Authors: Robert Jeffrey
The day of this escape was market day in Aberdeen and many a farmer heading for a profitable visit to the auction ring, and later the pub, had his drouthy plans delayed by roadblocks. But the man on the run had no chance with no money, nowhere to stay and no plan. He was picked up in Peterhead after twenty-eight hours, despite an attempt at disguise wearing prison warder’s clothes he had stolen from the shed where he had found the ladder.
Escape number four followed the routine: break out followed by manhunt, particularly in farms. In some of his previous escapes Johnny had shown a penchant for taking the odd nap in straw bales, undeterred by farmyard smells, mice or rats. In the inclement weather of these parts the straw at least provided some welcome warmth and a place to rest. His pursuers spent hours energetically stabbing hayforks into straw bales. This time he was out from a Friday to a Sunday before being spotted in a nearby farm. Again a youngster was involved. This time it was a seven-year-old, wee David Smith, who played a role in his recapture.
The lad had gone into one of the barns on the family farm with one of the farm workers and being a bright spark, he noticed the bales had been disturbed. He climbed on to them and turned to his companion with a shout: “Ramensky is here!” It is a dramatic illustration of Ramensky’s fame that even a seven-year-old recognised him immediately.
Interestingly, wee Davie’s companion was one George Henderson who, when a distillery worker, had been involved in the recapture of the Great Escaper in one of his earlier adventures. Ramensky would have done well to find out the whereabouts of Mr Henderson so that he could avoid him before he made yet another escape! Wee David later told a bevy of reporters, many of whom had covered other Ramensky escapes, that, “I saw Ramensky lying among the bales and he said, ‘You should not have come in here, sonny,’ and I shouted to Mr Henderson that I was frightened but that Ramensky has said, ‘Don’t be scared, sonny, I won’t hurt you.’” Gentle Johnny once again.
George Henderson tried to get the fugitive to give up there and then but he refused and in a pathetic scene watched by the boy, he pleaded for “just a five-minute start.” David’s father later told reporters that Johnny looked old and decrepit and they could not bring themselves to use force against him. One foot was bruised and bleeding, with a dirty bandage roughly tied round it. George Henderson stayed with the Great Escaper while the farmer went to the prison to inform the authorities. As they walked together Johnny pathetically pleaded just to be left alone but they soon came to a spot where the cops were watching out for him. He made one last attempt to hide behind a wall but when he saw Inspector John Campbell and a constable named Hendry he surrendered, the game was up.
The next escape, his fifth, was more interesting and mysterious than the rather sad antics at the Smith farm. This time he was out for almost nine days. And the mystery is that when captured he was clean-shaven, looking well fed and chipper. Not at all like the exhausted, shambolic and beaten man who surrendered at the conclusion of his fourth escape. Was he given shelter and food by, as a local newspaper speculated, “a kind-hearted but misguided local”? His commando training would have helped him live off the land and in particular he was said to be an expert in guddling trout. But clean-shaven? Neatly dressed? It is hardly likely that a razor and soap was part of his kit when he escaped.
There are those who think his good looks and charm enabled him to get help from a local woman who knew his fame and took a fancy to him. Not unlikely, as he was almost a legend in the area, but the man himself was giving nothing away and smilingly remarked he was keeping the real story for his autobiography! But he never got to write it and the mystery of where he was and who, if anyone, helped him remains.
But his fame and recognisability could work against him as well as in his favour. This time a lorry driver had recognised him at a roadside and called the cops and yet another manhunt was to end with the Great Escaper huckled head down in the back of a police car heading for Peterhead Prison. Back in the jail Johnny would face court action after his escapes, but he was not the only man in trouble. One of the legendary governors of the great prison was Duncan Mackenzie, who ruled the jail from 1958 to 1961. Johnny was so popular in the area that at court appearances crowds would watch him arrive and depart and cheer him with shouts of “Good old Johnny.”
Mr Mackenzie was not such a fan. Ramensky was a permanent headache to him and his bosses in Edinburgh took a dim view of the escapes. The governor even told him to present himself down in the capital to be given a severe wigging about security. Johnny and his highly-publicised escapades were making the prison something of a national laughing stock. He was not to be allowed to escape again. Full stop. No more lurid newspaper headlines about jailbreaks and reports in the papers about lax security were to be allowed. The solution was to have him watched twenty-four/seven. Six officers were specially selected to keep an eye on him at all times. That is heavy-duty security. Even Johnny came to accept that under such conditions he had to become the Great Escaper (Retired).
It is interesting that Mr Mackenzie, the soft-spoken son of a Highland crofter, was wise in the ways of the prison service and despite the trouble Ramensky had caused him down the years he developed a friendship with him and tried hard to get him to change his ways, a hopeless task.
Johnny also had a mixed relationship with two other governors – Major D.C. Heron-Watson and, of course, Captain J. I. Buchan. Both found him at times a nightmare prisoner, a constant headache, a world-class all-round pest. But both also had a sneaking admiration for him. Heron-Watson showed kindness in allowing him to keep a diary and was rewarded with another rap over the knuckles from his superiors in Edinburgh and, of course, Buchan played a major role in getting him into the army and he got his reward in postcards from the front from the commando, and on occasion even a wee present sent from abroad.
All governors, men of ability, recognised that Johnny was something special. A captive like no other they would meet in a career in the prison service. Indeed, in his final years in Perth prison documents show that he was still on the records as a potential escaper, though in reality his days of spectacular and unauthorised departures from prison premises were long over. But the thought remains that for any governor, their own Great Escape would have been to be given control of a prison that did not contain Commando Johnny Ramensky. That would be a posting that at least would guarantee the governor would get a good night’s sleep, unworried about whether or not Gentle Johnny Ramensky was still in his cell.
The Peterhead experience, as endured from behind cold iron bars, has never been a remotely pleasant one. Mental misery and despair and physical deprivation goes with the territory. From day one those incarcerated paid a high price for their crimes, separated from family and denied the comfort of the company of their like-minded villains and cohorts on the outside. Society was making them pay for their evil deeds with a regime that meant punishment was just that – day after grinding day. For the majority of its existence Peterhead punishment could be broken down to, obviously, loss of freedom, poor food, inadequate medical care and warders who on occasion could be as violent as their charges. Home comforts there were none. The outcasts who toiled in the quarries in the early days, under the barrels of rifles wielded by potentially trigger-happy warders and civilian guards, suffered back-breaking work in a hostile climate during the day and returned to cold fare, hopelessness, darkness, rough blankets and hard mattresses at night.
The soundtrack to such a miserable life was not the latest hits from an MP3 player or a TV in your cell. In the frequent foggy weather it was the mournful howling of what the prisoners called the Boddam Coo. This was no smelly four-legged grass muncher, but one of Scotland’s most iconic lighthouses, built in 1827 by Robert Stevenson on the windswept and bleak Buchan Ness. Its red and white stripes could be seen for miles around and its well-used foghorn could be heard from the prison and for miles out to sea and inland too to the rich farmlands of Aberdeenshire. For cons up from the industrial Central Belt it was a memory of another way of life in an area far removed from the polluted air and dark tenements of Glasgow, a memory that the hard men took home when the prison doors finally opened for them. It was rather different from the other persistent aural memory of the cons – the constant dispiriting clang of cell doors and the scratch of keys in locks.
It was only towards the end of the long life of the institution that such things as training in a trade, some degree of compassion, and attempts to combine retribution and redemption were given more than a passing thought. It was yet another reminder of the irony that the high-minded intention of building a lifesaving harbour also led to hell on earth for thousands of Scots convicts. No music and concerts from local musicians in these days. But Johnny Cash’s anthem to San Quentin, another infamous prison thousands of miles away across the world, would have been recognised by any inmate:
San Quentin, I hate every inch of you
You’ve cut me and scarred me thru’ and thru’
First-hand accounts of the life of early prisoners are scarce, but in the later years, the 1940s onwards, criminals of a literary bent – not as rare as you might imagine – put pencil to scrap paper to record what it was really like. And I had the good fortune to get the chance to write biographies of two of Scotland’s most remarkable criminals – Johnny Ramensky, of course, and Glasgow’s first Godfather, Walter Norval. Their insight into day-to-day life in Peterhead was intriguing. Both had wide experience of many of Scotland’s jails, but Peterhead was like no other.
Walter Norval spent almost a decade inside “PHead,” as he often called it, serving terms for different serious crimes. The use of the name “PHead” was fairly common with Glasgow cons, though some would refer to it as “PHeid.” The old jail, as we have seen, attracted many nicknames in its time: The Hate Factory, Scotland’s Gulag, COLDitz, etc. But the fact that many of the staff were “loons frae Aberdeenshire” – though their guests mostly came from outside the area – gave rise to another local nickname: “the napper.” This came from the Doric name for a person’s head – his napper. It was an easy linguistic jump from Peterhead to “the napper.”
There must have been some fun conversations between cons and warders at times, as the local North-East dialect is alien to those who reside in the Lowlands. Though to be fair there are plenty around who also find a Glesca dialect a tad difficult to understand. The Doric is on the verge of being a separate language. The scope for misunderstanding is enormous. I remember being on a long overseas trip to Canada as a young journalist with a group of hacks which included a worthy from the
Press and Journal
newsroom. Late at night after a few drams had been taken to ease the tension of the day – at least that was our excuse – a favourite entertainment was for us to ask Jim to “talk Aberdonian” and we would try to guess what he was saying. Notwithstanding the effect of the grog, sometimes we got it very wrong.
In his later years back in Glasgow, Norval retained an appetite for porridge as served in places well kent to him like Barlinnie and Polmont Borstal, as well as Peterhead. Writing his life story with me he used to share a plate of porridge as he reminisced on his time up north. (I enjoyed that spoonful or two cooked up by himself, a wee treat that enabled me to joke that I had done “porridge” with the infamous Glasgow Godfather!)
His tales were mostly bleak. But he could recount a few moments of kindness, an occasional gentle side, shown by those who kept him incarcerated. One such story was of arriving back in the jail in Aberdeenshire after a period of freedom on the streets of his native city. On his arrival one veteran officer, recognising him from the ’60s, greeted him with the friendly remark: “Come on, Wattie, you’re home again.” The kindly officer took this feared denizen of Glasgow’s post-war gangland to the laundry, where almost immediately among the workers there he met another familiar face. This was a con called Willie Bennett aka “the Wee Red Devil.” This was the lawbreakers’ humour at is best – the moniker did not refer to Manchester United or Third Lanark or indeed any red-shirted football team. It was a tag with a more sinister side. The red referred to was blood and was a wry acknowledgement of the amount Willie had spilled on the streets of Govan on the banks of the Clyde. This meeting with Bennett was a bonus for Walter, who was given that permanent goal of the gangster – respect – by Willie. Handshakes and small talk over, Norval collected clean sheets and a pillow and was given an assurance that his laundry would get first-class attention and his prison uniform, his towels and his bed linen would be looked after in a fitting style for gangland royalty.
No one in any nick lives quite the life of a captured gangster as shown in that enjoyable movie
The Italian Job
(the 1969 version, not the remake), where Noel Coward memorably lounged around in a velvet dressing gown and comfy slippers as fellow cons jumped to his command and made sure any little luxuries went his way. Mind you, Norval came as close to it as anyone in Peterhead and fellow jailbirds would make his sandwiches and boil the water for his tea, maybe even add the sugar and stir it for him, and run little errands round the jail at his behest. Inside he was a man sometimes to be feared and always to be given a full measure of that so desired “respect.”
The extent of this was demonstrated to me in his later years as he sat in a comfy armchair in his Possilpark flat, surrounded by memorabilia of his beloved Celtic Football Club, and told me in detail about the early hours of this second stay in Peterhead. From the laundry he was escorted to his cell on the third landing of “A” hall. Around him the cells were filled with old mates from the Polmont Borstal days (another reminder that that hard place where teenagers were held in punishing circumstances was mostly a failure in its task of setting these tenement tearaways on to a life led within the law). These by now veteran criminals held “up north” greeted his return to their fold with gifts. The presents he was handed were a selection of the little everyday items that smoothed out the long days and nights in jail. No Christmas Day-style leather gloves, aftershave, silk shirts in these tributes, but tea bags, sugar, sweets, biscuits, books and the like were very much welcomed.