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Graham Mumby-Croft


Graham Mumby-Croft
 Issue No. 92 Spring 2025
Being Duty Governor

Graham Mumby-Croft


I have followed the series of articles written by Peter Atkinson about some of the more notorious prison escapes over the years, with interest and fascination. Thank you to Peter for a well- researched, well-written and very interesting contribution. In reading Peter’s piece, I did however find myself reminiscing about the escapes that I personally had some involvement with, not always actually being present at the event, but certainly serving at an establishment when an escape has taken place, and being involved in all the work that such an event causes for staff at almost every level. As I thought about this it occurred to me that the most memorable of these events coincided with my being Duty Governor, so I thought I would write some of them down, and through the pages of The Newsletter share some of the “interesting things” that happened to me whilst in the role of Duty Governor.

There are two escapes that immediately spring to mind and both occurred at HMP Stocken, where I served from 1991 to 1997, during which time as a Governor 4 I worked one weekend in three, and for that weekend I was the Duty Governor from lunchtime on Friday through to handover at the Governor’s morning meeting on the following Monday morning. As you will appreciate, as a busy Cat C establishment the weekends at Stocken could be very active, as for long periods over the weekend the entire establishment would be unlocked, and this included on Sunday mornings when after breakfast the whole establishment was unlocked and allowed out onto the sports field for open association. 

It so happened that on my last weekend as Duty Governor before being posted out of Stocken my Sunday peace was shattered by an urgent message over the radio stating that an escape was in progress on or from the sports field. Fearing that I could be facing a potential mass escape, and the potential career impact that could have, I ran from one end of the prison to the other to arrive at a scene of organised chaos, as the sports field was cleared of prisoners who were being returned to their cells for a full roll check. The Orderly Officer, a very experienced and capable PO, had taken charge of the situation and the Control Room had already alerted the local police of the situation. 

Some months prior to this escape Stocken had, along with most other Cat C establishments, had its perimeter security upgraded with the addition of steel plates fitted to the bottom of the mesh fence panels. This measure had been implemented nationally following a series of escapes or attempted escapes that had been instigated by cutting the wire, sometimes from inside, and sometimes from outside. The upgrade was supposed to prevent this from happening. At Stocken the perimeter fence was huge, as I recall somewhere in the region of 2.5km in total, and this included the extensive sports field at the rear end of the site. The whole site was sloping from front to back and if you were standing at the top end of the sports field, nearest to the wings, the bottom of the field was some way below you, so that only the top meter of the 5m fence was visible.

As I walked down the site on that Sunday and came close to the point of the escape, it became clear what had happened and subsequent investigation revealed the details. Overnight on the Saturday/early on Sunday, a group of men had driven up a track on the farm that bordered the prison estate. 

They had then removed a gate from the field boundary and lodged this against the prison fence, giving them access to the mesh area above the steel sheeting. They had then cut a large flap in the mesh, but left it in place, and then waited. In the morning, before the field was opened up to allow prisoners to access the area, a patrol was detailed to carry out a fence inspection. Sadly the person who carried this inspection out on that day failed to notice that the fence had been cut, and because of the steel sheeting, could not see that outside the fence was a group of men and vehicles, waiting.

Once the all-clear had been given from the Fence Patrol the prison was unlocked and staff lined the route to direct the prisoners to the sports field. Amongst the first onto the field were 3 men who had only been transferred to Stocken two weeks before, as part of an overcrowding draft from HMP Bedford. As soon as these three got onto the field they made their way very quickly to the bottom corner of the site, which was out of sight of staff, who were perhaps not so quick to take up their positions as they might have been. On arriving at the point where the fence had been cut, the prisoners signalled to those on the outside, who immediately placed the gate back up against the fence, fixed hooks and rope to the top of the flap they had cut, and pulled the flap open bending it down to the outside. The prisoners then legged each other up into the gap, and they were out, into the waiting vehicles, and gone. The whole escape took 2/3 minutes: my part as Duty Governor would take up much of the next 14 hours.

This, of course, included the dreaded call to the Governor, who at the time was Ron Curtis, to tell him that we now had three fewer prisoners than we had started the day with. It also included liaising with the entire Rutland Constabulary, both of whom attended the scene, later bolstered by backup bought in from Leicestershire, led by an Inspector. The day culminated later that evening, in fact considerably later in the evening, when I took a phone call from the Duty Officer at HQ, to inform me that a cameraman from ITV would be coming to the prison to take pictures and details from the prisoners' records to put out on local news bulletins. When he arrived the prison was already in Night State so he had to film the mugshots and details as I held them up against the glass screen in the gate lodge.  

The second call that I received was from a member of the public who had picked up on the news that there had been an escape from Stocken, naming those involved and asking me if it was true. Not really knowing who I was dealing with, in my best diplomatic way I said that all I could confirm was that the news reports were correct and that indeed three men had escaped earlier that day. The caller then threw me the curve ball that at that point added the final element to what had already been an horrendous day, when he said, “You do know that it was me that grassed them up and put them inside, and they have escaped to come and kill me?” He then spoke to someone else in the room and said,” I’m on the phone to the prison, it is them, what are we going to do?” She then went hysterical, and he hung up the phone. Because the call had come in via the control room there was no way of tracing the call and so I contacted the police and spoke to the Duty Inspector and in the great tradition of buck-passing, once I had passed this on to him, it them became his problem, and not mine. I was ready for my bed.

On the subject of buck-passing, on one occasion I had a Police Superintendent do exactly the same thing to me, and as he did it he made no bones about the fact that this was exactly what he was doing. Nottinghamshire police called the prison and asked to speak to the Duty Governor and the switchboard put them through to me. The caller then introduced himself as Superintendent So-and-So of Nottinghamshire Police Vice Squad. He then asked me if I knew a certain person who he then described, and named, and I confirmed to him that I did indeed know that person. He then asked how I knew the person in question.

I told him that he was the Prison’s Chaplain. “Why do you ask?” I said, to which he replied, “we picked this gentleman up on a raid in Nottingham’s Red Light District last night and we are holding him whist we check out his details, and he did indeed tell us that he was a prison chaplain”. I then asked, “What are you going to do with him?” to which he replied, “Nothing. We will give him a talking-to and release him. What you chose to do is up to you, as he is your problem now”. 
My response of, “Cheers mate, thanks for that” was answered with a chuckle.
Yet another awkward telephone conversation with the Governor. “Governor I have just been on the phone with Nottinghamshire Police, you’ll never guess what the Chaplain’s been up to now? It seems he has opened up a side line in saving fallen women, but only for himself.” This also backfired on me later, because the Chaplain believed that I must have put a good word in for him with the Superintendent, that resulted in him being released without charge. In his subsequent disciplinary hearing he named me as a character witness and it took a long interview with the Chaplain General for me to explain that the Chaplain really was not my friend, and I had no intension of acting as his ”friend”.

The second escape at Stocken that sticks in my mind was one that took place overnight, for which fortunately I was not the Duty Governor, however it is a really good story. 

Stocken was originally built as a YOI in the early 1980s from a design first laid down in the 1960s. On completion it was opened as a Male Cat C. In the original cell blocks the windows were what were known as Crittall Windows, an all-steel window set in a concrete frame. The window was a number of glazed full-height panels each about 100mm wide and the two outside panes were opening casements.

In about 1994/5 a prisoner decided that he could escape from his cell through the window and set about collecting all that he needed to achieve this. He devised a plan that involved using a wet towel and a piece of wood as a windless to pull the window bars apart far enough for him to squeeze through. To aid his passage through the opening he planned to save up his butter ration, strip naked and literally butter himself up and slip easily through the gap. He also planned to manufacture himself some “hand hooks” in the workshop where he worked, that would allow him to scale the perimeter fence. Once he had everything he needed he decided on the night and set himself up ready to go. He was just about ready to start when he heard staff movement in the corridor outside his cell, so jumped into his bed just as an eye appeared at the spyhole looking in on him. 

Once this had passed he began his plan, but as with all plans it started to go wrong quite soon: however, he was a resourceful type and he managed to overcome each obstacle. He started by working on the window and with his home-made windless managed to pry the bars apart. Once he had opened the gap he thought he would try it out, so stripped off, buttered himself up and found that he slipped through the bars easily, in fact too easily as he had not expected to get through on the first try, and had not taken his clothes that he had tied in a bundle, and were still on the floor of his cell. So he found himself very cold and naked standing outside what up to then had been a nice warm cell. He was therefore forced to knock on the window of the cell next door and borrow a towel to un-butter himself and a set of clothes. Once he had these he managed to reach into his cell and recover the hooks he had made for climbing the fence.

I never cease to be amazed at the risks some people will take to achieve something, and in this case to avoid the two rolls of Dannett wire on the top of the inside of the fence he climbed a set of internal gates and then, in the style of a tightrope walker, made his way along the top of the internal section of fence, over the triangular joint with the main fence, thereby circumventing the Dannett wire, and lowered himself down the outside, and away. He was recaptured some weeks later and returned to Stocken and the story of his escape is pretty much as he told it to the Deputy Governor who undertook the investigation. The final irony was that the eye that had looked in on him through the spyhole only moments before he escaped actually belonged to the Number One Governor who just happened to be carrying out a night visit, and perfectly randomly chose that cell to check on the occupant. So in the investigation it clearly stated that the last person to see this prisoner before he escaped was The Governor.
During my time at Stocken we prided ourselves on being the first to introduce some of the things that are now commonplace in prisons, one of which was in-cell TVs. Just before I arrived as Head of Works a new wing had been built, and, as part of the construction, provision had been made for a power supply and TV signal feed to each cell. It was decided locally that we would seek authority to take this a stage further and wire the cells up to provide enough power for a portable colour TV and a centrally-distributed TV signal. Once we had received the go-ahead it was also decided that the TVs would form part of an enhanced regime and that prisoners would be charged both for the TV, and the electricity, and that this would all be part of a national pilot. 

Once the system was installed and up and running, there was a great deal of interest from Headquarters and other establishments into how it worked, and what were the benefits and drawbacks. This interest went right to the very top of the Service as the DG at the time was Derek Lewis, who you may remember was the first DG appointed from outside the Service, and who before his appointment was a Director of a TV company. As I have already indicated, as the Duty Governor my duty began on Friday lunchtime and ended at the Monday morning Governor’s meeting. Over the lunchtime I would make use of the gym facilities, usually playing a game of Paddle Tennis, and on a particular Saturday at just past 1pm, I had returned to my office in the Works Department, which was outside the main prison perimeter, and had just showered, when my phone rang. It was Joyce, one of the OSGs who worked the gate, “Mr Mumby-Croft” she said, ,“I have Derek Lewis, the Director General asking for you”. “What, on the phone?” I said. “No, he is standing here in the Gate Lodge” was her response. I then told her to stop taking the piss as I was not in the mood for jokes and she assured me that Derek Lewis was indeed standing in the gate lodge and wished to visit the establishment.

After I had very hurriedly dressed, but before I set out for the gate, I phoned the Governor who at the time was Dennis Hall. Unfortunately, I caught him just as he was leaving the house to play a round of golf, so his instructions to me were, “Show him anything he wants to see, and tell me all about it on Monday,” On my own then. When I met the DG and his bag man, and the introductions were over, he explained to me that he had been passing on the A1 and had decided on the spur of the moment to stop off to see our TV system for himself. So off we went to F Wing where the system was in operation. 

One of the things that we noticed very early on was that when the prison was unlocked for association, whereas on the other wings there would be lots of prisoners milling about and in and out of each other’s cells, on F Wing where every cell had a TV, prisoners tended to keep to their own cells, and even at busy times in the rest of the prison, F wing would be quiet. 

And so it was when I arrived on the wing with the DG, although the gate had pre-warned the staff we were coming. The wing SO then showed us round and explained how the system worked from an operational point of view, and I explained some of the technical details of how we had installed it. In particular the DG was interested in the use of in-cell TV as part of an enhanced regime, and as an incentive for good behaviour. So it was explained to him that in order to be able to have a TV prisoners had to be considered as enhanced. This meant that they had to be in work and prepared to pay for both the TV and electricity costs. If anyone was disciplined, or lost their job, then they would lose their TV. So much for the principle.

The DG then wanted to go into a cell and speak with the prisoner, who, as we walked in was sprawled on his bed, watching his TV. The DG told him not to get up, but from where I was it was clear that he never had any intention of doing so anyway. The DG then asked him some questions about the TV system and how it worked for prisoners, and if he liked it, to which he received good positive responses with the prisoner backing up what had already been said about how it was a privilege and if you broke the rules then you would lose your TV. 

Before departing the DG looked around the cell and commented that it was a very nice cell with everything neat and in its place and saying to the prisoner that he kept it very clean and tidy. It was at this point that I wished the earth would open up and swallow me, as the prisoner's response without batting an eyelid, was that it wasn’t his cell, it was his mates who worked in the kitchen. He was in here because he had been charged with a disciplinary offence and his punishment was for his TV to be taken away from him, and so he was watching his mate's set instead. 

It was at times such as this that I was acutely aware that being Duty Governor was great, apart from two things, the prisoners and the staff.

My final story involved a hostage situation that began on a Sunday morning, and of course I was the Duty Governor. It began at about 9:30 when the phone in my office rang, and it was the Orderly Officer who said to me that he believed that we may have a hostage situation, prisoner on prisoner. I asked him why this was only a “possible hostage situation” and he told me that he only had a very sketchy report from a prisoner that he had seen another prisoner being dragged into a cell and that he was trying to get this checked out without creating too much fuss. In the time it took me to get from my office, outside in the Works Department to the Centre, the possible had become the definite, and the whole contingency plan for a hostage situation kicked in.

Leaving the Orderly Officer to start getting the area around the cell cleared of prisoners, and to get a hostage negotiator into place to try to begin a dialogue, I went to the admin. building to begin the work of making the calls that needed to be made, and to set up the Command Suite. Of course one of my first calls was to the Governor, but I could get no answer. I then contacted the Control Room and asked them to call the Governor’s home number every 5 minutes until they got hold of him. In the meantime, as it was a Sunday morning with not much else going on in rural Rutland, the police were on site very quickly, and I was just briefing the Inspector who had arrived to take charge when the Fire Service arrived, and I started again to brief their Senior Officer, when the Ambulance Service arrived, and I started my briefing again. In between this I kept checking with the Control Room if they had managed to contact the Governor, and the answer was ‘no.’ Just after I had briefed the emergency services, and whilst I was on the phone to Gold Command in HQ, the Governor walked into the Command Suite. Having briefed him on the situation, and as by this time more staff were arriving for the Command Suite, he sent me down to the wing to act as the Bronze Commander on the scene.

The situation actually turned out to be a very nasty one, as indeed a prisoner had taken another prisoner hostage, and it soon became clear that he was treating him very badly. The whole situation lasted for 4 days and was ended with a full scale intervention when it was believed that the hostage was very close to death. As you can imagine with a situation such as this the prison was very soon overrun with all sorts of support teams drafted in by Gold Command to provide assistance in a situation that soon developed into a stand-off. Some of the support included technical people who were tasked with providing sound and, if possible, vision into the cell to provide as much information as possible. With this in mind it was decided that some equipment needed to be installed that would require holes to be drilled, but the question was, how to do this without being heard? 

Those of you who know Stocken will appreciate that it is located very close to the A! And that in the 1990s it was very close to two RAF bases. Just across the A1 was RAF Cottesmore, the home to the conversion squadron for all NATO nations that flew Tornado aircraft. Also, a few miles up the A1 was RAF Wittering, the main UK base for Harrier Jump-Jets. As part of their training the Tornado pilots would start with slow speed circuits and bumps where they would take off and remain at low altitude, and low speed to make circuits that were based on Stocken Prison. This meant that during the week there was always aircraft noise over the prison as the Tornadoes went round and round on their circuits. With this in mind, someone had the bright idea of contacting the Ministry of Defence and asking if their aircraft could provide noise cover over the prison for a period to allow the delicate work of the technicians to take place. It was also suggested that the best aircraft would actually be a Harrier from Wittering, as they could almost hover over the prison, and maintain the noise cover nearly continuously.

It seems that, as with the best-laid plans, the communications was not as good as they might have been as the call went out to RAF Cottesmore to provide this covering noise. It also seems (as we found out many months later), the Commanding Officer at RAF Cottesmore had only recently taken up post, and in doing so it marked the end of his flying days. However, when he received the call from the Ministry of Defence he saw it as his last chance of a spin in a Tornado, so rather than delegate the task, he donned his flight kit, and took off, almost in a “Scramble”. The Command Post at the prison had been informed that an aircraft had been dispatched, but they were not in any way prepared for what happened next.

A single Tornado was spotted approaching the prison from the west at high speed and he passed over the establishment at what was estimated to be just under the speed of sound, and on full afterburners. The sound hit the prison about 2 seconds after the aircraft, and had the immediate effect of setting off the alarms of every car on the car park that had one. I was on the first floor of the admin. block when this happened, and you could feel the shockwave inside the building. 

You may recall that earlier I had explained that the site at Stocken sloped away quite markedly? In fact this slope continued outside the perimeter, dropping down into a shallow valley. Having passed over the prison, the high speed Tornado executed a steep climb, turned 180 degrees and dropped down into this valley, and out of sight, before popping up and over the fence to once more pass over the prison on full power. This continued for a full ten minutes as we were treated to a display of flying that you would not get anywhere else, even at an air show, as I understand the pilot was given full authority to ignore all rules regarding minimum heights, and maximum speeds. 

Unfortunately this created two problems. The first was that because the pilot kept coming over on high speed passes, although it was indeed loud, it only lasted for a few seconds, so the technicians had to time their work to coincide with his passes, and they were never sure when his next pass would come. They would later comment that his intervention had been more of a hindrance than a help. The other problem was one that lasted for several months, dealing with all the complaints and claims for compensation from the neighbourhood about the noise, and the claims from farmers for livestock that had been scared witless by the noise. It seems that any complaints to the RAF were redirected to HMP Prison Service. As I said, the situation was brought to a close via a full intervention and, whilst seriously injured, the hostage did survive, although it really was touch and go at times. But everyone always remembered that Tornado. 

As you will appreciate, after an incident such as this there is always a de-brief, and a few weeks later we had a large session that involved representatives of all the different elements involved, although not the RAF. I was invited to this de-brief as I had been the Duty Governor at the start, and as the Head of Works myself, and my Department had also been heavily involved. It was at this de-brief that I got my big shock. You may recall that at the beginning I was trying desperately to contact the Governor to let him know what was happening, and that I failed to do so. When he did appear I thought no more about it, and it was only at the de-brief, as we went round the room and each gave a brief account of the part we had played, that the Governor revealed that he was actually in the prison when the whole thing started. He had come in early to attend the church service and it was only when he was leaving that he was informed that there was anything wrong.

Later in my service I did get to govern a prison, although only on a temporary basis for some 5 months. However, during this time I did have to deal with a Death in Custody, a Concerted Indiscipline that involved calling out Tornado Teams, and the suspension of a member of staff for an assault on a prisoner. But perhaps they are stories for another time.

I am sure that many of you will have some equally or even better stories to tell about your time as Duty Governor and I am also sure that your colleagues in the RPGA would love to read about them. So having read this from me, if you feel you could do better, either in content or style, then let us have your stories and we will ensure that they get published and shared.

Editor’s Note: I fully endorse Graham’s comments in his final paragraph. Being Duty Governor could become a regular feature in The Newsletter if we get the contributions.


















HMP Stocken aerial view showing the vast perimeter described by Graham