SITTING nervously in a hospital cubical, David Berridge waited to hear how bad his latest batch of workplace-related injuries were.
It was the umpteenth time he had been taken to A&E as part of his job as a prison guard at HMP Parkhurst, on the Isle of Wight.
This latest incident had seen the prison officer stabbed with a broken pool cue by violent lags, including one who bled on to him.
Recounting the traumatic moment, he told The Sun: “During the course of my duties I have been taken to hospital after breaking up a fight.
"The weapons were pool cues, the broken cue piercing my skin so had to be tested for various nasties."
David spent 28 years working at one of the UK’s most dangerous institutions – home to gangster Reggie Kray, notorious prisoner Charles Bronson, Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, cannibal Robert Maudsley, and Nazi-obsessed Patrick MacKay who was nicknamed the Devil's Disciple.
Cell 'covered in blood like a Jackson Pollock painting'
He witnessed prison riots, including when they lost a wing, and inmates' attempt to use a pool table as a battering ram, and numerous fires after joining the service in 1992.
On his first shift, he was faced with the stuff of nightmares when an IRA sympathiser slit his arms, legs, and throat in a suicide bid.
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In his book, Inside Parkhurst: Stories of a Prison Officer, he wrote: “I slid the observation flap open and was greeted with what appeared to be a living Jackson Pollock painting.
“The walls, ceiling and floor were decorated with what seemed, at first glance to my inexperienced eyes to be red paint. It was only when I spotted the inmate slumped in the corner that I realised it was claret (blood red).
“I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I shut the flap, gathered my thoughts and tried to take it in, then opened the observation flap for a second look. B*****ks, b*****ky b*****ks. It was real, very f***ing real."
Drunken lout set fire to two floors
It was his first taste of the chaos to follow in the years he spent working at the Category B prison.
Later on, he would see an inmate cover their cell in paper, themselves in toilet paper and threaten to set it all on fire.
One arson incident was so serious it set two separate landings alight and endangered the lives of 84 inmates and the officers on duty.
David said: “It became a major incident that saw me and other guards crawling through thick acidic black smoke on all fours to try and find an armed prisoner who was drunk and high as a kite.
"He had f*** all to lose and didn't care what happened.”
The fire saw 17 prisoners treated for smoke inhalation and the inmate responsible handed an extra five years on their sentence.
Excrement attacks & 'real-life Hannibal Lecter'
On top of dealing with blazing flames, officers often had to deal with bags of urine and excrement being thrown at them – and frequent attacks.
David was witness to a terrifying attack in 2016 that saw a colleague’s throat cut with a razor blade by a furious prisoner.
He said: "It was horrific to see, as with so many of the other assaults I had witnessed."
Most of the prisoners saw doing time as a rite of passage and remained unbothered by the experience, but for the officers, each day was a new challenge.
He said: "A good prison officer has a chameleon-like ability to quickly switch from one role to another often in a very short space of time.
"You deal with everyone from the mentally ill to the illiterate to those who are well educated or just thuggish.
"Very often we saw the same faces reappearing time and time again. Most would joke 'I told you I'd be back' or 'don't suppose there's any chance of my old peter [cell]'.
Bronson was mad… but one lag left me terrified
David dealt with some of the UK's most high-profile inmates, including barking mad and unpredictable" Bronson, but there was one lag who stood out among the rest as terrifying.
'Real-life Hannibal Lecter' Robert Maudsley, a serial killer whose last three victims had been fellow inmates, was the person who sent chills down David's spine.
He earned his nickname for allegedly eating the brain of one of his victims but this was later proved to be false.
After the final two of his four murders, Maudsley allegedly walked towards prison officers, placed his make-shift knife on the table and informed them that the roll call would be two inmates short.
Since 1983 he has been deemed too dangerous to be in a normal cell and spent his entire time in solitary confinement with compressed cardboard furniture to limit the damage he could do to himself.
He spent a short period of time at Parkhurst Prison during the 1990s while undergoing psychiatric treatment when David came into contact with him.
David recalled: “He was so dangerous that whilst he was at Parkhurst he was only moved with a complete team in riot gear and dog handler.”
Inside Parkhurst: Stories of a Prison Officer is available here.
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