Cries For Help

Joanna Kozubska

Description

Opens a window on the closed world of Holloway, other women's prisons and the lives of those held there in the 1970s, including Myra Hindley.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Reino Unido
• United Kingdom
• Offenders
• Great Britain
• Prison
• Royaume-Uni

Informations

• Publié par: Waterside Press
• Date de parution: 24 mars 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781908162694
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

CRIES FOR HELP
Women Without a Voice
Women’s Prisons in the 1970s
Myra Hindley and Her Contemporaries
Joanna Kozubska
Copyright and Publication Details
Cries for Help
Women Without a Voice
Women’s Prisons in the 1970s
Myra Hindley and Her Contemporaries
ISBN 978-1-909976-05-4 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-908162-69-4 (Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-908162-70-0 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright © 2014 This work is the copyright of Joanna Kozubska. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by her in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the author.
Cover design © 2014 Waterside Press. Front cover drawing by Graham Savage. Design by www.gibgob.com
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH . Tel: [phone]; [e-mail] ; www.gardners.com
North American distribution Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. Tel: [phone]; [e-mail]
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
Printed by CPI Group, Chippenham, UK.
e-book Cries for Help is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Myilibrary, Dawsonera, ebrary, and Ebscohost.
Published 2014 by
Waterside Press
Sherfield Gables
Sherfield-on-Loddon
Hook, Hampshire
United Kingdom RG27 0JG
Telephone [phone]
E-mail [e-mail]
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Contents
Copyright and Publication Details
About the Author
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Dedication
Cameo 1: A glimpse of a murderer Joining the Service ‘Nicks’ for Women 1970 — 1977 Women’s Voices
Cameo 2: A glimpse of the ‘most evil woman in Britain’ Cries for Help ‘And you the Governor shall hold........’ Day by … ……………………….Day
Cameo 3: A glimpse of a dying woman sentenced to hang for murder Friends and Lovers
An example of a letter from Myra Hindley to the author Families Left Behind Rooftops and Barricades, Riots and a Horse Race
Cameo 4: A glimpse of a personal cry? Will We Have to Call You ‘Madam’ Now?
Flyaway Hair
Treading the Boards
A Woman of Convictions and Conscience
Loaves of Bread and an Accordion
Their Legacy Reflections
Looking Back
Cameo 5: A glimpse of an innocent woman
Personal Timeline for Joanna Kozubska, 1970-1977
Index
About the Author
Joanna Kozubska is Professor of Managerial Communications at the Inter-national Management Centres and its Vice President, UK.
After teaching in the UK and then Africa with Voluntary Service Overseas, she worked as an assistant governor at Holloway Prison and other HM Prison Service establishments (1970-1977) then as Head of the Special Unit for Disturbed and Disordered Young People at Aycliffe School, County Durham.
During her prison career, she hit the news in the 1970s after borstal girls climbed onto the roof of Holloway demanding that she should not be transferred from their wing ( Chapter 10 ). As explained in Chapter 5 , she later escaped notice after Myra Hindley, the Moors Murderer, was escorted out of the gates of Holloway for a headline-making ‘walk in the park’.
Joanna Kozubska holds an MBA and DPhil. She published her first book The Seven Keys of Charisma in 1997, writes on related topics and is a well-known exponent of Action Learning. In 2012 she became an altruistic kidney donor. She is Chair of the Friends of Guys Marsh.
Architectural Drawings
The drawings in this book are by Graham Savage based on historical photographs and materials. He has been an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects since 1967 and his artwork developed from illustrating both his own projects and commissions from other architectural practices. He is a member of the Society of Architectural Illustrators and also the Society of Graphic Fine Art.
Acknowledgements
This book has been four years in the writing.
Ruth Eade and Bob Mackenzie convinced me I had a story worth telling. My friends from the Writers’ Cottage in Anglesey cheered me on. Ann Booth ensured I put myself into the book. John Taylor saw so much more in what I gave him to read. Angela Niemeyer Eastwood and Andrea Hessay gave me a necessary objective view. Mags Burgin, Jen Stack, Clare Denby, Angela Knight, Terry Tucker and Lara Harris read chapters and cheered me on. Val Lowman encouraged me with her passion and enthusiasm. Patrick and Katie Brown gave me their wise counsel, their time and interest over the long period of writing and asked after the book every time we met.
In dark days, novelist Mario Reading got me started again.
My Prison Service colleagues were magnificent in their support: Colin Honey confirmed in my mind what I wanted to write. Ann Hair couldn’t have been more helpful, jogging my memory, reminding me of how things had been, and researching information we had both forgotten. David Faulkner encouraged me, gave me his time and advice, read and commented on my work. Muriel Allen and Audrey Stern gave me their support and their stories. Monica Carden and Judy Gibbons shared their memories. Pat Bartholomew read chapters and gave me enthusiastic feedback.
Phil Wheatley cleared the way for me to use the letters in the book and gave me encouraging feedback when he later read the manuscript.
The Hon. Mary Morrison and Min Wood supported me in so many ways.
My school friends were a huge support. Judith Kelley, Gaynor McCarthy, Sue Di Girolamo and Marion Put Picton were interested and fascinated. Mary Simpson took a draft to bed with her and read it after a tough days’ work and reported a real fascination. Sue Jones read the final draft and gave me much valued and wonderful feedback. My family, Shena, Danuta and Gerald offered continuous support.
Graham Savage contributed the fantastic drawings.
Rosemary Macdonald gave me reassuring final feedback.
Mandy Little, my agent, encouraged me and kept me writing.
My new colleagues in the Friends of Guys Marsh gave me unbiased encouragement.
Bryan Gibson, Waterside Press, believed in the project and said ‘yes’. Alex steered the illustrations into the book with much care.
Most importantly, I am indebted to all the women who wrote letters to me and who gave me permission to use their material.
Jo Denby took my photograph and but for Jo I would not have started or completed. She read each draft and has been my support, encouragement and editor throughout.
Thank you.
Joanna Kozubska
February 2014
Site plan of the original old Holloway Prison taken from historical drawings made in the 1850s.
There had been a number of changes and alterations by 1971 but the structure was essentially the same.
List of illustrations
Site plan of the original old Holloway Prison taken from historical drawings made in the 1850s.
The Centre — The hub of the prison with its steel key safe and polished table
D Wing — ‘Opera box lobbies with an infinity of little doors’
A long-term prisoner’s cell — ‘Soft furnishings’ and decoration by the occupant
Holloway Prison, Inner Gate (apparently inspired by Warwick Castle)
Ground floor of F Wing or Borstal Recall sometimes called FDX
Myra Hindley wrote close to the edge of the page top, bottom and sides.
C Wing — One of the six prison wings, housing the hospital on the first two floors and the remand centre on the third and fourth floors
Dedication
For all those who wrote letters to me
For all the women whose lives I shared for a short time
Thank you.
For Jo
With love
Foreword: Lord David Ramsbotham
Like Joanna Kozubska much of my thinking about the imprisonment of women is based on what I saw of their treatment and conditions in HMP Holloway, the largest women’s prison in Great Britain. In her case that included practical experience, over a number of years, in different staff posts. In mine it began with my first ever prison inspection as HM Chief Inspector of Prisons in 1995, in only my second week in office. I was intrigued that she should have chosen the subtitle ‘Women Without a Voice — Prisons in the 1970s’, because the fact that women did not seem to have a voice within the Prison Service hierarchy was one of my main concerns after abandoning my inspection. Throughout my career in another operational service, the Army, I had been used to a chain of command in which someone, some named person, was responsible and accountable for every function or activity, at every level. Naïvely I thought that that was normal, as it was true of the business in which I worked for two years, in the hospital that I chaired and the school of which I was a governor. Uniquely however it remains not so of the Prison Service, as I found when I asked the acting Director General — the Director General had just been sacked — if I could see the Director of Women, to be told that such a post did not exist, nor was any member of the Prisons Board responsible or accountable for women, policy being the responsibility of a civil servant in the policy department.
I walked out of that inspection because I was so appalled that any country, let alone my own, could treat vulnerable women in the way that I saw in Holloway in 1995, and particularly that neither Ministers or the Prison Service appeared to have taken any action to rectify faults that had been pointed-out to them for months by the independent Board of Visitors. As with an Army unit, found, on inspection, not to be fit for its operational purpose, I gave the authorities a list of points that I expected to be corrected before I returned, unannounced, to re-inspect in six months.
Four of these have echoes in Joanna Kozubska’s book, because they illustrate points that she makes. Injuries to women being recorded on diagrams of