Britain Behind Bars - A secret history S01E03 (4th August 2024)
Britain Behind Bars - A secret history S01E03 (4th August 2024)
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00:00Behind every cell door lies a secret history.
00:06As a criminal barrister, I visited prisons across the country.
00:11I've always believed that how we punish people
00:15goes to the heart of who we are as a society.
00:18In this series, I'm uncovering the hidden past of British jails.
00:23All walks of life have walked through that gate,
00:26from Victorian beggars to cold-blooded killers.
00:29Going behind prison walls.
00:32In this wing here, a man being slowly walked to his death.
00:37And delving into rare historical archives.
00:41John Nuts stealing sheep, Thomas Bennett stealing a mare.
00:45All of these executed in front of the prison.
00:48I'll discover notorious gangsters.
00:52The Kray brothers believe that this is a critical moment
00:56that sets off their life of crime.
00:59Legendary crimes, highway robberies,
01:02the stuff of swashbuckling history.
01:05And everyday thieves.
01:07Leave prison, nowhere to live, go to the workhouse,
01:11back to prison again.
01:13Ex-prisoners will reflect on cases from the past.
01:17If I was around in 1787, I would have been executed.
01:24It's mad because that person could be me.
01:27What can these stories tell us about our prison system?
01:31About 100 prisoners have taken over.
01:33Everything went chaotic.
01:35It's just one of the worst memories of my career.
01:38Britain's criminal past brought to life.
01:42You're going to have to fight for your life in here.
01:45Some of them at some point will be released.
01:48What happens inside matters.
01:54This is Shepton Mallet Prison in Somerset,
01:59one of the oldest prisons in Britain.
02:04Opened in 1625, it operated for nearly 400 years
02:10before its closure in 2013.
02:14It's hard to imagine a prison like this.
02:18Just look at those stone walls.
02:20They almost look medieval,
02:22behind this thick barbed wire made of wrought iron.
02:29Over the centuries, Shepton's been home to Victorian pickpockets,
02:34beggars, petty thieves, as well as some of Britain's most famous
02:39thieves and robbers.
02:43But for most of its history,
02:45Shepton dealt with those convicted of minor offences.
02:49The people that would go into that building
02:52would often serve short sentences
02:55for what we understand as petty crime.
02:59And that's still the same with a majority of prisoners
03:02who were convicted of petty offences.
03:05Shepton was one of the first prisons in Britain
03:10and that's still the same with a majority of today's prison population.
03:16When I was 15, my first crime,
03:20I committed a crime of fraud.
03:24I was remanded for three weeks.
03:28The first thing I went into prison for
03:31was driving whilst disqualified, times six.
03:35My first-time offences were very small, actually.
03:38It was like theft from out of court,
03:40just me trying to earn a few quid.
03:45So what was life inside like for the men and women
03:48who passed through these prison gates?
03:51And what impact did the short sentences they served here
03:55have on their lives?
04:03At its peak, Shepton could house up to 300 inmates
04:07in 178 cells.
04:10The fact that this is now a place of history
04:13when it was brimming with people,
04:16a place where I used to come and work,
04:18is really extraordinary to think about.
04:21Until the 19th century,
04:23most petty criminals faced severe punishment,
04:26with many being transported to Britain's distant colonies
04:30or sent to the gallows, often for trivial offences.
04:37But at the start of the 19th century,
04:39penal reformers began to seek alternative, less extreme measures.
04:46A term in prison, behind bars,
04:49soon became the most common punishment for crime.
04:54Here we have the Somerset jail records
04:56and the people who were convicted around the 1820s
04:59would have been brought here to Shepton Mallet.
05:02And as you look at this record, things jump off the page.
05:06Look at this one.
05:08You've got William Magg and his associate George, 14 and 13 years old,
05:13guilty of stealing a dozen bottles.
05:16William Magg sentenced to two months here at Shepton Mallet.
05:21And we have William Every. He's 48 years old.
05:24He's sentenced to one month in Shepton.
05:27What's his offence?
05:29Stealing a piece of leather.
05:31He's a labourer.
05:33And that's a common theme as you look down that column,
05:36description of the person in nearly every case.
05:39Labourer, labourer, labourer.
05:42What we can see is a clear pattern of everybody in this record
05:46and who they are.
05:48They're the poorest, they commit petty offences,
05:52sentenced to come and spend a month doing hard labour in this building.
05:58If you were to go to any prison today
06:01and look at the list of who was there
06:04and ask what jobs did these people do
06:06before they arrived for their short sentence,
06:09very few of them would have skills.
06:11In many instances, they wouldn't be able to read.
06:14And that would be the same today as it was back then.
06:19You know, you look and you've got somebody called John,
06:23John Bryson, he's 20 years old.
06:26In 1824, stealing two ducks.
06:30And he gets four months in Shepton.
06:35We have another document here which explains more about the sentence.
06:40Ah, there's a note, handwritten.
06:44Not only is he sentenced to four months in prison here,
06:49he's also whipped.
06:52He's also whipped.
06:55Wow.
07:00I want to know what happened to John Bryson
07:03when he was imprisoned here in Shepton Jail in 1824.
07:08So John Bryson finds himself sentenced to four months.
07:12He's also going to be whipped.
07:14At this time, whipping was often attached to punishments for theft
07:18without using a cat o' nine tails.
07:21That's a big rod with leather thongs coming off the end.
07:26They would say, "'Till your back be bloody."
07:29So you can imagine, he was whipped until the blood came out.
07:34John Bryson's punishment appears shocking to us today.
07:38But there was a genuine belief in Georgian Britain
07:41that punishment could improve character.
07:44The authorities wanted prisoners like John
07:47to leave as better people than when they came in.
07:50And once out, to stay out of prison.
07:55What was life like for prisoners like John here?
07:59There was this renewed emphasis on providing the prisoners with work
08:03because idle prisoners, of course, are very, very dangerous,
08:06dangerous to the authorities,
08:08and also you can use work as a form of rehabilitation too,
08:11to teach good work habits.
08:13So when John Bryson came here in 1824,
08:16already the authorities here were reshaping that regime.
08:19They had a new hard labour machine.
08:21That was the treadwheel.
08:23And I've got some pictures of it here.
08:25This one's actually from later in the century.
08:27It's a photograph from the 1890s of men on the treadwheel.
08:31What's going on here?
08:33I think this one might help.
08:35This is the plan of the treadwheel as it was built here.
08:38So what the inventor of this did
08:40is he took essentially what we would call today a hamster wheel.
08:44At Shepton Mallet, you would have 40 people who were treading at once
08:48to keep that thing turning.
08:50What it does here at Shepton Mallet is it grinds grain.
08:55In principle, it sounded great.
08:57In practice, it was something else entirely.
09:00It's the sheer noise of it.
09:02Imagine the wood and the iron and those massive millstones.
09:06It becomes symbolic almost.
09:08It's the idea of grinding men good.
09:11How long was John conscripted to do this for?
09:14John Bryson and his companions worked for about 7.5 hours a day.
09:18And because of the climbing motion,
09:20they would ascend about 9,000 feet on average.
09:23Now, if you think the Shard in London,
09:25that's the tallest building in London,
09:27is just over 1,000 feet.
09:29And if you can imagine doing that nine times a day...
09:32Wow!
09:34How is this not torture?
09:36Hard labour essentially became torture.
09:38They disconnect a lot of the treadwheels from the millstones.
09:42They just become useless labour machines.
09:45Did it work? Did it have any effect?
09:47Because there was a treadwheel craze, if you like,
09:50and they appeared in so many prisons by 1824
09:53and more than 50 prisons in Britain,
09:55the Home Secretary at the time, Robert Peel,
09:58decided to do an investigation.
10:01He wrote to all the governors and he asked for evidence.
10:04He said, write back and tell me how it's going.
10:07Shepton Mallett responded...
10:09Shepton Mallett responded...
10:29What are ruptures?
10:31It's an abdominal hernia...
10:34..usually created through overexertion.
10:37It's not a nice injury to have.
10:39There's no cure for it.
10:41Ultimately, that's a life-changing injury.
10:45I have to remind myself that 20-year-old John Bryce
10:49was imprisoned here at Shepton for stealing two ducks.
10:53After completing his four-month sentence of hard labour,
10:57he left a different man.
10:59This is a treadwheel building
11:01where John Bryce would have walked for hour after hour
11:05with all of that noise and smell and horror
11:08until he couldn't do it any more.
11:11He was ruined, exhausted, destroyed.
11:20John Bryce was one of eight prisoners
11:22recorded as suffering hernias
11:24from working the treadwheel at Shepton.
11:28So I have a pamphlet here on the nature and effects of the treadwheel.
11:33Here's John McCormack, aged 27, sentenced to six months.
11:37I have worked six weeks.
11:39I never have had a day's sickness before for seven years,
11:43but now every night I cannot sleep for pains in my limbs.
11:46My feet are so swelled at night that I can hardly get my stockings off.
11:50I think I'm on the mill at night as well as the daytime.
11:55So what starts out as an idea to rehabilitate prisoners
12:00actually turns into this barbaric disaster.
12:05Despite the many injuries suffered by the prisoners,
12:08treadwheels would continue to be used in prisons until 1902.
12:13Working the wheel, that sounds absolutely brutal.
12:16You don't go to jail to get written off,
12:18and so you're coming out and you can't even do anything.
12:22You're not able to contribute to society
12:26because the prison has destroyed you.
12:28That's nuts.
12:33As Britain moved into the Victorian age,
12:36Shepton Mallet entered its most brutal chapter yet.
12:40An even more severe system of punishment was introduced,
12:44and not just for men, but also for large numbers of women.
12:59In 1865, with the British public worried about rising crime,
13:04jailers here at Shepton Mallet Prison introduced a new punishment regime,
13:09designed to deter would-be criminals.
13:12This new system had three principles.
13:16Hard labour, meaning strenuous, often futile work.
13:20Hard fare, that is dreadful, monotonous food.
13:24And hard board, literally hard, uncomfortable wooden boards for beds.
13:32The government's policy to get tough on crime
13:35was applied to all prisoners, no matter their age or gender.
13:43During the Victorian period, this was the women's wing,
13:47and it was designed to keep the men and women separate.
13:51The women who were incarcerated here were here at a time
13:56when that mantra, hard labour, hard fare, hard board,
14:00was at its absolute peak.
14:03Today, only one in 25 prisoners are women.
14:07But at the end of the Victorian period, it was far higher, around one in seven.
14:13Then, female prisoners were commonly from the working class.
14:17Illiterate washerwomen, cleaners and domestic servants.
14:24I've got the prison record of the women who were here from the 1890s.
14:30So you've got Mary Taylor, drunk, sentenced for seven days.
14:36Mary Ann Beauchamp, stealing one cloth.
14:41Six weeks she gets, she's 67 years old.
14:47And then you've got Rose Phillip, who's gathering arms at Yeovil.
14:52What's she doing? She's begging.
14:55These are the names of the desperate and the poor.
15:00Women who are from the lowest rung of society,
15:03they serve a week and then they're released, they're let go.
15:09You could look at a prison record like this today and see short-term sentences.
15:15It would be different because nowadays,
15:18everything is done to try, insofar as possible,
15:21to prevent, especially women, going to prison.
15:23But nevertheless, after a while, if you are drunk and disorderly,
15:27over a period of time, certainly if you carry on stealing,
15:31eventually you will get a short sentence
15:34and you'll be serving it in a place not dissimilar from this.
15:40I had a drug addiction.
15:42When I come out of prison, I would go shoplifting in Marks & Spencers,
15:48whatever shop I could get into at that stage.
15:53Then I would go out and commit more crime.
15:59So we have a criminal case file here of Beatrice Tucker,
16:03who, like the women on that record, was here in the 1890s.
16:07And there's something when you open a case file
16:10and the first thing you see is a person's photo.
16:13And it so often changes the complexion through which you read about them
16:17when you can see somebody's face.
16:19And here she is, Beatrice.
16:24We've got the Western Super May Gazette from the 9th of May, 1891.
16:30Beatrice Alice Tucker, a respectable-looking girl of 17,
16:34was charged with feloniously stealing from the premises of her employer.
16:39Three gold rings, pearl handle knife,
16:42quantity wool, writing paper and envelope,
16:45and together of the value of £5.18.
16:48Well, that's a lot of money.
16:51This is an odd offence.
16:53It's what we understand as acquisitive crime.
16:57But, you know, she's the most obvious suspect.
17:00She is a domestic servant who's been convicted
17:03of taking valuable stuff from her employer.
17:06Now, who does that, knowing you're going to get caught
17:09and you're going to be the first person who's suspected?
17:12So you have to ask the question, why would she have done this?
17:25When she was caught stealing from her employer in 1891,
17:29Beatrice was a domestic servant here in Western Super May.
17:34Tens of thousands of Victorian holidaymakers
17:37and working-class day-trippers
17:39flocked to the affluent seaside resort.
17:46Beatrice arrives here in Western Super May in the 1890s.
17:50I mean, this was a place of real glamour.
17:54You see it in the picture here.
17:56That idea of her arriving in a house
17:58where there were all of these objects,
18:01what would that have meant to a poor girl?
18:04And she comes from rural poverty
18:06where none of that stuff had even existed.
18:09And it would have been, well, a buffet of delights.
18:1717-year-old Beatrice had only been here a month
18:20before her arrest for theft.
18:22Her subsequent court appearance was reported in the local paper.
18:27What's fascinating is what the magistrate says to her.
18:30He says, we hope that this would be a warning to her
18:33that whilst in jail she would consider
18:35what a bad career she had begun as a thief
18:37and that she would reform and alter her ways.
18:40Well, it says, we hope this is a warning,
18:42not just to others, but to you.
18:45She would have to go to prison for one month with hard labour.
18:48Prisoner, brackets, smiling,
18:51thank you, sir.
18:54To what extent did it perhaps reform Beatrice's life in any way
18:59or did it make it considerably worse?
19:11Beatrice was transferred here to Shepton Seawing
19:14and for the next four weeks she'd endure the Victorian system
19:19of hard labour, hard fare, hard board.
19:22So, for Beatrice's case, she's going to be engaged in hard labour,
19:27things like oaken picking, which is kind of shredding apart rope
19:31for anything up to ten hours a day.
19:34It's tedious and it's painful.
19:37What the authorities don't want is that people who have very little,
19:41the poorest people in society,
19:43who make up the vast majority of the prison population,
19:47will actually see prison as a better bet than living outside.
19:50So, prisons need to be bad,
19:52because life outside for millions of people is so awful
19:56that prison actually might be a preferable option.
19:59Yeah, they talk about striking that balance to retain a deterrent.
20:04The conditions in here, things like the diet, are just...
20:08What was it? Dier.
20:09So, Beatrice's breakfast and supper is bread and gruel.
20:14Gruel is kind of thin, watery porridge made of oats.
20:17I mean, it's disgusting.
20:21Here in Somerset, government officials reported a rise in petty crime
20:26as local people committed trifling offences
20:29in order to find asylum within the prison walls.
20:34To deter them, the authorities calculated the minimum amount of food
20:38that each prisoner could be fed to survive.
20:42A policy described by one inmate as scientific starvation.
20:47This was Beatrice's first offence when she was 17.
20:51Do we know whether she went on to re-offend?
20:54In January 1892, Beatrice comes before the courts again
20:59for obtaining a pair of shoes by false pretenses.
21:03So, she comes back to Shepton Mallet,
21:06this time for a three-month hard labour sentence.
21:10Within a year, she's... Within a year.
21:12We also know what happens to her after that point.
21:16Is this a local newspaper from here? Local newspaper.
21:19At the Gloucester Police Court on Wednesday last, Beatrice Tucker...
21:23She's 18 now, so she's just a year after her first offence.
21:27Beatrice Tucker was brought up charged with having been found
21:31wandering about without visible means of subsistence.
21:35Found wandering with no means of subsistence, so she's homeless.
21:40The vagrancy laws effectively criminalise homelessness
21:44and Beatrice has nothing.
21:47I'd be homeless. I would go in and out of prison.
21:51One of the gifts they give me was a tent.
21:54They give me a one-man tent and a sleeping bag.
21:58To be honest, I sold it.
22:02When you're released from prison with £47 in your pocket,
22:06comes this cold, rock-hard reality
22:10that you ain't got nowhere to sleep tonight,
22:13and yesterday you were in a place that they were feeding you
22:16three times a day and you had a bed, you had a TV.
22:19So you'll come out and you'll see your probation officer
22:22and if they haven't managed to find you somewhere to live,
22:25you're basically now again back into the same position
22:28that you were before you went into prison, sofa-surfing.
22:31And whilst you're sofa-surfing, now what are you going to be doing
22:34to survive because you haven't got a job?
22:36You're just going to get back involved in crime again.
22:40I want to know if Beatrice Tucker escaped the cycle of crime
22:44and homelessness she'd begun at Shepton Prison.
22:48At the Somerset Archives is a record of women offenders from the 1890s.
22:55First entry we have, the first, the very first.
22:58Although she's described in different names,
23:00Beatrice Alice alias Mary Elizabeth Tucker.
23:03Wow, housebreaking and stealing therein.
23:08Wow. I mean, that's burglary.
23:10That's an escalation in her offending.
23:13She gets six months hard labour.
23:21There again now, Mary Elizabeth Tucker, Beatrice.
23:24Willful and corrupt perjury, another six-month sentence.
23:27She's 20 now, housekeeper.
23:30Now she's 21.
23:32Every single year, absconding from the Bridgewater Union
23:36on 30 July 1895, she's left the workhouse.
23:42So she's left prison.
23:44And her only other option, there is nowhere else, as a homeless person,
23:48which is illegal, is to go to the workhouse,
23:51where it could be as deeply unpleasant and demanding,
23:57physically, spiritually, as hard labour.
24:00And for leaving there, she gets ten days.
24:03Hard labour again.
24:06There she is again.
24:08Stealing a plaster ornament, one glass jug and one ware jug.
24:12Who does property belong to?
24:14The Bridgewater Board, the workhouse board.
24:18We're now building up a story of a Beatrice that's kind of saying,
24:23well, I don't care.
24:25This is her middle finger to the world.
24:31I've done a lot of short-term sentences.
24:34I'd come and go in, I'd come out, I'd go back in,
24:38then I'd come out and then I'd go back in.
24:41It was like a revolving door, really.
24:44Back in and out of prison for some time.
24:49The reason I kept on going back to jail was simple.
24:55I was a drug addict.
24:57Every little bit of criminality that I did was just to fund my drug habit.
25:04This woman, this girl, really, I mean, starts at 17 and now is 21,
25:10committing offences which are all connected to poverty,
25:14there's no doubt about it, and is in this book six times.
25:19The same cycle, leave prison, nowhere to live, go to the workhouse,
25:25can't exist there, there's no other option, back to prison again.
25:29In other words, at this point, Beatrice Tucker, the age of 21,
25:34is completely institutionalised.
25:39Beatrice Tucker was imprisoned more than 20 times.
25:43Her last recorded sentence was in 1917,
25:47when, having now married, she was known as Mary Elizabeth Friday.
25:5318th of July 1917, a hopeless case from Cardiff.
25:58Mary Elizabeth Friday, 42, was indicted.
26:02His Lordship said that she was a hopeless case
26:05and was one of the most miserable wrecks one had to deal with in that court.
26:11It's mad, because that could be me.
26:15I actually had a judge tell me I was a prolific offender
26:20and I should be removed from society,
26:23and gave me 22 months for shoplifting.
26:27I have 110 convictions.
26:31Some years I would go in two, three and even four times.
26:39After years of struggle, Beatrice Tucker settled in Cardiff,
26:43and began a family of her own.
26:46She died in 1953, aged 78.
26:50When you commit a crime, there has to be punishment.
26:53That's part of justice. People have to feel that.
26:56It's a necessary element.
26:58But the point of it has to be that people who come here don't return.
27:05Tens of thousands of prisoners serve time at Shepton
27:08during its 400-year lifespan.
27:12Most have been forgotten,
27:14but two of them would go on to become Britain's most notorious gangsters.
27:32When it opened in 1625,
27:35Shepton Mallet was primarily a jail for local people,
27:38often serving short sentences for petty crimes.
27:42But in the mid-20th century, Shepton welcomed two young men
27:46who would go on to become household names.
27:50Two of the most notorious prisoners to be held in Shepton Mallet
27:53were gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Cray.
27:55But how did they end up in a local prison
27:58over 100 miles away from where they were from in London?
28:02The Crays were born in London's gritty East End in 1933,
28:07the identical sons of Charles Cray, a furniture dealer,
28:11and his wife, Violet.
28:14As teenagers, the brothers had ambitions to become champion boxers.
28:20And they trained here at Repton Boxing Gym in Bethnal Green.
28:25You've got posters of the Crays.
28:28And why do people come to boxing gyms,
28:30especially young men at that time?
28:32And nowadays.
28:34It's not just about the fighting, the discipline,
28:37and all of the good things that boxing bring to young men
28:41and to communities.
28:43There's something really critical here,
28:45and it sets it out in a way that I don't think
28:48I've ever seen before.
28:50There's something really critical here,
28:53and it sets it out in the Daily Mirror from 1951.
28:56The Crays aren't just after being the best boxers.
28:59The heart of what they wanted to achieve
29:02was fame in the boxing ring.
29:06But events outside the ring
29:08would take the brothers' lives in a new direction.
29:12In the early 1950s,
29:14all able-bodied men aged 17 to 21, like the Crays,
29:18had to complete at least 18 months of national service
29:21in one of the armed forces.
29:24In 1952, Ronnie and Reggie were conscripted,
29:27forced to join the army.
29:30This is an extract from their biography
29:33and what they actually said.
29:35Ron Cray says,
29:36''We might still have stayed on the straight and narrow,
29:39''but in the spring of 1952,
29:41''something happened that changed the whole course of life
29:44''for Reg and me.
29:46''The army.''
29:48On the parade ground, the sergeant says,
29:50''You're going to listen to me.''
29:52Squad!
29:53We had a good chat about it and we decided
29:55that even though we were against the army on principle,
29:58we would give it a go.
29:59It would be very good for our boxing as well.
30:01We'd stay in good shape and probably get some good experience
30:04against the army champions.
30:05So having made up our minds,
30:07we put on our best blue suits and went along.
30:10The first thing we came up against
30:12was a bird brain in a bloody uniform.
30:15A corporal who thought he was Winston Churchill or Montgomery.
30:18We told him we wanted to be PTs,
30:20otherwise we didn't want to be in the army,
30:22and he told us, ''Bloody well, do what you're told.''
30:25That didn't go well.
30:26We said, ''We're going home to Mum for a cup of tea.''
30:29And then he did a very silly thing.
30:33He held onto my arm and tried to stop me leaving.
30:36I turned round and smacked him hard on the end of his jaw.
30:41What's totally fascinating about this,
30:44the Kray brothers believe that this is the critical moment
30:48that sets everything off to their life of notorious crime.
30:54They even say, ''We might still have stayed on the straight and narrow,
30:58''but what happened in the army?''
31:03The twins absconded, but were arrested
31:06and sent to Shepton Mallet Prison in 1953.
31:10To serve nine months behind bars.
31:15Shepton, which had been taken over by the army during the Second World War,
31:19was now exclusively a military prison.
31:22Known as the Mallet,
31:24it was one of the most feared and brutal prisons in the country.
31:29To find out what awaited the brothers inside,
31:32I'm meeting with former prison officer Maurice Gee.
31:36Shepton Manor was a lot harsher than the normal run-of-the-mill prisons.
31:40They run it more on the Victorian lines.
31:43Ronnie and Reggie Kray were held on this wing for dishonourable discharge.
31:46Were they sharing a cell together?
31:48They were the best single cells.
31:50Were they allowed to communicate with each other?
31:52The prisoners weren't allowed to talk to each other.
31:54They were only allowed to talk to each other for about ten minutes a day.
31:57The rest of the time they were either behind the door
31:59or they were doing hard labour.
32:01The Krays themselves were just local thugs.
32:04If they weren't fighting with each other,
32:06they were fighting with the other prisoners
32:08and they were fighting with the other staff.
32:11This is actually where they learnt to be the criminals that became the Krays.
32:20So this is the place where the Krays became the Krays?
32:24The prisoners in here were those hardened criminals
32:27that didn't want to play with the navy, the army or the air force.
32:30And while they were here, they met Charlie Richardson.
32:32The Richardson gang.
32:34Charlie Richardson was serving six months for assault.
32:38He would go on to lead a sadistic criminal outfit
32:41known as the Torture Gang, who'd become rivals of the Krays.
32:45So Sheikht Malik, for these notorious criminals,
32:50is the sliding doors moment?
32:52It is for them, yeah.
32:54They became very violent men.
32:57Very violent men.
32:59And if they didn't get their way, then you would pay.
33:06Prison is an education.
33:08I found straightaway that there are so many people
33:12willing to help you to further your career.
33:15Different ways of getting in, different ways of disguising yourself,
33:19how to do certain frauds.
33:21Stealing cars easier than I was originally stealing cars.
33:24There was a little trick of the trade
33:26to be able to get the money out of the firing boxes.
33:29When I told people this was the type of robbery I'd do,
33:32they were like, why are you doing that?
33:34Why don't you get yourself a firearm, get yourself a replica?
33:42The Krays left Shepton with a growing confidence
33:45and invaluable criminal contacts.
33:48By 1954, less than a year after leaving prison,
33:53they'd begun to rise through the ranks
33:55of organised crime in the capital,
33:57running protection rackets which preyed on local businesses.
34:03This is Reggie Kray's scrapbook.
34:06And it really is an extraordinary record.
34:09It's loaned to us by a private collector.
34:11And it's got the articles that Reggie deliberately cut out
34:15of newspapers throughout the early 50s,
34:17right the way through to the 60s.
34:21But this is somebody, clearly,
34:23who is collecting his own scrapbook of fame.
34:28The articles start small, they start with the two of them
34:31beating up a policeman and escaping jail,
34:34and they go right the way up to serious gang violence
34:38until they are, in 1962, at the top of the criminal food chain.
34:43Famous, doing exactly what they set out to do.
34:47Become the bosses of the East End.
34:52For years, the Krays got away with it.
34:56The police unable to pin charges of extortion
34:59and racketeering against them in court.
35:02How much does this trial cost you?
35:04It costs us roughly £8,000.
35:06And how do you feel about that?
35:08I don't suppose anyone likes it.
35:10I didn't spend that money for no reason at all, you know.
35:13Does it leave you broke?
35:15It doesn't leave us broke, but at the same time,
35:17it's a lot of money, so we have to pay it when money's innocent.
35:20What are you going to do now?
35:22I intend to get married in the near future.
35:24I did before this case, but it's put back over the case.
35:27Let's get married as soon as possible.
35:29Ronald, what are you going to do now?
35:31Well, I'd like to go abroad for a short while
35:33and then I'd like to be left alone.
35:38But in 1968, Ronnie and Reggie's criminal stranglehold
35:42was finally broken.
35:44Detectives forced their way in through the glass front door
35:47and surprised the Cray brothers, still in bed.
35:50After being allowed to dress,
35:52they were brought to West End Central Police Station.
35:55The brothers were arrested and found guilty
35:58of the murders of Jack McVitie, who'd worked for them,
36:01and George Cornell, a member of Charlie Richardson's rival gang.
36:07The 35-year-old twins were later sentenced
36:10to a minimum of 30 years in prison.
36:13My involvement with the Crays
36:15is because I was Reggie Cray's life and personal officer
36:18from 92 to 95, when he was at Blunderston Prison.
36:21You knew Reggie Cray?
36:23He was about 60 years old when I met him.
36:25He was just trying to live on his former notoriety.
36:30A lot of the older prisoners in the jail
36:32didn't want him on their wing.
36:34It was the young lads that heard Reggie Cray was coming
36:37and went, oh, Reggie Cray's on his way down.
36:39Can I ask you how much of a problem that is,
36:42that someone like a Cray or somebody who's notorious
36:45that commits serious crime,
36:47that they see that as something to aspire to?
36:50It's difficult. Some of them want to be the next Reggie Cray.
36:55Ronnie and Reggie Cray served nine months here at Shepton
36:59at the very start of their criminal careers.
37:02From there, they would go on to spend half their lives behind bars.
37:13In March 1969, the Cray twins were found guilty of murder
37:18and sentenced to life behind bars.
37:21Ronnie died in 1995.
37:24Then, in 2000, Reggie was diagnosed with terminal cancer
37:29and released from prison.
37:31He gave a remarkable interview from his hospital deathbed.
37:37How long have you been in prison?
37:39I'm just saying 33 years.
37:4133 years.
37:43So you've spent literally half your life in prison.
37:47This is, as I understand it, the last interview Reggie Cray ever gave.
38:02Prison life is a waste of time.
38:05Violence is an arson and nothing at all.
38:09I get letters from all over the country,
38:11these kids write to me.
38:13Speaking from the heart to them, I'd like to see them stay in prison.
38:17But whether they can do so, I don't know.
38:20Some will make it and some won't.
38:24But what a reflection at the end of his life
38:26when he gets letters from young people
38:29to say, do your best to stay out of prison,
38:33to say their nine months in Shepton Mallet
38:36was an important catalyst to what happened next.
38:42That he and Ronnie, despite everything,
38:46weren't necessarily born wanting to do this.
38:52Everything around my life was crime.
38:54Every person that I hanged around with was criminal.
38:57My whole mindset was committing offences.
39:01I was just entrenched in that.
39:06Clearly there was something wrong
39:08for the way I just kept on going back to jail.
39:12No normal person serves 22 years of their life in prison.
39:20In 1973, Shepton Mallet's role was modified again,
39:24becoming what was called a training prison.
39:28These screws also mean screwdrivers, the psychology of self-help.
39:34In line with a nationwide movement,
39:36Shepton was fitted out with workshops
39:38intended to help inmates learn professional skills
39:41for life after prison.
39:44There's a new awareness of the moral responsibility
39:47involved in confining a human being.
39:50The best job that I had in jail was the engineering job.
39:53That was powder paint on lockers.
39:56You had to be able to do that job because it was quite difficult
39:59and you had to be trained to do it.
40:01And the wages was really good, so you was able to survive.
40:05I worked in the Barnardo's workshop,
40:08which I really, really enjoyed.
40:10We used to paint flower pots, make cards,
40:13key rings and things like that,
40:15and they'd sell it in the Barnardo's shop.
40:18To get a job in jail, there's two ways to go about it.
40:22You can put an application in
40:24and most probably get a knockback,
40:26or you can befriend a prison officer.
40:29If you get on with them and they know you're a bit sensible,
40:34they'll give you whatever job you want, man.
40:39In the 1990s, a teenage Paul was imprisoned here at Shepton Mallet.
40:45I'd like to know what his experience of being in and out of prison was like.
40:51See, it looks like a museum now. Yeah.
40:53Nothing in here, no sound, there's the peeling paint,
40:56but that's not what it was like when you were in here.
41:00Oh, no, no, no. There was radios, there was arguing,
41:04there's guys running around the wing,
41:06there's prison officers shouting orders, directions, keys,
41:11always the sound of jingling keys.
41:15This is the first time Paul has been back in Shepton Prison
41:19since he was released.
41:23What's life like in here? What's a day like?
41:25It's like you're a caged animal.
41:27I can remember just pacing up and down the cell,
41:32just trying to do something just to maintain that normality.
41:38How old were you when you first came into prison?
41:40I was 16 when I first came in.
41:43A two-month sentence.
41:45I was an active heroin addict.
41:48That was the only reason I committed crime.
41:51It was to maintain a drug habit.
41:53So when you come in for a short sentence back then,
41:56what was your mindset?
41:58It was a bit of a laugh.
42:00It was only a couple of months here, a couple of months there.
42:03You don't have enough time to be given any full-time employment,
42:08you don't have enough time to get on any behavioural change courses.
42:13Those short sentences, they have one purpose.
42:17Which is?
42:18To keep you off the streets.
42:22Over the next decade, Paul was in and out of prison multiple times,
42:26serving anything from a few weeks to a year.
42:30But his crimes escalated, and in 2004,
42:34a serious offence landed him a long-term sentence.
42:39I got ten years, six months, 27 days for robbery,
42:45possession of imitation firearms,
42:49kidnap and false imprisonment.
42:53Can you imagine how the victims of your crimes feel?
43:00I believe most victims of crime,
43:04they want their offender to go to jail to suffer,
43:07to pay for the crimes they committed against them.
43:10Can you understand why?
43:12Of course I can understand why.
43:14So you would acknowledge that not just for victims,
43:18but for society at large, prison is necessary?
43:21It is definitely necessary.
43:24When I was sat in these cells,
43:28thinking, I knew I could be better.
43:31I did all of the education courses that were available to me,
43:36and it's one of my biggest achievements in life.
43:41I got a degree in health and social care.
43:43How did that change your life?
43:45It was my epiphany moment.
43:49There appears to be no single common factor
43:52that turns a prisoner away from crime.
43:54The catalyst for change is often personal.
43:57I was on drugs.
43:59I'd spent my entire children's lives using.
44:03And I was told, the last time I was in prison,
44:07they took me to a hospital and put me on oxygen,
44:10and they said to me,
44:12if you don't give up, you will definitely die within the next six months.
44:16And if I hadn't gone into prison, I probably would have died.
44:21How the mindset changed, I had family.
44:24I had a big breakdown, and I'd lost all of that.
44:28When I'd managed to be able to fight to get that back,
44:31that was the moment for me of changing my life and not going back.
44:38In 2013, after nearly 400 years,
44:42Shepton Mallet Prison closed its doors for the final time.
44:48But what does the history of this prison,
44:50and the men and women held here,
44:52tell us about the way our prison system works?
44:56John Bryce, Beatrice, the Krays and Paul.
45:01In John's case, everybody thought that that wheel
45:04would give him some moment of reflection.
45:07Instead, he was physically destroyed.
45:10He became a bigger burden on society when he left than when he arrived.
45:15In Beatrice's case, she came back time and time again.
45:19And so we carry on through our journey in history to the Krays.
45:23And who knows what could have happened had they not been in here
45:27and met really serious thugs.
45:32You look at all of their stories and you can completely understand
45:35why the correct option for them was probably prison.
45:39They did bad things and ultimately the community suffered
45:42and they had to come here for punishment.
45:45But that was only one element of it.
45:47But what about that critical purpose? Rehabilitation?
45:51The question of how to deliver justice and rehabilitate at the same time
45:56is something we've struggled with as a society for centuries.
46:03And here's the shocking thing.
46:05And so we end up in exactly the same position over and over again.
46:13There is no one simple solution.
46:17But perhaps we can listen and learn from the voices of history.
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