May Doris Charity Clifford
May Doris Charity Clifford, born September 16, 1914, in Woking, Surrey, may not be a name everyone is familiar with. May, who qualified in medicine at the Royal Free Hospital in Pond Street, Hampstead, London, married physician, Stephen Taylor, in 1930.
On August 7, 1958, Stephen was made a life peer and became Baron Taylor, thereafter. Baron Taylor, once director of Home Intelligence during the war was an expert policy advisor on the NHS following the war and is most definitely a man worth reading about.
The now, Mrs Charity Taylor, during WW2, not only joined the Prison Commission, but in 1942, Charity, was appointed Assistant Medical Officer at HMP Holloway. The first female to do so, and the first of several firsts, along with overseeing a last in 1955, achieved by May Doris Charity Taylor.
In 1945, Charity Taylor, became, not only the first female governor of Holloway, but she also became, the first female governor in the UK, and upon doing so said, “The thing is to give some of these people the hope that they will become decent citizens again. Severe punishment is not always the way to prevent an individual doing something wrong.”
Charity, then set about turning Holloway, from what was, a hellhole focused on punishment, into an environment focusing on rehabilitation.
“The prisoners were there to be helped back successfully into society”. Charity Taylor.
For the first time, women were able to wear their own clothes. They could also wear makeup. But, the greatest change, Charity introduced, was to let women keep their babies, born in prison, with them. ?
She developed education, and introduced classes in typing, home nursing and first aid. Also, introducing classes in current affairs and English literature.
On July 23, 1955, Charity, oversaw the last female being executed in this country when, Ruth Ellis hung for the murder of David Blakely
After leaving her role as governor in 1959, Charity, was made Assistant Director and Inspector of Prisons for Women and spent her time at the prison training college, which was based in Wakefield, lecturing and training staff.
In 1966, Charity and Stephen, moved to Canada where Stephen was appointed as president and vice-chancellor of the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Charity became president of the Social Welfare Council.
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Charity Taylor died on January 4, 1998.
On February 14, 1947, the conditions at Holloway were discussed in parliament.
Holloway Prison (Conditions)
Mrs. Ayrton Gould (Hendon, North)
In dealing with the condition of prisoners in Holloway Prison, I think it will be agreed nowadays by the public generally, and certainly by the present Government, that the desire in the treatment of prisoners is that it should be remedial and not purely punitive. We have come a long way from the old days when people were treated in prison in such a way that their lives were made a hell and it was hoped that the deterrent effect would be so great that they would be terrified into never committing another offence. Of course, it was soon found that did not work, and a good many years ago a different attitude was adopted, but, unfortunately, practice has not always kept up with theory and that is why I am bringing forward this question. I am dealing only with Holloway Prison because I have full facts about it, and that does not mean to say that some other prisons are not better in the matters with which I will deal and that some other prisons are not worse. Prisons vary a good deal, and I think most of them need the standard to be raised. To go back to Holloway, one of the things that seems to me particularly serious is that no privileges are allowed in any circumstances for the first three months. This applies to prisoners serving any term. If the term is shorter than three months, then it is the whole period. If it is a sentence between that and a life sentence, it lasts for the first three months. The reason why this is such a serious thing is that it includes all the prisoners whom it would be most likely to be possible to rehabilitate—first offenders and prisoners who are in for short sentences and have not committed any grave offences. As has so many times been said so recently in this House, in a very difficult life—as it must be admitted life is today for many people, and many women—people slip up and find themselves landed in Holloway. It may be that a woman has stolen because she has a sick child at home and wants to get something she is unable to get from a medical certificate or in any other way. Possibly she has seen it and taken it from a shop. There are quite a lot of cases of people who cannot be described as criminal in any real way but who get landed in Holloway Gaol with many troubles on their shoulders. I want to suggest what it must be like to them during the first three months. Many of them are working-class people who have, practically speaking, never in their lives been alone. We have great troubles with overcrowding, but this is the other side to that picture, and it applies to many of the people who go to prison. Never in the course of their lives have they been alone in a room for more than five minutes. They go to prison feeling very sorry, very humiliated and utterly miserable, and perhaps with grave home troubles. They do not know what is happening to their families, and whether their families are suffering severely because they are not there. These women, whatever their circumstances, are finally locked up at 4·30 p.m., and see no one between then and when they are called at 6 o'clock next morning. [An HON. MEMBER: "Shame."] Can hon. Members imagine the feelings of these people, the brooding, the misery, the wretchedness, of sitting there hour after hour in these days in the cold, because cold is inevitable, and even people in good homes are cold? They are cold and miserable, with nothing to do but to brood over their miseries. It is perfectly true that they are able to get three books a week. But very often they are not the books they want to read, and often they are not the kind of people who do read. They sit and think. During the evening they go to bed, and they have had nothing to eat or drink—this applies to every person in Holloway Gaol—after 4 o'clock in the afternoon, until the next morning.
Mr. Stokes (Ipswich)
Torture.
Mrs. Ayrton Gould
"Torture" is the right word. They have a reasonably good meal served at 4 o'clock. I do not complain, in these days of shortages, about the general diet in Holloway. But I complain most bitterly that the last meal, consisting of about three slices of bread, a very small pat of margarine, and sometimes a piece of cheese, or a tiny piece of spam, and a cup of quite good cocoa, should be the last meal served for 14 hours. Every prisoner should have tea at teatime. It is all wrong that tea should be only served once a day, at 6 a.m. That is the only time in the 24 hours that any prisoner in Holloway Prison has tea. They all have a pint of tea at 6 a.m., with their breakfast. There is precious little we women do not know about how far tea can be made to go in these days, and I cannot believe that the whole ration of tea is used up in the pint served in the early morning. If we are to rehabilitate these prisoners, we must provide certain reasonable comforts. One of those comforts should be that tea should be given at 4'oclock, if that is the time when the meal is taken,?and certainly later in the evening there should he another "unlock", as it is called, and the pint of cocoa, which is now provided at 4 o'clock, should be provided at 7.30, or 8 p.m., with something additional to eat. I would not mind so much if there was not anything additional to eat, if the prisoners could have that nourishing hot drink at 7.30 p.m. They would then be able to go to sleep. Ex-prisoners have said to me time and again, "Somehow or other one gets warm, and. goes to sleep ultimately." In the first three months there are no privileges of any sort. That means that, although the prisoners go to work—and I think the associated labour and the workshops are good—they cannot receive any payment. They cannot go to the shop, which is like what we used to call the "tuckshop" when we were at school. In no circumstances in the first three months is it possible for the prisoners to have their sweet ration. Our diet today is laid down pretty carefully by the Ministry of Food. Not only, is it decided: on what is obtainable, but also on a calorific and energy-making basis. The sweet ration is not provided for no particular reason; it is included because it is needed for the health of the people. People who are feeling very miserable and cold—cold largely because they are so miserable, as well as because the cells are not very warm—crave tremendously for sweet stuffs, because they are energizing. For that first bitter three months they cannot get the sweets, nor in any circumstances a cigarette, but are locked up at 4·30, after the last meal, for 14 hours of brooding and misery. That cannot be remedial, or rehabilitating. If we are to have moral rehabilitation, there must be physical rehabilitation. If there is one thing which has been proved by modern medicine, it is that physical rehabilitation is necessary for moral rehabilitation. I believe it to be true, although it is not provable, that there is not a free woman in this country who does not have a hot drink during the evening, certainly in the winter. I know the Minister wit] say—and I know it is accurate, because of the answers I have received to Questions—that shortage of staff is the reason the prisoners cannot get anything later than 4·30. But never in the history of Holloway Prison has a later meal been provided. It is not a wartime measure. nor an emergency measure. Throughout the history of that prison there has never been a later meal. Although it may not be possible to do it tomorrow, I want the Home Office to put this as a first priority to be provided as soon as possible. Every prisoner should be able to earn from the beginning. Rehabilitation should start as soon as the prisoner enters the prison. Those who are most capable of rehabilitation are likely to be the first offenders and those with short sentences, because they have committed very small offences. In actual practice, the system works out in what seems to be completely the wrong way. The long-term offenders, the old lags who come back over and over again, are the prisoners who get the most privileges. I am told that the reason is that the life is so unendurable that they could not continue in prison unless they got privileges. If this is true, it is all the more reason why the miserable people coming in for the first time, and obviously suffering much more, should get similar privileges. I ask the Minister whether it is possible to turn things round the other way, and to start off all prisoners with regular privileges. After all, what are the privileges? They are not very wonderful. The privileges are the chance of going out to classes, or to some form of recreation, in the evening, and of being able to earn a very small sum of money so that they can buy their sweets ration and a few cigarettes. It is nothing very luxurious for which I am asking. I ask that these privileges should be granted from the first day. The whole attitude towards prisoners should be reversed. They should start their sentence with privileges—if they abuse them, they could he taken away—instead of having to go through three months of sheer misery before they can get the simple things which we would not call privileges but just the fundamental needs of people. They should be able to earn a little money and to get out of their cells after half past four at night. I do not know, but I believe that the scale of earnings is laid down by the Prison Commissioners. On unskilled work not more than 4d. a week, and on highly skilled work Is. a week can be earned. Those are the possible earnings. On what basis this is laid down I do not know: certainly, it is not a trade union basis. If earnings are not to be granted on any sort of trade union basis, then the prisoners should be paid for good behaviour and for work well done. There may be a highly skilled engineer who would be very good at making radio parts, as they do in Holloway, or a highly skilled tailoress who would do good work in the tailoring shop, but there may not be any place in either of those workshops. The consequence is that she has to scrub floors and, because she is doing much harder work, which is unskilled, in no circumstances can she earn more than 4d. a week. If earnings are to be paid on a basis of good behaviour —it can only be called that because it is not really payment for work done—then it should be on a proper pocket money basis. It should be possible for every prisoner who works well, to whatever work she may be put, to earn at least 2s. 6d. a week. That would enable her to buy a full sweet ration, a few cigarettes or some other little thing. Because it must be remembered that if a prisoner wants a shampoo powder, or anything of that sort, she must buy it out of these ridiculously small earnings. On the question of recreation, I want to place great stress on rehabilitation. That can only be obtained if, in addition to good working conditions, there are good recreational facilities. As a result of an answer given yesterday by the Home Secretary, I learned that the average number of prisoners, able to get out of their cells after 4·30, for classes or any form of recreation, is 165 out of a total prisoner population fluctuating between about 460 and a little over 500. That means that on no night can more than about a quarter of the prisoners get out of their cells after the 4·30 "lock up." There they have to remain with nothing to do. They are not given anything entertaining except the books I have mentioned. They cannot do embroidery or needlework. They cannot occupy themselves in any sort of way. As I say, only 165, a little over a quarter, are able to get out of their cells after the 4·30 "lock up." If recreational facilities are to be worthwhile, there must be a grant which will provide the necessary materials. In this connection I asked about the gardens. There are fairly extensive grounds and certain parts are cultivated. I find that they are maintained by gifts. I claim that the Government should not rely upon charitable gifts for the cultivation of the gardens of our institutions.
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