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 Borstal Boy – Nightmare in Jamaica


        Borstal Boy
        Anon, 1960





    " BORSTAL BOY"
A Borstal boy came home one dayl

To find his love had gone astray
Though he knew the reason why 
she’d left him for another guy.

Late that night, just by chance,
he saw them  at the local dance.

She looked at him and softly said,
‘If you had lived an honest life,
I would have been your darling wife.

But still you choose your life of crime,
so Borstal boy — go do your time.’

The Borstal boy got rather drunk,
and with one punch, he floored the punk.

The coppers came across the floor —
the Borstal boy slipped out the door.

He ran along the railway track,
never once  looking back.

The train came fast, the whistle blew —
the cops stopped running. I guess they knew.

As he lay dying upon the ground,
from his lips came one last sound:

‘So dig my grave, and dig it deep,
and lay white lilies at my feet.
Above my head, place a turtle dove —
to show the world I died for love.’

So all good girls bear in mind if you ever find a Borstal Boy 

 Kind and true,  never change him for anew 

Soldiers salute.
Sailors — ahoy.
There’s now no life
for this Borstal boy.

A haunting reminder of the lost boys of Borstal where love, loyalty, and violence shaped the fate of many 

🥊 BORSTAL BOY – NIGHTMARE IN JAMAICA

By Tommy Kennedy IV – A Working-Class Voice | British Library Author

BORSTAL BOY AND JUVENILE DELINQUENT

The Teenage Years That Never Leave You (And Still Owe Me a Refund)

Some years never wash off. Some choices stain you for life, like trying to bleach denim in the seventies. This is one of those stories, pulled from truth, soaked in memory. It is the road that nearly broke me, the cells that tried to crush me, and the small flicker of pride that refused to die.

Look, life is a journey, full of ups and downs, mostly downs when you are fourteen in Nottinghamshire. But I kept on keeping on, did not I? Part of this story lives inside my book Nightmare in Jamaica, where I write about survival, consequence, and how you fight your way back. Good to be alive and telling the tale.

WHATTON DETENTION CENTRE: FIRST STEPS INTO THE MACHINE

Fourteen years old. Nottinghamshire. Whatton Detention Centre.

• Concrete corridors designed by someone who hated youth.
• The stink of bleach, sweat, and fear.
• The officers’ boots echoed like warnings. Proper doom music.

You did not speak unless they spoke to you. You did not look too long at anyone. One wrong glance could land you on the floor, and I learned quickly that my face worked better above my neck.

Three months inside. Out. Then straight back in. You learned quick: who would watch your back and who would sell you out for a smoke. That was survival. Eyes open, mouth shut. Every day was a test.

“You watched, you listened, and you learned fast, or you bled. You had to have a laugh about it later, mind.”

EVERTHORPE - FOR BORSTAL TRAINING : LESSONS IN BRUTALITY

By sixteen I had earned my place at Everthorpe Borstal in Yorkshire. After a few months in the Borstal Allocation Centre in Strangways prison in Manchester.  You could be there from 6 Months to two years or 6 to 2 as we used to call it in those days in Borstal. Reform, they called it. What it was, was war in uniform. You learned the rules through fists and fear. Mistakes cost you skin, and frankly, my skincare routine was already shot.

It was there I first picked up a trowel. A lump of metal and mud that became my lifeline. I laid bricks because it gave me something solid when everything else was chaos. Funny, is not it? The one thing that saved me was honest graft. That small thing, that rhythm of work, taught me control.

“A trowel became my weapon against madness. And a ticket to a decent trade, eventually.”

THE REMANDS: RISLEY, LOW NEWTON, WYMOTT, STRANGE WAYS

The system had no mercy. It was a grand tour of Britain’s roughest hotels.

• Risley.
• Low Newton.
• Wymott.
• Four runs through Strange Ways in Manchester.

Each one was its own hellhole.

Each one taught you a different language of fear. You learned to read people like road signs. A nod, a stare, a silence, all meant something. You got it wrong, and you paid.

My last stretch was Walton Prison in Liverpool. Cold walls, colder men. That was where I finally knew I had to get out, north to south, anywhere that was not another cage. The scars stayed, but the lesson stuck: no one was coming to save you. Only you could save you.

“Every glance had weight. Every step could end in blood. The only ups in that journey were the few quid I earned to pay for the bus ticket out.”

STOKE HEATH FOR MORE BORSTAL TRAINING: WAKE, WORK, OBEY

By ’78 I was at Stoke Heath Borstal in Shropshire. Same story, different uniforms.

• Wake up before dawn.
• Work till dark.
• Obey without question.

Talk back and you would meet the floor. You tried to find the humour in the absurdity of it all. The beatings were not official, but everyone knew. You learned to move fast, stay quiet, never trust too deep. That was the code.

“Wake, work, train, obey, or suffer. I chose the work, mostly. Needed the sleep.”

THE STREETS OF THE NORTH

The North in the seventies was hard. No mercy, no safety net. If you slipped, the streets swallowed you. Factories were shutting. Men were angry. Money was tight.

For working-class lads like me, one bad choice could lock your fate. I kept on keeping on, trying to dodge the doom.

I saw friends vanish into drink, crime, madness. Some did not make it out. That is the brutal truth. I knew then I did not want that story for my son. I was not going to let him live my mistakes.

MY SON AND THE STRAIGHT PATH

I pushed him into boxing, into sport, into discipline, not because I wanted him tough, but because I wanted him free.

Every punch he threw, every drop of sweat, was a brick in the wall between him and the streets that nearly killed me.

I wanted him to know control, not fear. To stand proud without breaking the law to do it.

“I took the beatings so he would not have to. I am not a martyr, just a dad with a hard-earned lesson.”

SURVIVAL, PRIDE, AND A VOICE

The bruises fade. The lessons do not.

You come out meaner, smarter, quieter, but alive. And that is the miracle, is not it? Good to be alive.

Survival is not luck. It is craft. You build it out of pain, out of patience, out of the will not to die another number in a cell. Life is a journey, and you just have to keep walking, even when the path is muck.

Those years gave me my voice. Rough, honest, working-class, but mine.

And I will keep using it to show that even from the gutter, you can rise. You can change the story.

“Resilience is born in silence, in the nights no one sees. Though sometimes, a good swear word helps, too.”

BORSTAL-TRAINING AFTER THE ‘SHORT, SHARP SHOCK’ IN THE DETENTION CENTRES!  

They said it would straighten boys out. Fifteen to twenty-one, that was the Borstal age. Fourteen to seventeen went through Detention Centres.

• The slogan: short, sharp shock.
• The truth: grown-man punishment for boys still learning to shave.

The system did not care who you would be. It only cared about breaking who you were. But I am still here. Still writing. Still standing. I kept on keeping on, and I won. And I will keep telling these stories until someone listens, because they matter.

A story of scars, survival, and second chances. From Whatton to Walton, fourteen to seventeen, raw, brutal, unforgettable. Part of Nightmare in Jamaica by Tommy Kennedy IV.

 juvenile delinquent, Whatton Detention Centre, Everthorpe Borstal, Stoke Heath Borstal, Walton Prison Liverpool, UK youth prisons 1970s, Risley Remand Centre, Low Newton Prison, Wymott Prison, Strange Ways Manchester, working-class life, survival memoir, parenting lessons

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