Introduction

INTRODUCTION In early 1970, I took a position as an education officer at Pentridge Prison in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg. Assigned to the high- security B Division, where the chapel doubled as the only classroom on weekdays, I became tutor, confidant and counsellor to some of Australia’s best-known criminals. I’d previously taught adult students at Keon Park Technical School for several years, but nothing could prepare me for the inhospitable surrounds I faced in B Division. No bright and cheerful classroom or happy young faces here – just barren grey walls and barred windows, and the sad faces of prisoners whose contact with me was often their only link to a dimly remembered world outside. The eerie silence of the empty cell block was only punctuated by the occasional approach of footsteps and the clanging of the grille gate below. Although it’s some forty years since I taught in Pentridge, the place and its people have never left me. In recent times, my adult children encouraged me to write an account of my experiences there, and this book is the result. Its primary focus is on the 1970s, which were years of rebellion in Pentridge, as in jails across the Western world. These were also the years when I worked at Pentridge, feeling tensions rise across the prison. The first chapter maps the prison’s evolution from its origins in 1850 until 1970, and the prison authorities’ struggle to adapt to changing philosophies of incarceration over that time. The forbidding exterior of Pentridge was a sign of what lay inside; once it was constructed, this nineteenth-century prison was literally set in stone, a soulless place of incarceration that was nevertheless the only home that many of its inmates had known. 1 PENTRIDGE The second chapter describes how an inmate experienced Pentridge as he travelled the well-worn path from the grim remand section, D Division, with its appalling exercise yards, into one of the divisions of the prison itself. These divisions were named alphabetically, and each housed a particular class of prisoner. In time, the prison established a range of industry yards that provided prisoners with daily employment and made the prison substantially self-sufficient in many of the essentials of life. The prison came to constitute a world of its own. For prisoners who further infringed while incarcerated, Pentridge from the late 1950s had a punishment section, the dreaded H Division, which is the subject of chapter 3. The operation of this division has been the subject of much controversy, as the penal authorities’ version of what took place there was far more benign than the picture painted by many of its inmates. All agreed that the division operated under a strict military-style discipline, but prisoners insisted – and the prison guards denied – that this was accompanied by daily violence. H Division was totally isolated from the rest of the prison, and my interpretation of what happened there has been constructed from personal contacts within the jail and written accounts by ex-prisoners, all of which portray a consistent picture. Chapter 4 outlines my own experiences as an education officer in the proverbially tough B Division, where inmates constantly lived under threat of being relegated to the punishment section for even minor infringements. The small educational provision in B Division was a sign of how low a priority was assigned to preparing prisoners to operate effectively in the world outside. Understandably, while most inmates were desperate to get out, a very high proportion reoffended and wound up back in jail. The prison’s fortress-like construction was a great challenge for its more daring inmates, who dreamed of escaping the harshness of life there. Chapter 5 outlines some of their more ingenious attempts – though almost all were ultimately doomed to fail. Pentridge was also the site of all executions in Victoria after 1924, and these are the subject of chapter 6. The last Australian 2 INTRODUCTION execution of a woman and the last of a man, Ronald Ryan, were both conducted there. Ryan’s hanging was met by a storm of protest that ultimately brought about the end of capital punishment in Australia in 1975. The following chapters focus on some of Pentridge’s more notorious inmates during the period when I worked there. They include some of the best-known criminals in the annals of Australian crime, from William O’Meally, the last man flogged in Australia, to ‘Mr Rent-a-Kill’, Chris Flannery, whose experiences in H Division set the scene for a life of violence, only brought to an end by his unexplained disappearance at the age of 36. The final chapter of this book begins the story of Pentridge’s metamorphosis after the prison was closed and the site sold off to be redeveloped for housing. This has been a fraught process, and is likely to remain so. The developers’ desire to maximise their returns from the site has periodically brought them into conflict with those interested in retaining the heritage of the place. In the time since I began writing this book, plans for the redevelopment have been repeatedly redrawn, and there have been heated campaigns to protect Pentridge’s historical landscape. Long after it ceased to operate as a prison, Pentridge’s history remains a bone of contention, the focus of a story that is still being written. 3 CHAPTER 1 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PENTRIDGE THE STOCKADE Early on the morning of Thursday 5 December 1850, a group of sixteen prisoners set out on foot from the Melbourne Gaol in Russell Street. Handcuffed, some in irons, and connected by a running chain, they were all dressed in white hats, jackets and trousers, on the legs of which were stamped the initials ‘PRG’ for Pentridge Road Gang. Their destination was a new stockade at Pentridge, a tiny village some eight kilometres north of Melbourne. Sentenced to hard labour by the Supreme Court, they’d be put to work constructing the road leading north towards Sydney. The stockade was to act as an outstation to house them as they did so. The prisoners were guarded by warders on each side, and were accompanied by six armed police constables, a sergeant and two Aboriginal troopers. Leading the procession in a horse-drawn cab was the superintendent of Pentridge Stockade, Samuel Barrow, formerly a magistrate at the notorious penal establishment on Norfolk Island. The prisoners made their way to the rough track known as Pentridge Road, then trudged north through the bush until they reached the stockade. The site for the stockade had been chosen because there was plenty of bluestone, which could be quarried and broken up by the prisoners, who were soon put to work spreading gravel along Sydney Road. Over the next few months, the workforce was strengthened by the addition of more convicts from the Melbourne Gaol. Prisoners in the stockade were held in two dozen hardwood slab huts, which resembled animal cages on wheels. These were originally designed with the intention of moving them along Sydney 5 PENTRIDGE Road as required, but instead they were used to move the prisoners from one quarry to another as the bluestone was located. The residents of the district were greatly concerned by the scant number of officials sent to guard the stockade, which was contained only by a log fence little more than a metre high. To assist with supervision, Barrow was provided with a number of Aboriginal police, who guarded the road gangs during the day and patrolled the perimeter of the stockade at night. Many of the police deserted and were replaced by members of the military. Gold had been discovered in central Victoria, and it was increasingly difficult to find men willing to work as guards. The gold rushes brought a dramatic increase in crime. The Victorian population doubled in just a few years, and the numbers of people committed for terms of imprisonment leapt. To reduce overcrowding at the Melbourne Gaol, some of the more unruly prisoners were sent to the ‘hulks’ – prison ships moored off Williamstown. Additional stockades were also established at Richmond, Collingwood and Williamstown. Samuel Barrow was a firm believer in hard work and discipline as tools for punishment and reform. At Pentridge Stockade, prisoners slept on wooden benches in their rough wooden huts. They rose at 6 am, and within an hour they were set to work on the road construction. If they refused, they’d be punished by being made to wear heavier chains or placed in solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water. They were also employed cutting bluestone pitchers, building living quarters for staff and constructing walls and culverts. Those who worked industriously had their sentences shortened, and Barrow also allowed them to make straw hats for sale in their spare time. Local residents were alarmed at the frequency of escapes. In March 1851, eleven men were flogged for attempting to escape. Five months later, Pentridge experienced its first fatal escape when 31 men made a rush for freedom and one was shot dead as he ran through the bush north of the stockade. These and other escapes, including some from the road gangs, resulted in Barrow abandoning the use of prisoners in road gangs in 1853. 6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PENTRIDGE Early the following year, Barrow relinquished his position as Inspector-General of Penal Establishments. On 5 May 1854, he was drowned when a sudden gust of wind overturned a small boat in which he was sailing off Williamstown. Few prisoners mourned his passing. His successor, John Price, had been Civil Commandant at Norfolk Island prison for seven years, and brought to Pentridge a reputation as a tyrant who enjoyed the sufferings of others – particularly prisoners.

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