The prison Christmas dinner UK’s worst killers get inside Britain’s jails

A former UK prison governor has revealed what Christmas dinner is like for the country’s inmates.

Vanessa Frake worked with Moors Murderer Myra Hindley, who, along with her lover Ian Brady, was responsible for the killing of five children – Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans – in and around Manchester between 1962 and 1965.

The former prison boss also crossed paths with Rose West. She murdered 10 young women, including her eight-year-old step daughter, in the 1970s and 80s.

Inmates, Vanessa, who retired in 2013 and was awarded an MBE for her service, told The Mirror, are served a traditional Christmas dinner.

Ms Frake said: “When I was at Holloway the staff used to serve the food to give the prisoners who usually do it a rest.”

She added: “There’s Christmas dinner, with all sorts of diets catered for. The usual that you’d have outside. It used to be about £1.30 per prisoner per Christmas dinner.”

But alcohol is strictly prohibited, of course. Prisoners have worked a way around this, though.

There is a spike in the production of hooch, an alcoholic drink made with ingredients that can be sourced in prison, during the festive period.

Vanessa said: “Before Christmas you always do a search of the wings to find any hidden hooch brewing.

“At [Wormwood] Scrubs we had the first ‘Hooch Pooch’, which was trained to sniff it out.

“It’s dead easy to make – they can buy fruit from the canteen, they get bread at mealtimes which has the yeast in it.

“You add some fruit, some bread, some sugar, some water and you leave it in a bottle by a radiator. You leave it to ferment.

“It can make you go blind, it can kill you, it’s 100 % alcohol.”

As far as church goes, Vanessa said, services run just like they do on the outside, with no visits from friends or family.

In her day, staff who worked in that area were used on the wings to help prisoners get out of their cells for a bit longer. With TVs in every cell, prisoners can choose to watch The King’s Speech or perhaps a Christmas Day soap special.

Vanessa said: “The days of Porridge where you have one TV, put a film on and everybody sits down and watches it have gone.

“But TVs are a privilege not a right.”