Published by Ether Books 2016
If you were
permitted to enter the mind of James Bunstone Bunning, architect to the City of
London, who began building Holloway Prison in 1849 and completed it in 1852,
one might have been privy to thoughts like these:
“One had to
draw on one’s imagination for the building of it, for it was not the main
prison for the City of London at the time. As to the cost? Wait for it, well, the princely sum of
£91,547, 10s 8d. I will let you gather yourself at that astounding sum.
“Now, if truth
were known, I had an exhilarating time planning it all. Let’s see, 436 cells,
283 for males, 60 for females, 62 for juveniles, 18 refractory cells, 14
reception cells and 14 workrooms. How symmetrical, how perfect, and land for extension, which had me,
Mr. Bunstone Bunning bursting with civic pride. Ah yes, forward thinking,
indeed something I am sure you would appreciate with your ‘going forward’
parlance.
“And I haven’t
told you yet about our most - our most famous, well most infamous inmate of
all; dwarfing even the stature of that confused young woman Ruth Ellis now in
the condemned cell, waiting to be hanged. Yes our most famous inmate, none
other than yer man himself; yes, Oscar Wilde. Yes, he was imprisoned here, he
was.”
So exclaimed
the atoms of Bunstone Bunning in that here-and-there at the same time way.
Oscar Wilde, yes Oscar no less, was sent to Holloway as a remand prisoner
before being taken to Reading Jail to complete his sentence and his ballad.
He did not wear
his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red
For blood and wine are red
His step seemed
light and gay;
Oh, you know, don’t yeh? - all that love that dare not
speak its name.
“Female
suffragettes were also imprisoned in Holloway,” Bunstone Bunning intoned from
nowhere and everywhere. “The prison was known locally as ‘Camden Castle’. You
see, the closure of Newgate Prison necessitated more places for female
prisoners and so Holloway was refurbished and became a purely female prison
from 1903. In this format it had capacity to deal with women prisoners
sentenced to death in London. For previously, London’s female executions had
been carried out at Newgate. Well, I better be off.”
“Don’t let Ruth
Ellis hang!” you would have heard if you had been outside Holloway Prison in
that year of our Lord 1955. A winter had
just passed with its ‘peasouper’ smog which had killed hundreds of Londoners.
Suffragettes had been raising their voices since winter, the breath from their
cries piercing the smog. And if you had
been outside Holloway prison in July 1955 you may have seen a scrawny line of
visitors queuing disconsolately to see their loved one in a procession of
misery that rivalled Dickens’ at his bleakest. These visitors edging along, so
pasty and badly shorn, so worn down by the travailles
of life that if Bunstone Bunning had conjured himself up from a London smog, he
would have had to hang his head in shame at the sight of such abject misery.
Kate Redmond
was in a cell in the first landing, called B11 wing. She had two cellmates,
Noreen Smith, a prostitute, like Kate in for theft, and Molly ‘Cutpurse’,
infamous for cutting people’s purses off their shoulders and in for aggravated
assault. The two residents had greeted the arrival of this young Irish woman
with some trepidation which quickly turned to relief when they saw the new
inmate wasn’t a butch heavy. But they remained puzzled that such a fine-looking
woman was in here in the first place. Still, it takes all types.
Noreen was
kindness itself. “Which one do you want? You can have the bottom bunk, I don’t
mind, I’ll move up to the top bunk.” Kate looked puzzled, standing there,
holding her world of toiletries in her hand.
“I’ll take the top,” said Noreen chirpily. “Don’t worry, I don’t suffer
from nose bleeds nor nuffink.”
Molly ‘Cutpurse’ looked on, like the lifelong criminal she was. She had
seen it all before, heard it all before.
But she hadn’t seen one thing
before.
Ever since Kate
had arrived, all the talk on the landings was of Ruthy and her day for the chop.
“Cathy and Billy are the screws looking after
her.”
“Yeah, looking
after her, they is. There’s someone wiv her twenty four hours a day. Sitting
there, watching her…”
Yes, they sit and watch her night and
day
In their suits of shabby grey;
Why do they do
that then?
…lest she should rob
Their scaffold of its prey
Their scaffold of its prey
“Where is it?”
“End of C Wing.”
“How big is it?”
“It’s big, about the size of four of our cells. Got her own visiting room and everyfing. And its own kaazi.” “Well, I never.”
“It’s big, about the size of four of our cells. Got her own visiting room and everyfing. And its own kaazi.” “Well, I never.”
And the
guttural laugh, which staved away their terror, broke out from the inmates of
Holloway prison in this queuing for their food.
“Billy says the
lights are on all the time, 24 hours a day.”
“Why’s that
then? In case she tops herself?”
“Who’s the
screws that’s with her, did yer say?”
…these silent types
Who watch her night and day;
Who watch her when she tries to weep,
And when she tries to pray.
Who watch her lest she should rob
The prison of its prey.
“Poor woman, thought Kate, how does she ever sleep, for God’s sake what can her state of mind be?"
Who watch her night and day;
Who watch her when she tries to weep,
And when she tries to pray.
Who watch her lest she should rob
The prison of its prey.
“Poor woman, thought Kate, how does she ever sleep, for God’s sake what can her state of mind be?"
She sleeps like
all these women in this hellish place, with one eye open and with mouths ajar,
as if they are about to drink a last glimpse of the sun. Now, despite their
bravado and enforced camaraderie, these inmates all knew one of their kind
would soon thirst no more.
“Yeah, Billy
and Cathy guard her through the night. Billy says there’s this execution
chamber, yeah, and that it’s built over an empty cell. That’s why they do it on
the first floor, so as the empty cell is for the drop; when they...”
Drop her feet foremost through the floor
Into an empty place
Into an empty place
“When is this… all
going to happen?” Kate asked timidly.
“Next
Wednesday… always nine in the morning.”
“When you’se
slopping out.”
“My Frank tells
me they’re all demonstrating outside. And it says on the news that there’s
demonstration in these other countries as well.”
“Where’s they
going to bury her?”
“Some unmarked
grave, no priest or nuffink.”
”I saw her, you
know.”
“You never did.
No one can see her, unless you’re for the chop yourself, that’s the only way
you would see her.”
“Did, when… when
I was coming out of the kitchens.”
“Liar. Porky
pier.”
“Don’t you call
me a bleeding liar, you bitch.”
“Oi, Oi, put
that bleeding thing down.”
And Kate was
nearly knocked down by the bullish warders barging in to separate the
combatants.
And so the talk
of Ruthy went on unabated.
“Look, I’ll
give you a leg up, go on. There, can you see it?”
“Where?”
“To your
right.”
Kate strained
to peer through the tiny aperture to see the execution area. But she was doing
it to please Noreen. She wasn’t interested in that poor woman. But once with a
view through this little window there was… oh, what a roofless world. Can you
see it?
Kate, now held
aloft like some child peeping over a fence, looked out at the sky: she could
see a small aircraft circling in this sky without mantle, where the white
cotton wool clouds scudded along in slow majesty. So she watched with gaze of dull amaze that small plane disappear. That
sky, those clouds. While Noreen continued supporting her legs she clasped the
bars on the tiny window and continued to gaze in wonder at the careless clouds
that in their freedom drifted by.
“Can you see
it?”
“Yes, I can see
it. Yes, I can see it now.”
Oh, I never saw a woman, who looked,
with such a wistful eye,
upon that little tent of blue
We prisoners call the sky.
“Going to let
you down now, darling, me arms are getting tired now. All right, sweetheart.”
Half an hour
later at teatime. A ‘trusty’ ran a spoon across the bars, as she pushed along
the tea trolley. “It’s next Wednesday. Ruthy’s for the chop next Wednesday.”
When a voice behind me whispered low
that girl is going to swing.
that girl is going to swing.
And in that
wait a certain silence fell on those women prisoners locked up with the
condemned Ruth Ellis in Holloway Prison. Who dawdled through their ‘time’. Now
there would be pauses in the manufactured bravado and their strained bonhomie.
In the conversations there would be involuntary lulls, for sometimes they had
no words to say as they silently went about their duties of scrubbing floors
and shining rails
as they mutely clattered with their
pails.
Then they would
sew their sacks and bawl their hymns.
But then, when
it got closer they dared to bang their tin cups on irons bars, until cowed into
silence by the burly screws. And now as the moment neared, as it neared now,
they would tramp across the concrete and mud of the exercise yard, and look at
the ground as if the very mud cried out
for blood. There would be few if any as they tramped that yard who thought
of their former inmate, Oscar Wilde, succinctly versing this forthcoming
transition from life to death.
Oh, it is
sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
is delicate and rare:
But God, it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air
When Love and Life are fair:
To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes
is delicate and rare:
But God, it is not sweet with nimble feet
To dance upon the air
As the hour
neared, and the true and the worthy, continued to debate the fate of Ruth
Ellis,
“Don’t let Ruth
Ellis die!”
“Stop hanging!
Don’t let Ruth Ellis hang!” came the shouts from the placard holders gathered
outside the prison.
“But now, the hangman with his
gardener's gloves
Slips through the padded door
And binds her, then...
Slips through the padded door
And binds her, then...
A teenager
holding a placard for her mother piteously asked, “Is that woman going to be
killed, Mum?”
Oh God, it is
too awful. But this woman had killed, killed the thing she loved. And as 9am
neared on that morning, the crowd outside the prison had swelled so much that the
traffic on the Holloway Road had stopped.
As the seconds
ticked towards nine, a portion of the crowd ran towards the prison gates and
started hammering at them. Too late! It is 9am.
Dear Christ! Did you hear that? I swear,
the very prison walls, suddenly seemed to reel.
All made so lame by who to blame
Their pain they could feel.
Ruth Ellis
became the last woman to be executed
in Britain when she was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint at Holloway Prison on
Wednesday, the 13th of July 1955, for the murder of her boyfriend, David
Blakely. He had refused to see her over the Easter holiday, so she lay in wait
for him outside the Magdala pub and when he came out, shot him five times with
a revolver on the Easter Sunday evening. She was arrested immediately by an
off-duty policeman and equally quickly convicted by the Old Bailey jury. Her
execution caused great public controversy, both in the UK and abroad.
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