‘How long have you been here?’ Josephine asked as they walked further into the main building.
‘Only a couple of years. I first came here as a social worker back in ’32 because I was interested in prison conditions for women, but, when I saw what they were trying to do, it seemed sensible to help from the inside. What would you like to see first?’
‘Oh, I don’t mind—I’ll be led by you.’
‘Right, then—we may as well start with the cells.’
On the way to one of the wings they passed a table full of flowers, some exotic and obviously expensive, others which looked as if they had been picked from the garden rather than ordered from a florist. Each pot or vase held a piece of paper with its owner’s name and number, and Josephine exclaimed in surprise at the brightness of the display. ‘Somehow I didn’t expect to see flowers in Holloway,’ she said.
‘Well, they’re not allowed in the cells so we keep them here. That way, prisoners can look at what they’ve been sent four times a day as they pass through to work or to exercise, and it’s nice for those who never receive anything of their own. We put some in the chapel, too, but you have to be careful.’ She grinned. ‘Tulips are particularly good for hiding make-up.’ Josephine was struck by the combination of cheeriness and practicality, and wondered—should she find herself on the receiving end of it—whether she would find it reassuring or irritating. ‘This is the first offenders’ wing,’ Cicely continued, unlocking another glass door at the head of yet another corridor. ‘You’ll notice they’re wearing green checked overalls instead of blue.’ It seemed to Josephine a negligible distinction: the women she had seen so far had all had their individuality knocked out of them by shapeless dark dresses, a charwoman’s overall, black shoes and thick, black woollen stockings; some stood at the doors to their cells, others were fetching water from a tap on the landing or queuing by a lavatory recess, but all seemed to wear an expression of resignation which suggested that the experience of prison was much the same whether your uniform was finished with blue or with green. ‘Most of the women eat in their cells, but there’s a dining area downstairs where those who’ve earned enough good conduct marks can eat together and talk or read a paper,’ she added. ‘It sounds grand, but it’s actually a cheerless strip of landing between two rows of cells and, if I’m honest, most of the women in here have no interest whatsoever in the
‘Are men’s prisons very different, then?’ Josephine asked, relieved to find that Cicely McCall’s view on prison reform was not as rose-coloured as it had at first seemed.
‘Good God, yes. At Wakefield, they eat together, unsupervised, and they don’t all look like they’ve just stepped out of the workhouse. I suppose it’s because there are so many more male prisoners than female—they’re a bigger problem, so they get more attention from those who make the decisions. But it would be nice if more people on the outside recognised that women aren’t somehow less affected than men by this sort of demoralisation.’ She stopped outside an open door at the very end of the wing. ‘Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox and show you the cell.’
Josephine walked in, and realised too late that it had been ridiculous of her to expect the room to be empty. A woman of about thirty stood in front of a mirror. She reddened when she saw a stranger, and Josephine felt the heat of the blush reflected in her own face; it was hard to say who was more embarrassed. ‘This is Miss Tey, Browning,’ Cicely explained. ‘Miss Size has sent her round to have a look at us.’
‘What a lovely bright … er … room,’ Josephine said and could have bitten her tongue out for sounding so preposterous, but Browning seemed genuinely pleased.
‘Isn’t it?’ she said, then noticed Josephine looking at the photographs on the walls. ‘That’s my husband,’ she explained, pointing to a picture of a good-looking young man in a postman’s uniform, ‘and this—this is my Bobby, but I expect he looks so different already. They grow so fast at that age, don’t they?’
There were tears in her eyes when she spoke of the baby. ‘Will you be away from them long?’ Josephine asked gently.
‘Another six months, Miss.’
‘That must be very hard.’
‘Yes, Miss—it’ll be half his life.’
‘He looks like you, though,’ she said, stepping closer to the picture. ‘Six months won’t change that.’ They left Browning to her enforced privacy and walked back down the corridor. As they neared the hub of the prison, Josephine noticed how much darker the cells became due to the close proximity of the other wings; obviously Cicely’s scepticism did not entirely overcome the natural desire to make a good impression on a visitor. ‘Have the cells changed much in the last thirty years?’ she asked, remembering for a moment why she was supposed to be there.
‘It’s only in the last few months that photographs and a looking glass have been allowed, and the beds are different—they have proper springs these days, rather than old wooden planks. There’s an electric light now, and it’s lights out at ten to give them a chance to read or write letters. Oh, and there’s a bell in case they need anything in an emergency. Sometimes it even works.’
‘And the women on this landing—what are they in here for?’
‘All sorts.’ She pointed to each cell in turn. ‘Williams was too heavy-handed with her foster child, Pears and Gregory are both shoplifters, like Browning, and Gaskell is the daughter of an admiral who somehow forgot to pay her bill every time she left a hotel. Over here, we’ve got a bigamist, a prostitute and a widow who lost her job and tried to steal two tins of fruit from Woolworth’s.’
‘So the only thing they have in common is being a first offender?’
‘That’s right. The only first-timers who go elsewhere are brothel keepers.’ Josephine raised an eyebrow. ‘For some reason, they get the heaviest sentences, they’re treated like lepers and are not usually favoured by the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society—they never get any money when they’re released. We reckon it’s because the ladies on the committee fear for their husbands’ moral welfare.’
‘But the others are all treated the same, no matter what they’ve done?’
‘Yes. All classes, all crimes, all ages—they get the same routine and the same treatment, no matter how long their sentence.’
To Josephine, it seemed anathema to reform that women should be herded together with so little understanding of their backgrounds or needs, and she said so. ‘Or is that just naive of me?’
‘Not at all—you’re absolutely right, but we’re battling for twentieth-century changes in a Victorian building, and even Miss Size can only do so much with the shell she’s given. If she had her way, they’d knock the whole place down and start again with something more workable, but she’s shot herself in the foot by achieving as much as she has. The Home Office sees that she’s making life bearable in the existing prison, so we drop a long way down the Treasury’s priority list.’
Bearable was a subjective term, Josephine thought, but she said nothing. ‘Is anything done for their families while they’re in here?’ she asked, remembering the young woman’s face as she had looked at the picture of her child.
‘There’s a group of voluntary visitors who look after families as well.’ Josephine’s reservations must have been obvious, because Cicely said: ‘I know what you mean and, by and large, they’re made up of the great and the good, but it’s nothing like the old lady visitors system; they were all terribly earnest and devoted to a woman’s spiritual welfare, but they had no idea how to deal with what they found here. No, these volunteers are more practical—they give money so that women can get their husbands’ tools out of hock or pay their rent arrears, things that keep the family going and give the prisoner a fighting chance of not ending up back in here a week after she’s released. And some of the friendships that are made last well beyond the end of a sentence.’ Josephine could not help but reflect on how different it sounded from Celia’s guarded comments about her own time in the prison service, when any such fraternisation would have been frowned upon. ‘I know I joked about the brothel keepers,’ Cicely added, ‘but the Aid Society is a remarkable organisation. It’s raised nearly twenty thousand pounds since it started.’
The sewing rooms and laundry were housed in separate buildings, and Josephine was glad to leave the oppressive smell of grease and sweat and general dirt behind for a while as they walked across the yard. ‘I might as well show you the workrooms,’ her guide said, ‘but don’t forget that all the work would have been done in individual cells during the period you’re writing about.’
‘So didn’t the prisoners associate with each other?’ Josephine asked, surprised. In her mind, she had created an image of Sach and Walters glaring at each other across the exercise yard as they awaited trial, or Sach and
