Author:
david bryans (more from Whatton)
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Date Posted: 18:23:22 12/24/16 Sat
i remember one day a screw, Mr Nicholls interviewed me on why i received a detention centre sentence. i told him i had received some stolen goods (chocolates) and sold them on and made a small profit this i used to buy cigarettes and two led zeppelin albums. he said if i gave you all their albums and £100 pound would you come back here for three months, i answered honestly that i would not come back for another day never mind three months and i meant it, i think he believed me too. i remember Mr Nicholls had really bad scarring from old acne, he must have suffered terrible from it when he was younger. i know he could blow hot and cold and he could lash out but to be honest he was always o.k with me. one afternoon Mr Nicholls asked for two volunteers to go and clean the governors office i along with another boy named Phil put our hand up. Phil came from a place just outside of Sheffield called Eckington. i got on well with Phil we both had the same likes and dislikes we would take the piss out of the screws mind you we made sure we were the only ones who could hear, it helped the time pass by, then when he finished his sentence a week before me he told me his address and said keep in touch by letter and if i was ever up near Eckington pop in. although i never wrote or visited him i can still remember his name and address and what he looked like and that was forty years ago. i still think of him now and again and hope he made something of his life. both Phil and i were given a bag each, one contained a tin of polish and a couple of clothes, the other was for the waste. we gave the desk a good polish and placed everything back where it belonged. while doing this we both spotted a large cigarette end in the ashtray, we looked at each other knowingly but said nothing i was scared to speak in case the room was bugged, something wasn't right the ashtray had no ash in it, it had to have been placed there. on the outside we both smoked but neither of us was going to touch it, why risk a beating?. we finished the polishing and emptied the waste paper bin. inside the bin was two pieces of screwed up paper and two large cigarette ends again no ash. we finished the room and went and stood outside and waited for Mr Nicholls to return. when he came back he checked the room and said we could return to the dorm as we went to leave he said you didn't throw any pens or paper of the desk away did you, he took a look in the bag then walked away, i cannot be sure but i would gamble everything that he was checking to see if the cigarette ends were there, and they were. while on cage duty one day i was told to wait until a load of clean towels arrived before going back to the dorm. during this time a small group of women, i guess trainee police officers arrived in the changing room, this is who the clean towels were for. no one told me they were coming and i wasn't expecting what happened next to happen or i would have made my presence known. i took my eyes of them for one second and when i turned back one of the women had started to undo her buttons on her shirt i panicked and dropped to the floor in the cage i was below the wire so could not see anything i had my back to them , i honestly didn't see anything and i didn't try to either, was it the bromide in the tea or was it that i was a gentleman, neither i was shitting myself. i preyed that the towels didn't arrived while they were there or i would have been caught. my prayers were answered and the women made their way to the gym, the towels came while they were in the gym i placed them on the benches and legged it to the dorm. could you imagine what would have happened if i was caught, it would be either, it's o.k at least you didn't look, we all make mistakes but no harm done just run along and forget anything happened, or you dirty little bastard your going to be booted up and down the corridor until the shit seeps out of you, then your going to the block for eternity, my guess would be the latter. i remember a boy from Leicester never got his hair cut, the odd screw would tell him to see Mr Mackintosh and get it sorted out, but he never did. it was strange, no screw seemed to give him grief like we got and he didn't seem bothered by them, he was always happy and smiling. we asked Mr Mackintosh why he was allowed long hair and why he never got told to scrub and clean like the rest of us. "we can't touch him, he's got an appeal coming up and when that fails he will be getting his hair cut don't worry". the lad in question was told one day to go and get a needle and thread and sow his collar button back on, he did it but left the needle in his bed, during the night he woke up in pain the needle had gone into his knee and snapped in two.he was whisked off to hospital in Nottingham to have it removed. the next week he stood in the corridor all crisp and clean in his own clothes, he was ready to go to court and have his appeal heard, he was holding a bag that contained the rest of his gear in case he won his appeal. we wished him good look and he left, he never returned, he must have won is appeal and been released. i can remember the time i got the mother of all sore throats, it was painful and i felt really ill. i was to scared to tell the screws, and hoped it would get better on its own, but a couple of days later it got worse. i was in a classroom i cannot remember why i was there but a teacher who was taking the lesson noticed that i was looking ill so he sent me to see the doctor, the doctor took one look at my throat and said i needed to go to the hospital wing. the hospital was full of old farming and national geographic magazines but who cared it was cushy. the doctor put me on non solids for the first two days. all i got to eat was custard at every meal time but to be honest that's all i could eat. the third day the lad bringing the food around said today you have dinner and a (dove) this word could be duff but either way it's a pudding. i couldn't eat it so i had the custard, the lad said i'll eat your dinner and dove and he did, i've never seen a dinner eaten so fast it was gone in less than a minute. the following day was the same my throat was still really bad and i could only eat the custard, again the lad polished off the dinner and dove. a few minutes later the doctor came to see me he looked at the plate and said i'm glad to see you have your appetite back and are able to eat solids again you can go back to the dorm now, within an hour i was back in my old bed. while queuing for dinner one day a boy tried to pass to one of the lads who was serving food a small package, inside was tobacco that he had gotten from breaking open cigarette ends but as he did Mr White spotted him. the lad serving said it's nothing to do with me he said if i give you this can i have extra food. Mr White believed him and went off with the boy. a couple of days later the boy came back from the block and said he knew that lad from home and he had been asked to gather up the tobacco for him. Whatton was split into two, one side was for seventeen to twenty one year old's, and were i resided for sixteen and under although i had my seventeenth birthday in there i stayed in the younger side. neither side mixed unless you were going to the workshops. all the lads who dished out food came from the older lads side. whilst in Whatton i think i only saw the governor maybe three times he never spoke to me but i know if he spoke to one of the boys he would ask the same question " what his your number prisoner, is everything o.k, are you happy, do you have any complaints". i can remember the last time i saw the governor , it was when we were made to stand in a line next to the cage in the changing rooms all the young boys were there three rows deep. in the first row was new boy called kavanagh i knew him from home. on the outside he was a flash cocky git who could afford to buy all the best clothes he was a rock a billy and had great hair and no end of crepe soled shoes, he was going out with my girlfriend's best mate. the governor who was flanked by the two gym instructors asked him for his number instead of giving it he looked around in his cocky way and said what's your number, big mistake the governor took one step back which was the sign for the screws to deal with it. straight away he realized he was going to get sorted out so ran for it. he ran into the corridor and turned right followed by the screws all the time screaming that he was sorry. we all knew he would be caught straight away as the corridor only lead to a locked steel door. this door if it was open would only lead to the workshops followed by the grass field that contained the running track that had the two steeplechase fences on, that was surrounded by the big grey wire fence that kept us firmly inside, but he would never see or reach any of it. we heard him getting sorted out, his screaming turned too crying that turned to pleading for help not long later we saw him being dragged along the floor past the door. as this happened in my final week i only saw him once more and his lovely hair was gone. some months later after leaving Whatton i bumped into his old girlfriend i told her what had happened to him. she told me he was convicted of other crimes while in Whatton and from there he went to north sea training camp and she had since fallen out with him. to this day forty years later i have never seen him again, sometimes other people mention him but no one can ever remember the last time they saw him, strange. i must also mention bed packs. i always did a good bed pack, i would use the bottom of my shoe to make it look squared off. some lads just couldn't do it, you could show then fifty times and they would still be useless. some packs looked like a tightly wrapped liquorice allsort others more like a soggy lasagne. finally has i only lived about fifteen miles away from whatton, i always had visits, all my family came which made it easier to bare. i can remember eating all the biscuits they got with their tea, after the visit we had to stand and wait for a search to make sure we had no cigarettes drugs weren't an issue, how times have changed. on my last week i gave away all my puddings this was a thing everyone did although i never got any ones last weeks pudding. finally i remember walking out of that twenty foot high grey wire fence and into freedom. i walked over the road to the bus stop where my Mam and Dad stood, in one hand my Mam had my man city woolen hat, yes i'm Nottingham born and bred and a life long man city fan, i asked then to bring it so i could hid my bad hair cut, and in the other hand she had a cigarette, i had also asked them to bring me twenty players No 6. the first few drags made me cough and hack but i loved it. i can still see the lads sitting in the transit van as it passed on the way to Nottingham train station all the faces had smiles a mile wide. i made sure they saw me smoking. it was a chapter in my life i hated but i did it. i met a few good people who i hope have found a better life than crime. i saw the good and bad in some people. you had to have been in there to know how bad it could be but we made it out.. if you were in whatton detention centre why not write down your memories on this site so we can read them as everyone will have memories that we can identify with and things we have forgotten you may remind us about. i pass whatton maybe half a dozen times a year, it still has that high grey fence and the prison officers houses at the front but it as been make twice as big and is a sex offenders prison now, so it is doing a worth while job. anyway everyone take care and good luck for the future.
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