by Alice Sharpe
A tall, pale-faced woman, with soft, brown, shoulder-length hair stood in the dock, her name: Anna Dobson. Perhaps one should refer to her as a young woman, for her age was twenty-eight. One could sense the tension in her yet, all the same, there was a look of defiance in her attractive features. She was smartly dressed in a tunic blouse and a figure-moulding trouser suit. The outfit showed her generous but well-proportioned figure to advantage and the colour - a powder blue - seemed to emphasise her femininity.
Before Anna Dobson were the three magistrates who had been conducting her trial; they had just returned to the court after a brief consultation in an adjacent private room. The moment of their verdict was at hand. The young woman's hands suddenly gripped the brass dock-rail tightly, and she swayed slightly. In her heart, she already knew that verdict. The trial, without jury, had been a mere charade, a formality which had to be gone through, for those accused of her 'crime' were invariably convicted. Even so, being human, Anna Dobson held on to thin strands of hope until the last. One never quite knew. Perhaps her appearance, her manner, might soften them.
The chief magistrate was a man in his sixties: balding, greying, his rounded features gave a first impression of joviality which was quickly denied by the coldness of his pale blue eyes. He was flanked by two women magistrates of similar age, both lean, hatchet-faced creatures, with angular, bony bodies. All three gazed at the young woman in the dock, coldly and dispassionately. If the chief magistrate saw her sway in the dock, he did not comment on it, nor did he suggest she be offered a seat by one of the two female guards who stood with her in the dock.
"Anna Dobson," said the chief magistrate, after a prolonged pause, "you have been accused and put on trial here for a serious offence." Another pause. "Taking part in an unlawful demonstration is a serious offence. You do realise that?"
The blonde head bowed fractionally, the light brown eyes wavered.
"Yes ... Your Honour," Anna Dobson answered in a low, well-modulated voice.
"Speak up, girl," ordered the chief magistrate sharply. Frankly, he admitted to himself (and only to himself, of course) that he had enjoyed this morning. He liked trying that sort of case, especially when the prisoner was as attractive of face and figure as Anna Dobson was. She had the looks and shape which made her a menace to society - and to herself.
"Yes, Your Honour," repeated Anna Dobson in a louder voice. Her head came up again and her jaw had a rather more defiant jut to it.
A spell in one of the special Reform Schools will do this arrogant trollop a power of good, thought one of the women magistrates. Just look at her standing there, flaunting herself, still shameless. She, who had admitted two charges of unlawful assembly. She wondered whether the six-month sentence they had decided was sufficient. Still, the schools were rigorous, no denying that. Very rigorous, she thought with satisfaction. Anna Dobson would not be looking so defiant in a few weeks time!
"On the evidence I and my colleagues have heard, and, indeed, on your own admission, there is no shadow of doubt as to your guilt," the chief magistrate was saying.
Anna bit her lower lip. It was a full, pale pink lip, slightly pouting. Yes, it had been inevitable all along, now it was simply a question of how long they gave her. She must be brave to the end, not let her generation down, nor the few, secret, like-minded friends she had.
At her sides, the two female guards glanced at her from time to time. Their eyes were filled with hate and malice. Both of them loathed pretty, sexy, young women. However, there was in those eyes, also a certain steely satisfaction. They were well aware what was coming to Anna Dobson.
"My colleagues and I have considered your case carefully," continued the chief magistrate, "and have come to the conclusion you are in serious need of reform - for your own good, as much as anything else, young lady. After all, you are still only twenty-eight. Have you anything to say before I pass sentence?"
Anna gripped the brass rail before her, white-knuckled. "No, Sir," she said softly. Her heart was thumping and she felt rather sick. It was difficult indeed to keep a brave face on things.
"Anna Dobson," said the chief magistrate in a sepulchral voice, "it is obvious that your case is a serious one and it is my duty to see you are thoroughly reformed. Accordingly, you will serve a term of twelve months."
Anna closed her eyes, shuddered, and swayed again. What a monstrous sentence for so trivial an offence!
"What is more," the chief magistrate was saying, "you will serve your sentence at a Senior Reform School."
There was a pause and one of the guards at Anna's side gave a small, satisfied nod.
"Do you understand what that means?" came the question.
Anna shook her head. "N-no, no Sir," she answered weakly. And, indeed, she did not understand. Only in the vaguest way. She had heard rumours.
"A Senior Reform School is reserved for female offenders such as yourself. The regime and discipline is strict," said the chief magistrate. "You, with your rebellious arrogance - not to mention your political activities - will benefit from such a place! Take her down!"
Anna, tightly gripped by the arms, was marched along the corridor beneath the court towards her cell.
One whole year of imprisonment lay ahead!
Of course, she had heard about the Reform Schools. Who hadn't? They had them for both young men and women. There were plenty of stories about them, but she had always reckoned quite a lot of them were propaganda put about by the authorities in order to scare people. All the same, there could be no doubt they were strict places. Places where one was reformed.
Everything in Anna Dobson's make-up rebelled against that idea. Why could she not be who she really was, and not something the state wanted her to be? It was both heartless and immoral. For her, though, it now seemed things were going to be worse than for the average. A Senior Reform School. Fearfully, Lisa wondered exactly what that meant, at the same time trying to steel herself for the awful future which lay ahead.
Still, it won't be forever, she told herself.
The cell was unlocked and she was thrust inside. One of the guards stood over her as Anna fell on to her bunk. "Now you're really for it," she announced, jeeringly. "You're just the type that needs reforming."
The two guards turned and left the cell, slamming the door and then locking it behind them. Anna Dobson slumped down and buried her face in her hands, the tears begging to flow.
Blackfriars Grange, situated in the bleak flatness of Westmorland, was one of half a dozen such Reform Schools in the United Kingdom. Two hundred years previously it had been the country seat of a Victorian recluse and it retained much of the bulky, ugly grimness of that period. There was a central section with a pilloried portico and two long wings, East and West. Once those windows had been curtained, or maybe shuttered; now they were barred ... which scarcely added to the appearance of the gaunt, granite building.
Set in something like forty acres, part pastoral, part wooded, the estate had originally been encircled with tall iron railings. Iron, and labour had been cheap in those days. The railings remained, but had been reinforced by two other barriers. These were of heavy, coiled barbed wire, twelve feet in height. One barrier was within the railings, the other without it. Thus, to all intent and purposes, Blackfriars Grange was escape proof, having but one entrance and exit to the place. This was the main gate, guarded night and day by a security guard.
If proof were needed of the excellence of the security system in the Grange it need only be said that no-one had ever succeeded in escaping from the place. Mind you, there were other deterrents. Anyone even attempting to escape was made to wish they had not.
Anna Dobson saw none of this as she entered. She was locked in one of the small cells of a windowless prison van - one of three new prisoners beginning sentence. The van came to a halt in a courtyard, the doors were unlocked and prison guards came to take over. Unceremoniously, the three young women were bustled through a grille gate ... and into the main prison block.
Amelia Frayn, the Governor of Blackfriars Grange, was a woman in her early fifties. Unmarried, she had always been a career woman... the prison service coming to her as perfectly natural. She was made for the job, and had known since her twenties when she had begun as a humble junior guard in a female Reform School, that this was the right career because she enjoyed the work so much. She had never made any bones about that, saying that if people did not enjoy acting the disciplinarian, they shouldn't take up a prison job.
To punish came naturally to her. She admitted to enjoying that, too, whether she was ordering punishment or administering it personally. Again, she would state that if one had any qualms or conscience about correcting an errant prisoner, one shouldn't be doing the job. The 'girls', as she referred to the female inmates, were there to be reformed, and it was the duty of the prison officials to reform them.
Her attitude, her attention to detail and, above all, her reforming zeal, had brought Amelia Frayn swift promotion. First as Chief Warden then, whilst still in her thirties, her success there had brought her the post of Governor of a Senior Reform School at the age of 48. It was a position that satisfied her completely and even if she had been offered promotion to a higher post she would not have accepted it.
She had found what she wanted to do in life, and she did it wholeheartedly.
Appropriately enough, Amelia Frayn was a keen student of the Victorian era. She was a great admirer of the people of that time and their way of life, and, of course, their disciplinary methods and prison system. She even went so far as to behave like a Victorian woman in her manners and her dress. Invariably she was garbed in a severely simple long gown of grey or black - or, just occasionally, purple. This form of dress, it need hardly be said, added to the severity of her appearance, which was already hard enough. She had what can only be described as a bleak face ... reminiscent of something Dickensian. There was a paleness about her skin which belied the toughness and iron will beneath. Her facial bone structure was angular, her forehead high... and she wore her hair in Victorian matronly style, with it pulled back tight over the skull and fastened in a 'bun' at the back. Surprisingly for her age, that hair was still jet black, though there were some who said, behind her back, that she dyed it.
Yes... a formidable woman by any standards, and made all the more formidable by the position of authority she held and the power she wielded. The inmates, understandably, were in terror of her, but her staff also treated her with the greatest respect. They knew she would always back them up to the hilt, and also that she had the ear of the Ministry. One did not cross Amelia Frayn, one toadied to her. That was the way to further promotion.
Now, as Anna Dobson and her two companions were entering the prison, Amelia Frayn sat at her massive, ornately carved desk in her office.
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