FOR more than three decades Barnsley-born Veronica Bird worked in some of the country’s toughest prisons, coming face to face with notorious inmates like Myra Hindley and Charles Bronson - Katia Harston reports.

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VERONICA Bird was one of nine children living in a tiny house in Barnsley with a brutal coal miner for a father. Life was a despairing time for her in the 1950s as she sought desperately to keep away from her father’s cruelty.

Astonishingly, to her and her mother, she won a scholarship to Ackworth Boarding School where she began to shine above her classmates.

Veronica had at last found some happiness. That is until her brother-in-law came into her life.

She said it was like stepping from the frying pan into the fire. He took over control of her life removing her from the school she adored, two terms before she was due to take her GCEs, so he could put her to work as a cheap option on his market stall.

Abused for many years by these two men, Veronica eventually ran away and applied to the prison service, believing it to be the only safe place she could trust.

“I grew up on Doncaster Road on the outskirts of town, close to the school,” said Veronica, 75, who has decided to tell her story in a new book - Veronica’s Bird, which is out now.

“Life was tough for everyone in the post-war 50s.

“Food was still on rations and clothes were not available. It wasn’t just our family, lots of families were struggling at that time.”

Veronica, who now lives in Harrogate, said the prison service gave her a new life and she went on to spend 35 years working within the walls of Britain’s prisons and jails, rising up through the ranks.

“It gave me a very good job and career and provided me with accommodation which was free and that was the turning point in my life because I was able - being single - to work overtime and earn good money,” she said.

“I started as a prison officer and worked my way up to being a prison governor.”

During her time on the inside, she worked in some of the country’s toughest prisons - Holloway, Brixton and Armley.

It was at Holloway where Veronica came face to face with the notorious Moors murderer Myra Hindley, who killed five children with Ian Brady.

“Holloway was pretty scary,” said Veronica, who retired in 2003 from a career that involved prisoner escapes, riots and hostage-taking.

“There were only nine prisons in the country for women and it was pretty horrendous. Holloway had mice and cockroaches and it was an old Victorian prison.

“There were lots of notorious prisoners in Holloway.”

She’s referring to the likes of Carole Richardson who was accused of the Guildford pub bombings, a conviction later quashed; Mary Bell who as a child strangled two toddlers, and Carol Hanson who was incarcerated for the murder of a ten-year-old girl.

Then there was Charles Bronson - the most dangerous man in the prison system - who Veronica had to visit daily at Armley because of his reputation.

“Part of my duty as governor in charge of the prison was I had to visit him each day and he was always very calm and very polite,” she said.

“He never raised his voice. Everyone was really worried and never let me near his cell door and I had two staff with me at all times because he had taken hostages before. He never did anything.”

It’s hard to imagine slender Veronica, who is 5ft 5ins tall, making daily visits to the man once hailed Britain’s most dangerous inmate.

“The first thing people said to me was ‘you’re not tough enough to be a prison governor, you’re not big enough and don’t look like a prison governor’. They expect you to be big and butch and because I have been described as elegant and eloquent it is not the image they had.”

Her delicate frame didn’t stop Veronica from having a succesful career spanning more than three decades and she was compelled to write the book about her experiences to give hope to others who feel there is no way of getting out of their own difficult life situations.

“I want to give people to hope and let them see there are ways of turning your life around without turning to crime. If it helps put people on the right track and give them hope, that’s what I want to do.

“The book isn’t about making money out of criminals because any money, if the book sells, will go back to charities to help other people.”