Mad Frank's Underworld History of Britain by Fraser Frank

Author:Fraser, Frank [Frankie Fraser with James Morton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2007-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

BROADMOOR

BACK IN 1953 I got taken from Durham straight down to Broadmoor in a taxi. It was a long drive in the days before the motorways and there was an overnight for the screws which meant overtime. That pleased them and paid for a part of their holiday. No one told me where I was going. I just found out when I got there. They didn’t actually talk to me on the journey. I went straight into Block 6, the refractory block, and I stayed there the whole time. At one time you did every day of your sentence if you was in Broadmoor; there was no remission. The benefit was the regime was easy there. But as years went by prisoners tried to get in and out of Broadmoor and back to prison just before the end of your sentence. If you was doing say a seven then you did a couple, went to Broadmoor for a couple of years and back to the nick. You’d be out in four years and eight months if you’d lost no remission and it had been an easy run.

Generally you worked your way up through the blocks and apart from Block 1, which was a sort of assessment block at the time I was there, the lower the number the more the privileges. There was some wealthy people in Broadmoor over the years and in Block 2 some of the men had others being sort of batmen or valets for them, giving them a few bob a week. Even if I’d got out of refractory I’d never have done that.

I was in Broadmoor just after John Allen, the so-called Mad Parson, had escaped. He got the name because he’d been part of the Broadmoor concert party, a sort of end-of-pier show, and had dressed up as a vicar for one of his parts. He’d managed to hang on to the collar and the stock front and he climbed out one night, jumped into some telephone wires which broke his fall and he was off. November 1947 it was. There was a big hue and cry but he was clever. He wore slippers and carried his shoes and the bloodhounds followed the scent to a pond where he’d thrown them in and the dogs got confused. I don’t think bloodhounds are that bright myself. Some got used in the hunt for Jack the Ripper and that lot got lost. Anyway, Allen gets a lift into London from a fellow. That happened then. If you saw someone walking by the road it was courtesy to offer them a lift. It can’t happen now. Women are generally too frightened. Men ought to be as well. I read of a case the other day where some girl made a speciality of getting herself lifts and then telling the men that if they didn’t give money she’d go to the police and say they’d tried to rape her. Back then vicars in particular were respected, and if you saw one then of course you’d stop.

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