other baby farmers like Eleanor Vale talking at meal times and finding comfort in their shared fate.
Cicely smiled. ‘I can only tell you what it’s like now. Inside each cell, there’s a card of prison rules and any woman who can be bothered to read it will find that no talking is allowed at any time.’ She nodded as Josephine opened her mouth to argue. ‘I know, I know—you’ve only been here half an hour and already you can see that’s nonsense. They talk while they’re standing at the doors to their cells, and while they’re waiting to go to chapel. Most of the gossip happens mornings and evenings while they’re queuing to empty their slops or waiting for the luxury of the lavatory. You’re not telling me that fifty women on a landing with one hot tap and four toilets aren’t going to talk to each other, even if it’s only to suggest politely that the woman in front might like to get a move on. Then there’s the exercise yard—I could show you a dozen old lags who can carry on a conversation with the woman in front without moving their lips or turning their heads. Excellent ventriloquists they’d make in another life.’ She laughed. ‘I’m not saying it’s non-stop chatter from dawn until dusk, but they
‘One of the women who was tried for baby farming at the same time as Sach and Walters was sentenced to two years’ hard labour. What would that have meant?’
‘For women, it just means straightforward imprisonment.’
‘No difference at all?’ Privately, Josephine had wondered if Eleanor Vale suffered more than Sach and Walters, whose punishment, although final, was at least swift.
‘Don’t misunderstand me. Prison isn’t easy and it was far worse then—but most people cling to life at all costs, so if she got away with hard labour rather than hanging, she’ll have been down on her knees thanking someone.’
There was little to see in the workrooms on a Saturday afternoon, and they didn’t linger there long. The path from the laundry back to the main building took them through one of the exercise grounds, and Josephine stopped to look at the odd assortment of women walking round and round dejectedly on cement paths laid in concentric circles, each about a yard wide with snow-covered grass in between. The outside circle was occupied by an energetic prisoner who behaved as though she were tramping across the Pennines; by contrast, an elderly woman, frail and hunched low against the cold, inched slowly round the smaller circle, and Josephine could scarcely recall seeing anything more depressing than a crowd of women walking aimlessly and getting nowhere. ‘You wouldn’t guess it, would you, but exercise is looked forward to as a treat,’ Cicely said. ‘Gardens like this are a novelty for some of these women, and a sanctuary for others.’
They looked bleak enough in the fading light of a November day, but Josephine could imagine how important the lawns and carefully arranged flower beds might be to these women; in the spring and early summer, if you could detach them from their surroundings, they might even be said to be beautiful. As she looked around, her eye was drawn to an oblong bed of neatly trimmed evergreens at one end of the grounds; it stood alone, and seemed out of place next to the general scheme of paths and plants that sat between the radiating arms of the cell blocks. Cicely followed her gaze, and said: ‘That’s Edith Thompson’s grave. She was the last prisoner to be hanged here. There’s no stone or marker, but you don’t need one: every woman in here knows what it is and what it means, and they’d find it hard to forget.’
‘Are there many women buried here?’
‘Too many, if you ask me.’
‘And Sach and Walters would be among them?’ Cicely nodded. They stood in silence for a moment, looking over towards the trees. ‘What’s that?’ Josephine asked, pointing at a new building which was just visible over the top of a nearby wall.
‘That’s the new execution chamber—and I mean brand new.’ She shook her head. ‘All that trouble they’ve gone to to build it, and no one’s had the decency to try it out yet. How ungrateful can you get?’ Her sarcasm was blatant, but justified, in Josephine’s opinion: there was something quietly horrifying about the close proximity of the scaffold to the victims of its predecessor. ‘They pulled the old chamber down after Thompson went,’ Cicely explained. ‘They said she haunted it. A gang came in from one of the men’s prisons to build this beauty—they arrived in a bus each day, like some sort of day trip. Do you want to see it?’
‘No, not if it’s not the original.’ Cicely seemed relieved, and Josephine remembered what Celia had said about the burden of being the warder at an execution; to go to the chamber at all must seem like tempting fate. ‘We’d better go back, anyway. I don’t want to hold Inspector Penrose up.’ She looked at her watch, realising suddenly how badly she wanted to leave Holloway behind.
‘Why do you do this?’ she asked as they walked back to the main building. ‘I can’t imagine it’s for the money.’
‘You’re right there, and it’s not for the social life either.’ She thought before answering, and then said: ‘The best way I can explain it is to tell you something about Miss Size. We had a woman in here who’d been caught shoplifting. She’d run up huge debts with her husband and she was in despair because she didn’t know how he’d manage without her or what she’d do when she got out. Miss Size asked her for a list of her debts, and she wrote to each and every one of them personally, asking what they’d accept by way of payment. Everyone was paid out of money from the Prisoners’ Aid Society, and that woman left prison with a clean slate, debt-free for the first time in her life. That’s just one story—I could have chosen a dozen more, but that’s why I do it.’
One glance around the deputy governor’s sitting room was enough to tell anyone how Mary Size spent what little free time she had: books lay everywhere, and Penrose noticed that she divided her loyalties equally between her countrymen—there was a good smattering of Joyce, Swift and Wilde—and the contemporary female writers who had been recruited into the movement for reform. Her taste for satire obviously extended to the visual: she was a keen collector of cartoons, and examples by Tom Webster and David Low lined the walls. ‘David’s a friend,’ she explained when she saw him looking at them, ‘although sometimes I wonder.’ She drew his attention to a small framed drawing by the fireplace, in which a monstrous female figure towered over three caged and emaciated men, one labelled ‘discipline’, one ‘punishment’, and the third and weakest of the three, ‘justice’; like all the best cartoons, the image was at once grotesquely exaggerated and instantly recognisable as her.
Penrose smiled and took the chair he was offered. There were two folders on the table in front of him, one each for Marjorie Baker and Lucy Peters, and she pushed them across for him to read. He thanked her, but left them where they were; he had liked Mary Size instantly and was interested in hearing her personal opinion before he looked at any official records. ‘Tell me about Marjorie Baker,’ he said.
The openness of the question seemed to throw her for a second, and she considered it carefully. ‘When I first met Marjorie, she was sullen, resentful and aggressive. She showed no interest in her fellow prisoners and rejected any offer of friendship; she regarded prison officers as her deadly enemies. To prove that she wasn’t afraid of anyone, she was always ready to strike the first blow, be it verbal or physical. The last time I saw her, which was only yesterday, she was in command of a responsible job where she was admired for her talent and valued for her hard work; she obviously got on well with her employers and colleagues, and was happy and excited about her future. It takes considerable courage and strength to make those changes without losing the essence of who you are, and that’s probably the most important thing that I can tell you about Marjorie.’
‘What do you put those changes down to?’ He smiled. ‘Apart from prison rehabilitation, I mean—it sounds like she benefited from her time with you.’
‘Yes, she did. Her earlier behaviour was entirely down to frustration and despair, and she was terrified that she would never amount to anything. Once she could believe that she had a future other than as an outcast, she found she could look people in the eye again. It sounds terribly sentimental when I put it like that,’ she added, sensing his scepticism, ‘and of course there were some setbacks along the way—I can see you’re about to remind me that Marjorie needed more than a second chance—but it came right for her eventually. Call it third time lucky if you’re a man who believes in luck.’
‘And do you genuinely believe that she wouldn’t have done anything to bring her back to prison?’
‘I’ve been in the service for thirty years now, and I’ve learned not to make claims which are quite as definite as that. But contrary to what some of my older officers will tell you, they
‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her? Any prisoners who had a grudge against her or someone recently released who had a score to settle? You said that she didn’t make friends at the beginning of her sentence.’
‘No, she didn’t, but that’s the sort of behaviour which might bring instant retaliation: it hardly warrants the sort of violence you’re talking about. I have to admit, when your sergeant telephoned and told me that her father
