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In the High Court yesterday Mr. William Sykes, currently of HM Prison, Wormwood Scrubbs, was awarded £10,000 damages with costs in a test case brought against Mr. Furnival Thomas of 83 Elterwater Drive, Elstree, for trauma induced by the conviction of Mr. Sykes (his twentieth) for burgling Mr. Thomas’s premises on the night of 10 June, 2001. Giving judgement in what was described as a landmark decision, Mr. Justice Harrison said that there was an alarming increase in the incidence of psychiatric illness among prisoners convicted of crimes against property, and he was glad that a recent change in the law, clearly placing the onus on owners to prevent such crime, allowed him to recompense one such victim, although of course money could never atone for the mental distress already suffered.

Mr. Sykes had rightly pointed out that Mr. Thomas’s owning the property in question, a video recorder, was an irresistible temptation to one of Mr. Sykes’s temperament, and the claim that Mr. Thomas was not personally acquainted with him, still less had given any information to arouse Mr. Sykes’s interest, was irrelevant since Mr. Sykes had noted the recorder during a previous burglary but been too heavily loaded to remove it at that time. In any case Mr. Thomas must have been aware of the attractiveness of such devices since they had been among the items taken on two of the six previous occasions when he had been burgled since taking up residence in Elterwater Drive in 1998.

Commenting after the hearing, Martin Jones, Mr. Sykes’s solicitor, hailed the judgement as a welcome moral victory, but regretted that it would not materially benefit his client since the defendant was extremely unlikely to pay. It was however gratifying that Mr. Thomas had been committed to prison for contempt of court following an outburst in which he described the judgement as justice turned on its head. Moreover, there was an excellent prospect that Mr. Sykes’s conviction would be quashed on appeal, since under an EU directive Mr. Thomas’s surreptitiously marking the item to identify ownership could be construed as constituting entrapment.

Donald Atkins, representing Mr. Thomas, confirmed that the damages and costs could not be paid, since Mr. Thomas’s business had been destroyed by vandalism and he had been personally bankrupted by damages awarded to another intruder who had injured himself on being startled by the sound of Mr. Thomas’s (now illegal) burglar alarm. Moreover an arson attack on his home had left him with demolition charges of £20,000 - the property was of course uninsurable - and in the circumstances he would be substantially better off in prison than anywhere else.

Peter D. Wilson
December 2002

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What the hell am I doing here?

It was bad enough being sent off with only the haziest of instructions, that some crisis was looming and it was up to me to deal with it as and when it appeared. Then I had to be completely inconspicuous, so I was lodged in a dismal sort of hostel for itinerants of all kinds and races with people constantly coming and going, or hanging around for no obvious reason. Not only that, I had to avoid, as far as possible, any kind of communication with the other inmates. Have you ever tried pretending not to understand your own language, or to be stone deaf when people address you? It isn’t easy. Even when you’re prepared it’s difficult enough; when someone catches you off guard, it’s almost impossible to register no reaction at all.

There was one chap the other day, absolutely determined to tell me his life story - goodness knows why, I haven’t all that sympathetic a face - and wouldn’t let go of my arm, so the only way to avoid a scene was to stay put. He didn’t seem to notice that I wasn’t listening with more than half an ear, he just had to get it off his chest, starting with his childhood in the USA. His father had died of lung cancer, and for reasons that never became clear it seemed important that the old man had smoked Camels. I once had smoked venison for dinner, and wasn’t particularly struck on it, and the idea of a smoked camel fillet is positively revolting. At that point I managed to make a break and went off towards my room with what I hoped was an air of purposeful determination. The effect was rather spoiled when half way up the stairs I found that the treads had been taken off the upper flight for some repair work, so I had to go back and use another set. Fortunately the pest was looking for another victim as I went by.

One comfort in the situation is the promise that a female colleague is to join me in a few days, I don’t know who. In fact I don’t know many of the women in the department. Obviously it won’t be anyone like the man-eaters in the James Bond films: that sort would attract far too much attention. It’s just as well as I’m not at all sure I could cope with one of those, but I can hope that it will be someone personable and friendly if not actually affectionate. Knowing my luck, though, she’ll probably be more like the woman with the poisoned flick-knives in her toe-caps. But there’s no harm in dreaming.

That staircase, now - why on earth should anyone want to take the treads off? I’ve never known it to be done anywhere else. For some reason I’m reminded of dreams about my old school. They always seem to feature the staircases of a wing where one of them was attached on the side of the building, enclosed but apparently an afterthought, possibly in case of fire blocking access to the other end of the corridor. The one at the hostel was nothing like that, but it’s set me wondering. With all the vagueness about what’s going on, just who was it that decided I had to come here?

There’s supposed to be a theory that Man is but a dream in the mind of God. I’ve no problem with that idea. But I do object to being a dream in the mind of a mere fantasist.

Peter D. Wilson
Seascale, January 2003
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