Malicious Damage - Islington Council

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The life and crimes of Joe Orton
and Kenneth Halliwell in Islington
In 1962 aspiring writer Joe Orton
and his partner and mentor Kenneth
Halliwell were each sentenced
to six months imprisonment for
‘malicious damage’ to Islington
Public Library books.
They were found guilty of theft and defacing library
book covers by adding alternative images from
other sources or inserting new text and narrative.
In the process Orton and Halliwell produced
‘guerrilla artwork’, motivated by what they believed
to be the “endless shelves of rubbish” that they
found in public libraries.
The ‘collage’ work in Islington had begun after Orton
and Halliwell moved to the area in 1959. The couple
also removed illustrations from library art books to
’wallpaper’ their bedsit flat at 25 Noel Road.
Imprisonment proved difficult for Kenneth Halliwell
and he tried to commit suicide while inside. Joe
Orton’s incarceration, however, proved inspirational
and he embarked upon what was to be a successful
but all too brief writing career, cut short by his
murder at the hand of his jealous partner in 1967.
Library wallpaper: An example of ‘interior design’ discovered at Orton
and Halliwell’s Islington flat after the police raid in April 1962.
The now infamous doctored book covers form the
‘Joe Orton Collection’ held at Islington Local History
Centre. Fortunate to survive after the court case,
these collage works are among the most viewed
items at the Centre.
‘Malicious Damage’ tells the story surrounding the
life and crimes of Orton and Halliwell in Islington.
Accompanied by the surviving doctored covers,
the exhibition reflects upon the couple’s creative
and mischievous talents while resident in this north
London borough.
Guerrilla art: An Islington library
book cover ‘maliciously damaged’ by
Orton and Halliwell, 1959-62.
Life after prison: Joe Orton
in Islington, 1964.
A break from Islington:
Kenneth Halliwell in
Morocco, 1965.

Opening act:
John Kingsley
Orton
John ‘Joe’ Kingsley Orton’s short,
yet incandescent life began in
Leicester on New Year’s Day, 1933.
He was the eldest son of a council
gardener and a machinist eager
for him to escape a sedentary life.
Joe’s vision of escape from the
drudgery of working class, postwar
Leicester was very different to
his parents’ - he wanted to act.
It was through amateur dramatics
that he found a way out. Aged
18, Orton was accepted for a
scholarship at the prestigious
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
(RADA) in London. It was here in
May 1951 that the young drama
student first met his long-term
partner Kenneth Halliwell.
Kenneth Leith
Halliwell
Born in Birkenhead on 23 June
1926, Kenneth Halliwell had a
troubled childhood. His mother,
with whom he was very close,
choked to death when he was
11 years old and his father later
committed suicide when Kenneth
was aged 23.
Halliwell’s upbringing was, however,
aspirational compared to Orton’s.
He was born into money, welleducated
and destined to become
a writer. Halliwell moved to London
to study drama at RADA, having
received a small family inheritance.
A month after meeting at
RADA, the two students were
living together in Halliwell’s
West Hampstead flat at 161
West End Lane. This was to
be the beginning of an intense
relationship lasting 16 years.
Master and pupil
The learned Halliwell saw his new
but inexperienced partner as his
young apprentice. With Halliwell
as mentor, Orton went through
a metamorphosis, absorbing
a wealth of art and culture
previously denied him.
Following graduation from RADA,
the two newly-trained actors
experienced a brief flirtation with
regional repertory theatre but soon
returned to London to devote their
energies to becoming successful
writers. It was during this time
that the couple started writing
together, supplemented by casual
work. In 1959 Halliwell was to
purchase a tiny flat in Islington.
Amateur dramatics: Joe Orton
(fourth from left) in the Vaughan Players’
production of Agamemnon, 1950.
RADA awaits:
Joe Orton aged 16 years in 1949.
Mentor: Kenneth Halliwell in 1967 –
erstwhile master to Joe Orton’s pupil.

Act two:
Noel Road
From 1959 until 1967, the second floor bedsit flat
measuring just 16ft x 12ft at 25 Noel Road was Orton’s
and Halliwell’s residence and centre of operations. The
bed-sitter afforded Orton and Halliwell security when
writing together. When not at home, the two men spent
much of their day using their local public library service but
not for the usual reasons!
Cover story
Public libraries should have played a major role in Orton’s
re-education but enraged by library bookshelves weighed
down by what he and Halliwell considered to be “so
many rubbishy novels and rubbishy books” and the lack
of “good taste,” they embarked upon an unusual and
creative form of protest.
They began by systematically stealing library books
from their local public libraries: Essex Road (now South)
Library and the larger Central Library on Holloway Road.
At home the pair ‘doctored’ the library book covers with
alternative images from other sources to create collages,
or by adding new text and narrative to the jackets’ blurb.
In the process Orton and Halliwell were to create a form
of ‘guerrilla artwork’. They also removed illustrations
from library art books to ’wallpaper’ their flat.
Joe and Ken’s former‘playhouse’: Central
Library, Holloway Road, 2011.
Doctored: A library book
cover defaced by Orton
and Halliwell, 1959-62.
Library theatrics
Home: 25 Noel Road,
Islington, 2011.
Anonymously returning the altered covers and their
books to the libraries, Orton and Halliwell would often
loiter behind library shelves to observe the reaction of
readers when they selected a title with a defaced jacket.
John Lahr, Orton’s biographer, commented that the
pair “turned the library into a little theatre, where they
watched people reacting to their productions.”
Joe Orton later recalled:
”I used to stand in the corners after I’d
smuggled the doctored books back into
the library and then watch people read
them. It was very funny, very interesting.”
A home from home: Essex Road
(now South) Library, 2011.
Cover notes:
Dorothy L. Sayers’
Clouds of witness jacket
blurb ‘amended’ by Orton
and Halliwell, 1959-62.

Act three:
M
Suspicion
Orton and Halliwell’s work did not go unnoticed by
library staff. The finger of suspicion started pointing
at “…two men who shared the same address and who
always visited the library together.” A cunning plan
to bring about an end to their lengthy and nefarious
campaign was devised early in 1962.
Sidney Porrett
Islington Council’s Principal Law Clerk, Sidney Porrett,
masterminded the plan to ensnare the two prime
suspects stealing and defacing Islington’s library books,
namely Orton and Halliwell:
Arrest
The culmination of an 18-month investigation into the
persistent theft and alteration of public library property
came to an end on the morning of 28 April 1962 when
two policemen knocked upon the couple’s door.
Upon answering, and hearing the reason for the
warrant, Halliwell simply said, “Oh dear.” Once inside the
flat the police found walls covered from floor to ceiling
in pictures removed from library books.
Orton and Halliwell were duly arrested and the following
month appeared before local magistrates. The judiciary
were to denounce the pair’s acts as “sheer malice and
destruction from which the public must be protected.”
“I had to catch these two monkeys. I
thought OK, I’ll let my ethics slip a little
bit. I wanted to get them aggravated.
They were a couple of darlings, make
no mistake.”
Porrett’s idea was to try and obtain a sample of print
from the typewriter used to produce the false jacket
blurbs. A bogus letter dated 15 February 1962 was
sent to Halliwell at Flat 4, 25 Noel Road requesting that
he remove an abandoned car supposedly owned by him
-no such vehicle existed.
Halliwell’s indignant response was his and Orton’s
undoing. The police forensic lab confirmed that his
typed reply and the false jacket blurbs were produced
by the same machine and a search warrant was issued.
Interior design: An example of ‘library wallpaper’ discovered
at Orton and Halliwell’s Islington flat after the police raid
in April 1962.
Nemesis: Sidney Porrett,
1982. Islington Council’s
Principal Law Clerk and Orton
and Halliwell’s adversary.
Back home: Joe Orton relaxing at home
in 1964, two years after his arrest,
with collage-style wallpaper still
the preferred decoration!

Act four:
B
e ca s e e w
e
uee
Guilty
On Tuesday 15 May 1962, John Kingsley Orton
and Kenneth Leith Halliwell appeared at Old Street
Magistrates’ Court. They were charged with stealing
72 library books and damaging several others, which
included the removal of 1,653 plates from art books,
the property of Islington Borough Council and Library
Service.
Release
Upon completing their sentences, the pair returned to
Noel Road. The balance of power between them had
shifted and Orton was now writing independently.
Halliwell had turned, ironically, to a new art form -
collage. He hoped that it would bring him fame but this
proved not to be the case. For Joe Orton, however,
success was soon to follow.
Both pleaded guilty to a total of seven charges of
theft and unlawful, malicious and wilful damage, and
each sentenced to six-month imprisonment with
fines. Damages and costs of £262 17s 6d were
subsequently awarded to Islington Borough Council in
the civil court. Joe was to comment, “I know what I did
was wrong but I’m just unrepentant.” And, when later
asked why he thought they had been given such harsh
sentences, Orton replied, “Because we were queers.”
Homosexuality was never mentioned during the trial.
Prison life
The pair went first to HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs in
London, after which, Orton served his sentence at HMP
Eastchurch on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, and Halliwell at
HMP Ford in West Sussex.
This was the first time in a while they had been apart but
Joe found incarceration inspirational, as it brought focus
to his writing:
A lovely book: Collins guide to roses or ‘Gorilla in the
roses’, as renamed in a Daily Mirror article published
after the court hearing. Maliciously damaged by Orton
and Halliwell sometime between 1959 and 1962, the
prosecuting counsel at Old Street commented it ‘was’
“a quite lovely book.”
“Being in the nick brought detachment
to my writing, I wasn’t involved
anymore and it worked…I had a
wonderful time and wouldn’t have
missed it for the world.”
While Orton found prison to be a positive experience,
the same could not be said for Halliwell, who found the
ordeal so humiliating that he tried to take his own life.
Guilty: Old Street Magistrates
Court, 2011.
Frustrated authors:
Islington Gazette, 18 May 1962.

Act five:
Entertaining Mr Sloane
Success for Orton came a little while after leaving
prison. His radio play, The Ruffian on the stair, was
commissioned by the BBC in 1963 and broadcast the
following year; Orton was paid £65 for his script.
From May 1964 Orton’s award winning play
Entertaining Mr Sloane enjoyed a popular run in
London’s West End. The playwright Terence Rattigan
wrote to Orton in praise of the work:
“I don’t think you’ve written a
masterpiece… but I do think you’ve
written the most exciting and
stimulating first play that I’ve seen in
30 odd years of play going.”
The Beatles
Orton began writing Up Against It, a screenplay for The
Beatles, in 1967. It was, however, rejected by the pop
group’s management. This may have been due to the
storyline involving adulterous cross-dressing murderers
- characters not compatible with the public image of
the Fab Four!
Working-class hero
Despite the success of his plays and his growing
celebrity, Orton stayed remarkably grounded. He never
owned a television or a car and a telephone was a
late addition to the furniture. By the mid-1960s even
Islington was becoming too middle-class for Orton. A
determination to stay true to his working-class roots
added to the playwright’s appeal.
Within a year Sloane was being performed worldwide,
as well as being made into a film and a television play.
Loot
In 1965 responses to the first production of Orton’s
next play, Loot, were poor. Nevertheless, the dark farce
was revived the following year and went on to receive
the Evening Standard Award for Best Play; the film rights
later sold for £25,000.
Working-class hero: Joe Orton at
home during the mid-1960s.
Taking a break: Orton and
Halliwell in Morocco, 1967.
A play for radio:
The Ruffian on the stair, as
advertised in the Radio
Times, and broadcast on 31
August 1964. It was first
commissioned by the BBC
in 1963.
Success: Orton poses in front of a poster
for his play Loot, at the Jeanette Cochrane
Theatre, 1966.

Final curtain:
The price of fame
By 1967, aged 34 years, Joe Orton had established himself
as a significant writer with a promising future. His success
however put a terrible strain on his relationship with Halliwell,
who was becoming increasingly jealous of his partner. He felt
marginalised as Orton’s career took off and his own artistic
efforts floundered. Halliwell also suffered from a sense of
inadequacy due to Orton’s sexual promiscuity with other men.
On 9 August 1967, unable to carry on and not wanting his
partner to continue without him, Kenneth bludgeoned Joe to
death with several hammer blows to the head. He then took his
own life with an overdose of barbiturate pills. The couple were
discovered the next morning by a chauffeur calling to collect
Orton from their Noel Road flat.
In memory: Commemorative plaque to Joe Orton
at 25 Noel Road.
Aftermath
In a final twist to the tragic event, it was discovered that
Halliwell had died first and, although unconscious, Orton had
taken several hours to die. Kenneth Halliwell’s funeral was
held on 17 August in Enfield and Joe Orton’s the day after at
Golders Green Crematorium, where playwright Harold Pinter
read the eulogy, concluding with, “He was a bloody marvellous
writer.” It was later arranged for their ashes to be combined
and buried together.
Legacy
Joe Orton’s public life lasted barely four years but his impact
as an innovative playwright of international standing remains
to this day. Regrettably the same cannot be said of Kenneth
Halliwell, whose life was unfulfilled.
A tragic loss: Joe Orton - playwright,
‘collage’ artist and icon, 1966.
Joe’s unique literary work is his legacy but, in typical
Ortonesque fashion, the ‘guerrilla artwork’ that he and his
partner-in-crime created when resident in Noel Road is key
to that legacy. The surviving doctored library book covers go
far beyond being simply historical items that were subjected
to malicious damage. They are the catalysts that inadvertently
activated an extraordinary playwright’s career and lasting
reminders of the life and crimes of Joe Orton and Kenneth
Halliwell in Islington.
Islington Heritage Services, 2011
Scene of the crime:
25 Noel Road,
9 August 1967.
Final curtain:
Daily Mirror, 10 August 1967

Acknowledgements:
Islington Heritage Services wish to thank
the following for their support and use of
images and material for this exhibition
Mrs Leonie Orton Barnett /
The Joe Orton Estate
Islington Local History Centre
Leicester University Special Collections
A & C Black Publishers Ltd
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Islington Gazette
Joe Orton Online
John Haynes / Lebrecht Music & Arts
Lewis Morley Archive /
National Portrait Gallery, London
Orion Books
Paul Burton
Random House Group Limited
The National Archives