Gentle Johnny Ramensky by Robert Jeffrey

Author:Robert Jeffrey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781845023836
Publisher: Black & White Publishing Ltd.
Published: 2011-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

10

A GIRL CALLED LILY

In the years after the war, back in the Gorbals and Rutherglen, Johnny had won himself a girlfriend, an attractive widow called Lily Mulholland. In their letters there is real tenderness and they had many happy times together, though it was only little more than a year after they met that Johnny was in England and in jail. Lily styled herself as Johnny’s fiancée in 1947 and they eventually married in 1955, the delay mostly because of Johnny serving time.

Lily was always in his corner fighting for him and, after he was jailed in England for the York job, she worked hard with a local MP, Dick Buchanan, to get him transferred to a Scottish jail. Johnny and Lily were very concerned about his mother’s state of health. Johnny in particular was fretting about lack of contact with her and his inability to see her doctors and hear about her treatment first hand.

Letters on the subject of his possible transfer flowed between Lily, the MP and the prison authorities on both sides of the border. One note in the archives tartly remarks that because of his swift return to crime after the Army: ‘Ramensky does not deserve very much consideration’. After some correspondence and various pleadings for a move on humanitarian grounds due to his mother’s illness, the case was concluded and it was noted that Ramensky (as the prisons still called him) should be transferred to Barlinnie and his girlfriend Miss Mulholland be informed. Lily was also to be told that this was a mere temporary return to Glasgow for Johnny and that his final destination was Peterhead.

For Johnny, there were many years of adventure ahead, playing the same old game with the police and prison authorities. The first of his post-war escapes came eighteen years after that dramatic break from the old jail in 1934. The newspapers of the 1950s were much less constrained than those of the 1930s and the headlines were lurid. There was no end of speculation on how the prisoner – whom the newspapers also still knew as Ramensky – had obtained his freedom. No doubt, too, papers in the central belt, as well as those in the north-east, were getting a circulation boost from covering the story in depth. At this time Johnny had the celebrity that now attaches to pop stars and footballers, if not their wages. Readers followed his exploits on a daily basis with something approaching admiration for his part in the cat and mouse battle being played out. Johnny thought of it all as a game and the press provided regular match reports.

Some remarkable proof of how prominent Johnny was in the public eye came in a book published in 2009 called Scouting in Banchory. Written by Michael M. Robson, the book includes many anecdotes from the gang shows that the local Scouts put on, particularly one in the 1950s. Robson writes:

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