Terry Morris’
Photo Album
Wormwood Scrubs transport:
A 1926 3 litre Bentley Registration NX 5589. Still on the road in 2006
and on a Bentley website! This car was a monster and certainly stood
out among the other vehicles in the prison car park.
Maidstone transport:
A 1951 Type TD MG. This is a photo of another car but is in every respect identical to
my own beauty, UMG 406, that I once drove around the course at Le Mans. Not, I
hasten to add during the Le Mans 24 Hours. I found it just before starting the
Maidstone work and parked it inside the prison. Where are you now, I wonder? You
were perfection! Neither Mannheim nor Merton travelled in this car, but in an earlier,
extremely rare green Type TB, registered EWM 25 in 1940 of similar appearance and
performance. Sadly, neither car appears to remain on the MG register. Perhaps in
some loving home in California . .
Panopticon cell houses of the Illinois State
Penitentiary, Stateville. 1959.
These ‘round houses’ are enormous structures, much bigger than any built
in Europe. I think a small Panopticon survives somewhere in the
Netherlands. Inside, I recall, they had all the charm of an industrial
warehouse. There were giant TV screens in the prison yards.
Chicago gang July 1959.
I met these lads through a youth worker on the South Side. When told I
had come from London England, none of them knew where London
was. Note the cheeky one in the front row wearing white socks (or
should that be white sox?) putting out his tongue. I just hope none of
them ever saw the inside of Stateville or the Cook County Jail. But given
their ethnicity, I wonder.
Inner city Chicago. 1959.
Note how similar is this scene of urban dereliction to one of the
pictures taken five years earlier in Croydon. The Croydon picture shows
the handiwork of the Luftwaffe, but I don’t recall Japanese bombers
getting further east than Pearl Harbor.
Chicago backstreet. July 1959.
Not the greatest picture since I got the focus wrong, but you can get
the general idea. Not the greatest advertisement for the Windy City
Garbage Department.
Fourth of July in the Indiana State Penitentiary.
This picture was not taken by me but by the Warden who gave me the
slide. I thought Indiana had the edge over Illinois from a penological
viewpoint
Al and Naty Cohen with their new tent.
This had arrived only an hour or so before, mail order from Sears
Roebuck in Chicago. We put it up in the back garden straight away.
Al spent his entire war in the Pacific and met Naty in the Phillipines.
Al and Naty Cohen with their ancient Pontiac.
Although the body was in reasonable order, this thing was a mechanical
heap. Al did not believe in fixing cars, he just sold them and found
another. It was certainly cheaper that way, as I discovered in California
some years later where I coaxed a decrepit Studebaker into periodic life.
Al Cohen with his cat and his dog.
Al and Naty had no children, but loved their animals. People after my
own heart. Al was always great company and introduced me to the
music of Huddy Leadbetter.
Pauline Morris and Barbara Biely. LSE. June
1960.
Pauline died in 1979. Barbara, still a dear friend, has done
important research on ageing, is the matriarch of a great family in
California, and remains as bright a star as ever.
Barbara Biely and Terence Morris. LSE June
1960.
Around this time the School rented accommodation in the Strand
opposite St Clement Danes. This was one of two rooms on the top
floor of a building that was home to a tailor, a tobacconist and a
men’s barber. Heated by gas fires it was primitive, but comfy. It
was literally a minute or two away from Louis’ chambers, which
was very convenient. And NO, that’s not my handbag . .
The Weather Deck of HMP Weare.
Weare was the accommodation barge from the Gulf of Mexico that first served
as a prison hulk in New York subsequently bought by HM government to be
moored alongside in Portland Harbour. Frances Crook, Secretary of the Howard
League, together with the Chairman, Andrew Rutherford and I, visited the day
before the first prisoners arrived. This deck was the exercise area and given the
eastern side of Portland is fully exposed from NE to SE it would have been
difficult even to stand up on it in any thing fiercer than Beaufort Force 6.
The Croydon Photographs
These are six pictures selected from a number taken by me of
the areas where juvenile offenders were to be found. Here
we are looking for the most part at a forgotten Croydon
ignored by the more affluent parts of this then County
Borough. Taken on my ancient Kodak bellows camera in 120
format they are printed on glass slides
The Croydon photographs.
The Croydon photographs.
The Croydon photographs.
The Croydon photographs.
The Croydon photographs.
The Croydon photographs.
AND A FINAL SHOT FROM 1954
This is the 1954 Mark 1 Ford Consul, OXP 679, in which I was privileged to convey
Margaret Mead from rural Sussex to London. Being a Ford, it of course broke
down and the relaxed comment from the Grande Dame of Pacific anthropology
was:“ In this country the gremlins work with IBM cards”. A stone had struck the
radiator drain tap, thereby emptying the cooling system, and the engine boiled. A
nearby cottage kindly supplied hot water to get us on the road again. Though a
bigger car, the mechanical pedigree of the Mark 1 Consul had features in
common with the Ford Prefect 100E (with the not dissimilar registration, OXF 12)
pictured on the cover of Fine Lines and Distinctions.In retrospect, having driven
both models I wonder if they were just early Skodas in disguise?