Autobiography

CHAPTER SEVEN
C7. DARTMOOR PRISON
My father wasn’t really an evil person and he
didn’t do really evil things. He was just a spiv,
a petty criminal.
I suppose one of the reasons I didn’t like him
was the way he treated my Mum. A vivid
childhood recollection is of him putting some
jam on a slice of bread and pushing it into her
face.
I believe that was the worst incident and I
certainly never saw him strike her, but over
the years I grew to dislike him more and more.
As a kid I didn’t want to disapprove of my dad,
and I fought it, but gradually I discovered I
disliked everything he stood for. He was ‘sent
down’ several times, the longest sentence
coming when he was used as the getaway
driver of a lorry for a gang that was stealing a
cargo of copper from a barge on the River
Thames at Greenwich.
It was valued at over £70,000; equal at the
time to winning the football pools. He was
found guilty and sentenced to four years in
Dartmoor for his crime. I was casually listening
to the news on the radio one day when I found
out what my father Godfrey had done and why
he had been sent away. I heard that he was
the driver for a gang who pulled a barge off the
Thames, up a creek, and stripped it of its cargo
of copper bars.
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