Getting screwed at the school for crime

The parallels between the brutalisation processes of Tamworth as a child and Grafton as an adult were inescapable for me. Men like Finch, McCafferty, Munday, Schneidas and Smith had experienced both. Their lives and crimes were significant components of my excursion through the NSW prison system during the 1970s. They also became warning beacons of how institutionalised brutalisation can turn a man into a pressurised time-bomb waiting to explode on an unsuspecting public once they were released from prison.

I finished writing Intractable during 2006 and submitted the manuscript to my publishers. It was around the same time Keith Higgins contacted me.

Keith still has a vivid recollection of Tamworth boy’s reformatory. He was sent there in 1961 and 45 years later he is still gripped by nightmares and uncontrollable bouts of depression as a result of that childhood experience.

“It was a brutally cruel place. The screws were sadistic animals and attacked without warning. We were bashed and starved for no reason whatsoever.” Keith told me. “I remember one time I was forced to stand with my nose touching the wall for some minor infringement of the rules. My arms were outstretched in a crucifix. After an hour or so my arms got tired and began slipping down. The screws got stuck into me. They bashed me every time my arms slipped. They eventually knocked me out and dumped me in a cell.

“They used to take our meals and halve them as punishment. Sometimes we didn’t get a meal at all for 48 hours. Bouncing they called it, or being unprivileged. We were always hungry.” Keith paused reflectively.

Tamworth Jail opened its doors for business on March 10, 1881. It was used to house convicts sentenced to imprisonment in northern NSW. In 1883 the cat-o’-nine-tails was installed and was first used in March 1886. At different intervals Tamworth Jail also hosted the hanging of five convicts; Michael Connolly, Dan King, John Cummings, Alick Lee and George Taffts. On March 25, 1943 the Australian army took over the jail and used it as a military prison.

On June 6, 1947 the then NSW Premier proclaimed the jail to be an institution for “the reception, detention, maintenance, discipline, education and training of children and young persons committed to such institution” and that such institution be named “The Institution for Boys Tamworth”.

During April 1948 the first inmates were transferred from the Mount Penang Training School for Boys at Gosford. Thus began one of the most secretive and shameful episodes in the history of juvenile incarceration in Australia.

Keith Higgins began the institutional trek to Tamworth when he was made a Ward of the State and placed in the Mittagong Boys Home as an eight-year-old. He ran away shortly afterwards and authorities reported: “He is a new admission and absconded because he was homesick and wanted to see his mother.” On another occasion Keith ran away because he was accused of stealing lollies from another child and was scared of being punished. The death of Keith’s mother increased the frequency of his absconding.

A 1957 psychological report described the little boy’s emotional turmoil at that time: “Keith is a quiet, rather serious little boy, who lacks the normal spontaneity and light heartedness of the normal boy of his age. He still shows, even three years after her death, quite a strong attachment to, and dependence on, his mother. He has few really constructive influences in his life at present and therefore has some difficulty in adjusting to the world after so long in sheltered institutional life.”

Repeated escapes from Mittagong earned Keith a two-year sentence and transfer to Mount Penang Training School for Boys at Gosford. It was there he learned his father had died. On March 8, 1961 he ran away again. It was this escape that earned Keith a transfer to the Tamworth Institution for Boys.

“When my mum died I felt lost and alone. I grieved for a long time but when my dad died the remainder of my world just crumbled to dust.” Keith said. “The Child Welfare Department showed no compassion whatsoever. They just said: ‘Get over it. They’re dead. You have to move on’. So I did. I ran away. Running away seemed the only thing to do.”