every so often the lads would gather around and tell each other stories of how they had found fool proof ways of robbing and stealing cars, and how to out wit the police, each one seemed to know people who were making vast amounts of money using these tactics, not once did they realize that they were in fact inside because these certain tactics were flawed. in my final week i recall a new boy (a lifer) from Mansfield telling us that he had been sentenced to six months for sticking match sticks in the valves of a few car tyres. he was messing around one night with friends when he decided to let the tyres down on a row of cars, "lots of us have done it", but unluckily for him one of the cars belonged to a locum doctor who was on duty responding to emergencies. on my final day a screw came and let me out of the dorm early along with another five boys. i remember wishing all the lads in the dorm the best and headed off for breakfast, the last breakfast was all you could eat and the menu had everything on it, strange all the weeks before you could eat a dead horse and when you had the chance you didn't feel hungry. we were then given our brown cardboard box that contained all the clothes and items that we came in with. we were given i think one weeks dole money but i might be mistaken i know i got transport fares. in my box i had a light blue jacket, blue shirt and trousers a pair of brand new brown doc martins, the seventies was a bad decade for fashion. one of the lads opened his box and found that his shoes had been taken and replaced with a really worn out scruffy pair, they were many sizes to big all he could do was tell the screw on duty, but he was told to make a complaint in writing. when leaving a couple of the lads said can we book a room for later in the year, the officer said eighty percent will be coming back into the prison system but i knew i would be in twenty percent that didn't i had learnt my lesson. i know the beatings were bad and it affected many people including myself, but i have heard recently that some boys were sexually assaulted while in Whatton. i don't recall anything of that nature but then again those things are done to the victim in private, just hope that the perpetrators get sentenced for what they have done only wish there were places like Whatton for them to serve their sentences, see how they like it to be beaten and humiliated constantly, would that be fair probably not like it wasn't fair for us.
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