Pentridge - Behind the Bluestone Walls

Cheryl Osborne, Don Osborne

• Publisher: Echo
• eBook ISBN:
  9781760069605
• Year: 2015

When Don Osborne went to Pentridge in 1970, he found a nineteenth-century penal establishment in full working order. It held about 1200 inmates, most of them cooped up in tiny stone cells that sweltered in summer and froze in winter. Some had no sewerage or electric light.Assigned to teach in the high-security section of the prison, Don worked in the chapel, which doubled as a classroom during the week. There, he saw the terrible effects of the violence that permeated H Division, the prison's punishment section. He found himself acting as confidant and counsellor to some of the best-known criminals of the era, and to others who'd become notorious later, after H Division had worked its magic on them.This book offers an insider's reflections on how the prison emergd as it did, and is supplemented by a stunning pictorial section. It focuses especially on the rebellious 1970s, when the military 'disciplines' of H Division began to give way in the face of prisoner resistance and public criticism. Don writes of the people and events that shaped Petnridge's history and etched it into the memories of the city that was its reluctant host.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Pentridge: Behind the Bluestone Walls
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Development of Pentridge
• Chapter 2: From Remand to Prison
• Chapter 3: H Division
• Chapter 4: An Education Officer
• Chapter 5: Escapes
• Chapter 6: Executions
• Chapter 7: William John O’Meally
• Chapter 8: Andrew Gordon Kilpatrick
• Chapter 9: Robert Peter Tait
• Chapter 10: Daryl Francis Suckling
• Chapter 11: Leith McDonald Ratten
• Chapter 12: James Edward ‘Jockey’ Smith
• Chapter 13: Leigh Robinson
• Chapter 14: Derek Ernest Percy
• Chapter 15: Christopher Dale Flannery
• Chapter 16: Laurence Joseph Prendergast
• Chapter 17: Towards Closure
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Image Section
• About the Author
• Imprint
• Echo Publishing