Millennium Memory Bank Bessell, James, 1933 May. 30- (speaker, male; Builder) Collection title: Millennium Memory Bank FIND FORMAT: C900/17517 FIND FORMAT: 1CDR0018001 FIND FORMAT: 1CDR0018002 Contributor: Bessell, James, 1933 May. 30- (speaker, male; Builder) Contributor: Morgan, Eka (speaker; interviewer) Contributor: BBC Thames Valley (sound recordist) Performance note: Place of Birth: Manchester Performance note: Education: Other Performance note: Marital status: Married Performance note: Children: 5s 3d Performance note: Father's occupation: Engineer Performance note: Mother's occupation: HW Tag: Interview Recording date: 1998-11-25 Recording location: Home Item copyright: BBC Subject: Where we live Subject: House and home Subject: Who are we Subject: Living together Subject: Crime and the law Subject: Growing up Subject: Playtime Subject: Going places Recording equipment: Denon DMPR70 MiniDisc digital recorder (BBC modified); Beyer M58 microphone Recording note: James has been in many prisons. He describes smelling biscuits from Huntley and Palmers opposite his cell when he was in Reading Jail. As a child he played on the street a lot and used to make little figures out of the molten lead he found in tram lines. Summary: Logged by Matt Sutherland and Michelle Downey-Simpson Summary: WHERE WE LIVE: 2 1 00 Berkshire's a place if you live here you realise you don't need to go away on holiday...1 55 There's a spot not very far from here which amazed me one day...I was walking and I found a woods, that was absolutely full of bluebells, and it looked like you was walking in the sky, everything was blue under your feet and all around you. Summary: GOING PLACES: 4 0 15 What I found out when I give up driving is that we walked, and it was good for us...we both found out that we noticed more things by walking, than sitting in a car - we was whizzing past people's lovely gardens and not seeing them, but when we walked... Summary: PLAYTIME: 6 00 17 (how met up with wife) It was only sixpence to go into the pictures then ...we sat there watching the film...these girls in front... "my Janie likes you"...I made a date for the following week... I think you're searching for sexual relationships...in the army you've got thousands of young lads...we were lads, and we had ...one thing in mind - find a girl...you might meet 2,3 or 4 girls in a night...you don't turn down the opportunity. Summary: HOUSE AND HOME: 7 2 25 That's where we ended up in this van...so we put a Queenie stove in there, made a whole in roof for a chimney and we lived in there. We had our first child in there, Jimmy, it was cold... it was very hard...we had no hot water...in the winter the tap used to be frozen and so we had to thaw it out...She burnt wood under a tin bath to wash our clothes, and that's how we went on for 6 or 7 years...Then ...I bought a chicken pen and ...fixed that on the back and made that into a sort of living room, and some corrugated iron and made a kitchen...It was so funny...Larry Rodgers...said..." Cor blimey, Jimmy you've got a village up here. ( laughs) NOTE: THIS IS ALL REPEATED TRACK 10, BUT THIS VERSION IS BETTER Summary: LIVING TOGETHER: 11 00 17 Travellers have a language of their own...we were called 'gorges' ...they still call us 'gorges'...I was a house dweller living with my wife who was a gypsy ...I never had anything to do with gypsies before...my mother...if she see them Summary: ( gypsies) coming up to her house, she'd make out she wasn't at home...she was scared...the travellers I lived with worked... Summary: GROWING UP: 14 00 09 I had a good life until the war, then my dad... he went in 1939... in the war to Dunkirk...he got wounded...he went into the eight army...he was away all through the war...the family broke up when my dad went away...my mother carried on with other fells...it was wrong...before the war we used to go for picnics...eventually ended up to be the end of my dad's marriage...we were neglected...she met somebody....with four or five kids, but he didn't want us ...then my dad went off with a younger woman...came to live with us...she didn't like us, she didn't even like her own kids...she starved them to death nearly. Summary: CRIME: 14 3 00 I was living on the streets. She (step-mother) didn't want us, me Mam's fella didn't want us , nobody wanted us so I suppose I slipped into a life of crime, which I didn't really want to do.... Nobody wants to be bad - it's much easier to be good, but when you're hungry and you've got to pinch a piece of bread - you've got to pinch a piece of bread.... I was about 11 years old when I started going on the streets. I ended up in trouble.. I ended up in ' proof school'... in borstal and.... in prison...I was searching for love...nobody was concerned about who I was or what I was doing with my life...I didn't commit murder, I didn't hurt anybody...all children ...want to be loved...I didn't know I was looking for love...I pinched some baby ducks...because I loved 'em ...I got caught...I got probation for that...it was the start of a criminal career for me then...the only really serious thing...was for pinching some shirts...didn't have many clothes....my mother's fella told the police...after the pictures...police waiting for us...me and his son...they charged us....I was sentenced to an approved school for that...I'd have been thirteen or fourteen...that became a way of life...in one way it was good, the only thing is that I had lost my freedom...I worked on a farm, which I loved...the cows and the cattle... Summary: GOING PLACES 14 06 45 I used to go round the tram tracks and by the side of the rails they used to put tar or pitch. I used to take the pitch out of the tracks and I used to sit on the doorstep and roll it and make animals out of it like you would with clay...I'd roll it in me hands and make crocodiles, all kinds of different animals. NOTE. This story is repeated on track 62 Summary: PLAYTIME 15 01 48 Come eighteen, I had met a girl, who I loved very much....head over heels...she was the only one who ever seemed to loved...butterflies in my stomach...when it came for me to going in the army ...I couldn't be away for her...I met her ...on the streets...she was only thirteen and I was eighteen...we was intimately in love...bad thing in them days...I didn't feel guilty...we did it together...I lived rough...some nights I stayed in bombed houses...one...Monday night...we went up the Pennine chains...it was freezing...crawled into a haystack with a canvas sheet over it...it was Thursday morning before we come out...we'd been in there for four days... I've always loved them...nothing God created I more beautiful than a woman...I met Kathy through a friend...I can see that girls eyes...we never finished... Summary: LIVING TOGETHER: 18 00 17 I was in the army...big mistake...my mate got this girl into trouble...she was pregnant...he didn't want to marry her...I said I would marry her...the reason...I ended up deserting the army...we both run away together...they charged me with abduction...I got picked up by the military army...and carnal knowledge...having sex with an 'abductioner' ...in the old days...they used to call them the 'size' courts...any big crimes, would have to wait for the 'size' courts ...days when the judge could put a black cap on and sentence you to death...I was like a 'gangster'...I knew I had to be tough inside...I made friends...didn't know they were up for murder...they murdered a woman...they were tried for murder, found guilty and both hung at Walton jail...my life was a mess-up....I was in Strangeways prison, Green prison, Wilmut scrubs, Upfield prison in Yorkshire and borstals...was a rough life, you had to look after yourself, you had to be able to fight...I see good lads, that should never have been there...they're not bad lads, but they were put with bad lads...I've seen 'em raped, I've seen all this... you had to be tough...I was hard..off the streets....but some of the lads ...come straight from good homes... In Winton Green prison I was locked up every day. I was allowed out for a half hour each day - to walk around a circle. It changes you...you sit in your cell, day after day, year in year out.... You start thinking entirely different, you go into yourself. ..You learn so much about yourself...I ended up institutionalised...I got to the point that I felt I would never be free again... What I remember most is that they was an establishment for mental cases, I never see it , but I used to hear blokes shouting...there was a factory that used so sound a siren every day at the same time...he used to get up to his cell window and shout "Ship ahoy!" and that used to tickle me...(READING PRISON)Then I went from there to Reading, which was a borstal then, I was in there for 3 or 4 months... One of the things about Reading - I loved their fish and potatoes on a Friday...it was absolutely gorgeous...the batter was about an inch thick...we'd clean ...the brass...of the fire engines...green and mouldy and we'd have to scrub them with a wire brush...sewing mail bags...nine stitches to an inch...The nice thing about it was that Huntley and Palmer's - the biscuit people - was across the road and we always had the smell of their biscuits all around the prison...I used to sell cigarettes...I was a baron...was also a 'daddy'...slang for a bloke who could look after himself...they are the bunch you leave alone...the 'daddies' knew the 'daddies'...( During course of total imprisonment) escaped twice...the first time...just walked out...the second time it was the same prison... Summary: ( TATTOO STORY) 31 00 08 A little kid called ' Dellie' he done that with a needle...black lead in there...it was just something to kill time with... Summary: PLAYTIME ( sex) 35 00 48 you get a girl and you take her out, what else could you do... Everyone was making love with everyone, and the girls knew what was going on...I was a good-looking lad...I was Jack-The-Lad... I wanted to be good with the girls...... can't really remember not liking girls, except maybe when I was about 8 or 9. I think I started noticing girls when I was 11 or 12... It was never for anything but sex...I'd make love in the course of a night to three different girls. Summary: LIVING TOGETHER: 38 3 25 Joey Bradbury came up to me one day and said "I've got a girl in trouble." She was having a baby, and he didn't want to be bothered with her... and I was looking for some sort of life...I wanted to be part of a family...I said to him I'd marry the girl...I didn't realise that you can't get married without love...it didn't work out. .I didn't see Kathy again...she died of a tumour...we'd never seen each other to say that we were finished Summary: WHO ARE WE : 41 01 04 It makes me proud to be British, but it makes me so sad that the governments seem to be giving the country away and everything it stands for. When we were kids we used to have empire day, at school...all the flags of all the countries...so proud to think that our forefathers had fought for it, and sad that its been given away.... Summary: BELONGING: 45 00 16 We are all in a space...wherever we put our space is where we want to be...you could be in Scotland or wherever ...when you move, your space is taken over by someone else Summary: CRIME: 46 00 36 The trouble with kids today is they've got to commit crime to have people pay attention to them. ...They're never praised for what they do do....mothers and fathers who go out to work and when they come home from work, they have nothing to do... There's nobody there to be with the kids, to love them, to hug them and tell them they're doing good...so they get together...make a nuisance...I think my life was ruined...al I could do is work...a wish may be that my mum and dad should not have split up...maybe I'd have never done the things I've done...(police attitudes) they seem to be a waste of time to me...look at these guys who sell drugs on street corners, they know who they are...yet they don't do a thing about it...they are running around with their fingers up their back-sides...every sensible man knows what's right and wrong...people go to court for not having a television licence Summary: WHAT'S NEXT and BELIEFS 55 00 00 I dread to think about the next century...I don't know where its going...I feel so sorry for the kids( almost upset)...just a grey concrete world...Euthanasia will be made compulsory...people with illnesses won't be allowed to be born. ...People are not needed now - that's why there's so much unemployment...the World is a very beautiful place.. we are more interested in killing each other...we allow it...people are starting to search for God...You find God in yourself through love...God has his spiritual angels around him...God us as...physical angels...what we do in this World with the bodies we carry...at the end of it...we leave our bodies...go back to heaven Summary: WHAT'S NEXT and ADVICE 59 00 18 I don't know how they will be living to give them advice...what you feel is right...I don't know what's going to be left...believe in yourself and follow what's in your heart...they may have messed around with the world so much, but they cannot mess around with your inside Summary: HOUSE AND HOME 62 00 11 My first day at school...there was sewer rat laying in the gutter at the side of the road...they are very big...I saw this rat with it's little legs and it's little eyes...it fascinated me...I loved animals...I decided to pick the rat up and keep it...I kept the rat for a week...played with it...and hid it...I got Diphtheria from it...in them days people died from diphtheria.. that animal nearly cost me my life...so I was in hospital for quite a long time...then I got pneumonia...put me back in hospital ..lucky to be alive