Peterhead (15 page)

And part of the technique to maximise prison humour is to use nicknames. Being reduced to a prison number (181-74 in Crosbie’s case) can be numbing and in prison, as in factories and other places with repetitive routines, nicknames add a certain colour to daily life. In the 1970s Peterhead had a full share of characters and some mad nicknames, for prisoners and “screws” alike. Take the cons, for a start. They included Rent A Rope, Batman, Raving Rampton Rab, Bald Eagle, the Saughton Harrier (our old friend Willie Leitch), Sodjer Thompson, Flame On, Davie Doughnut, the Mad Major, Rab the Cat, Stinky Steve, Gentle Johnny (Ramensky), Big Nellie and the Godfather himself (Walter Norval). Big Nellie acquired his nickname, as it is not too hard to guess, from his obvious sexual orientation. And it is said that on occasion in the exercise yard he was taunted by the more macho cons on his predilection for same-sex sex. He used to deal with this in contemptuous fashion by shouting back at his tormentors, “Aye and I’ve had him, him and him pointing out the cons he meant to all and sundry.” It was a successful ploy.

Nellie was for a long time the prison bookmaker. Most cons like a gamble and the racing papers are at a premium and the punters have a lot of time on their hands to study form. The currency for behind-bars gambling was, of course, tobacco which could be bought in small quantities. Nellie ran the book and paid out when required. But it was not a good idea to run up too much debt. If you had not enough baccy to pay what you owed, Nellie would decide to ignore the debt in return for a sexual favour or two.

Incidentally, tobacco smoothed some of rough edges of prison life in other ways. A good prison officer always had an ear to what was going on, keeping track of what prison feuds were brewing and the formation of different and antagonistic “teams” among the prisoners. You needed inside info on that in order to take early action to put a stop to any little wars that were boiling under the surface. And one way to get it was to drop a little baccy into the right palms. Care was required and officers and cons were adept at the transfer of the inducement from warder to con. In a line of cons with their back to their captors an open hand might be slipped behind a con’s back and the baccy dropped into it unnoticed. No chances were taken, as it was not a good idea for a con to be known as being in the pocket of an officer and grassing on fellow prisoners. Identification as a grass or toady to the officers would lead to verbal and physical abuse from the cons who hated their jailers.

The officers were given equally eccentric monikers – Fairy Queen, Banana Back, Bible John, Cement Heid, Hank the Yank, Gibbering Gibby, Red Alert, Deputy Dawg, Hess (Jackie Stuart, who was to be taken hostage in one of the major riots of the late ’80s), Jelly Buttocks and The Gimp. Even in 2013, in the final months of the prison, nicknames were rife. I spoke to one senior officer enquiring awkwardly if he, too, had a moniker.

He smiled and said, “Of course, we all have.”

It was a clear invitation to ask, “What was yours?”

He smiled back and said, “Surely you can guess?”

“No,” I said, letting down the school of thought that thinks all journos are trained observers.

“Well it is Wing Nuts.”

Why on earth . . . ?

“Take a good look,” he said, then I belatedly got it – this officer had ears rather on the large side!

The old nicknames all feature when Bing talks of his prison life. Earlier in this book the fate of Gypsy Winning’s cat was told. Winning was not the only con with a pet of sorts. Crosbie notes that keeping pigeons was something of a prison hobby that had a bit of a blind eye turned on it by the prison authorities, who no doubt thought that feeding the odd crumb to a bird on the ledge outside your cell was harmless. Indeed it might even have a calming effect on the men in such a high-security prison.

One of the aforementioned prison guards was called Cement Heid, this sobriquet coming from the fact that before joining the prison service he used to drive a lorry delivering cement to the prison. In this occupation he noticed that the warders led what to him seemed a cushy life. So he parked the lorry and applied to join the prison service. The nickname could also have had something to do with the fact that the cons did not consider him an ideal candidate for
Brain of Britain
on the radio. Or indeed any quiz show.

The aptness of this judgement could be seen in the story of Cement Heid and the pigeons. The guard had taken against a particular prisoner and had decided as a punishment to remove his pet birds. This he proposed to do by throwing them out of the window, seemingly unaware of the homing habits of such creatures. A fellow officer remonstrated with Cement Heid and said there was only one way to get rid of such a bird, demonstrating by picking up the unfortunate nearest pigeon and ringing its neck in front of its owner.

As in the case of Winning’s cat, this became a cause célèbre in the prison and although the owner had wisely kept his hands to himself at the time of the assassination, a letter arrived at the Royal Society of Protection of Birds. Bing and his pals waited for retribution for the bird killer. Some hope – the Society said pigeons were vermin and the method of disposal had been humane!

What is it about birds and prisoners? Apart from the Peterhead pigeons the skies around the old penitentiary were full of seagulls. These handsome wild birds were on the edge of their more normal habitat – seashore. But, of course, they soon twigged that there were easy pickings around the jail and sat on the rooftops watching for a prisoner to drop a crumb or two before swooping down. An old dodge that gave veterans a laugh was to get a newly arrived prisoner to cross the yard with a tray of bread which soon created a scene worthy of Hitchcock, as the wild birds dive-bombed the victim in search of a free meal.

It is never a good idea to confide any fears you have to fellow cons – any weakness is exploited as soon as it is admitted. Joe Polding – nicknamed the Mallet – had been a henchman of Glasgow Godfather Walter Norval in his bank robbing days and was as tough as they come. But this hard man from the Glasgow streets was afraid of the gulls. This caught the attention of one of the prison’s practical jokers. One night this guy put out some tempting bread for a gull and when it landed on his window ledge he promptly snared it with a loop of string and stuffed it into a pillowcase. He then waited till the Mallet was out of his cell and hid it in a cupboard. The joker had figured that alone in the dark the frightened bird would sit quietly, which it did. But at lock-up time the bird sensing the quiet falling over the prison became restive. Polding at first put the strange noises down to the wind or wood creaking but after a while he had to investigate. He opened the cupboard door and a huge seagull with a five-foot wingspan flew into his face. The screams could have been heard in Aberdeen. Quite a laugh for Joe’s fellow prisoners, though.

A compulsion to seek the company of animals seemed to affect some prisoners. Mice, cats and birds could all be befriended by a con. Maybe they just wanted a quiet listener to their tales of woe and injustice. But others were afraid of insects or wee furry creatures. The infamous Arthur Thompson Snr, who succeeded Walter Norval as Glasgow’s Godfather, was remembered for a prison ploy. He noted that a cell near to his was inhabited by a hard man with a weakness. This guy would fight in the streets like a tiger, afraid of no man. But mice? That was another story. Big Arthur decided to have a bit of fun. He managed to get a fragment of brush tied to a bit of string into a pipe in the cell of the man who was scared of mice and pulled the string, producing the most realistic of mice-scratching sounds that drove the con into total distraction.

It would be sad and wrong if “Bing” Crosbie’s prison memoirs left the reader with any sort of impression that doing time in Peterhead – or even working there was some kind of fun. Hard men like to play the hard man even when in jail but a few laughs – however entertainingly told – should not be allowed to dilute to any great extent the misery of the place. The shocking fact is that Bing is an intelligent and literate man, if criminal, but spent years in the company of people who were so mentally ill that without a doubt they should have been in a mental hospital rather than a prison. It is ironic that in its final years Peterhead became a specialist place for sex offenders and killers with mental health issues.

The story of one nicknamed offender, Rab the Cat, shows how desperate some of the inmates were. This man, Robert Meechan, was not given his sobriquet in response to skill as a burglar. The “Cat” referred to was the cat o’ nine tails. He was the last man in Peterhead to be whipped by this horrific weapon.

How he earned this punishment gives us a remarkable insight into prison life around half a century ago. Meechan had attacked an officer and languished in the prison punishment block, where he was becoming demented because it was a tobacco-free zone. He devised, as they say, a cunning plan. He asked permission to join the prison Sunday bible class. This is the sort of move that delights and enthuses all governors and he got his way. The large attendances at such prison events are often caused by a desire on the behalf of the con to break the boredom of prison rather than take a step towards the religious life. The plan hatched by Rab the Cat was this: he knew the organist smoked a pipe and would have a tobacco pouch on his person and this was his target. He picked his moment to “embrace” the organist, congratulating him on a nifty bit of keyboard work all the while searching for the pouch which he found and snatched from the terrified musician in skilled pickpocket manner. Rab was immediately thrown to the ground by the screws and a wild struggle began. But the Cat would not release the pouch. In the end, however strange as it sounds, a compromise was reached and he was allowed to keep the tobacco if he handed back the pouch. This was done and the governor compensated the organist for his lost tobacco. Mind you, the musician decided that was the end of his career as organist in the jail and he never returned.

For his “assault” on the prison visitor Rab the Cat was sentenced to twenty lashes of the cat o’ nine tails. This was the maximum number permitted at the time. Shortly after his ordeal the use of the lash was banned. This gave Rab both his nickname and a place in penal history. He was stretched on a brass frame in the bathhouse to allow the administration of the lashes. For many a year afterwards, prisoners would look at the brass mountings for the frame on which he was stretched, which had never been removed, and thank their lucky stars that they had never suffered in the way Rab the Cat did. But Meechan was one tough con and after his lashing he jumped to his feet and declared, “Give me a couple more fags and I will take the same again.” The prison records to be seen to this day grudgingly give acknowledgement of his fortitude in the face of what was, in effect, torture. They note “that he was a man of stout character.” Something of an understatement, you might say. His experience did not turn him into a model prisoner. Serving another sentence later in an English prison he again assaulted an officer and was given another touch of the “cat,” which was then still in use down south.

The Peterhead cat is still in amongst the collected memorabilia stored in the prison. It is a fearsome weapon and when you look at it you wonder how someone like Meechan could have taken it and asked for more. Around two-and-a-half-feet long it was designed to break the flesh and draw blood. For flogging or whipping you could not find a better weapon, though it would be no fun to be birched either. One touch of the cat should have been enough to deter the worst of criminals. Or so you would think. Incidentally the existing cat held in the prison is in pristine condition. Someone must have wiped it clean of blood and lovingly prepared it for the next victim. The cat could only be used with the express permission of the governor and had to have government approval. It disappeared from the Scottish prison scene in the late 1940s, though in Australia it was in use some years afterwards.

The nickname habit was not restricted to Peterhead or indeed any other jail and while many of the sobriquets were applied to cons or warders low in the pecking order, there was another exclusive tribe – the governors. And nicknames were popular, too, even in Alcatraz, perhaps the most famous penal establishment in the world. The first governor there was James A. Johnstone, known as “Saltwater” for his habit of getting unruly convicts washed down with hoses of sea water. In Alcatraz Governor Swope was “Cowboy” because of his favoured style in hats and another ruler of that hard jail was “Promising Paul” Madigan, who was good at listening to the cons’ complaints and promising action but nothing much ever happened despite his constant assurances.

Here in Scotland the governors of Peterhead, Barlinnie, Saughton and Perth and some others often had nicknames, mostly unrepeatable. But one man stands out from the rest – “Slasher” Gallagher, who was Peterhead governor from 1976 to 1979. He was doubly distinguished in the nicknames game because he had two. He was originally “Square Go” Gallagher, so called because he was not adverse to a gloved battle or two in the boxing rings which at one time were a feature of gyms in old prisons and borstals. It was a useful moniker to have in a place where violence bred violence and where you needed to show toughness to gain respect.

In
Peterhead Porridge
James Crosbie gives his version of the re-christening of Governor Gallagher. It is, however, a story that takes “a bit of believing,” as he puts it himself. According to the tale, a prisoner had been some months in the protection cells as a precaution after an altercation with another con. Now he was fearful of being placed back on the regular cell blocks where his enemy still strutted around. He was scared of retaliation and came up with an idea that might save him from his fate. He would do something desperate to prolong his stay in the protection cells where he was safe from the other cons. Governor Gallagher had a bit of a routine, like most other governors, of popping into various cells and asking “any complaints” of the inmates. Mind you, this is often a cosmetic PR exercise and in Gallagher’s case, and I suspect that of most other governors, you had to be quick with a complaint before a door slammed in your face.