| Subject: Re: 1978 Whatton detention centre |
Author:
Witheld
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Date Posted: 12:43:09 12/06/16 Tue
In reply to:
david bryans
's message, "1978 Whatton detention centre" on 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.
Wow, that description of Whatton is the most accurate I have ever read and you have a great memory.
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