Compass Borstal Club – by TH

My father founded the first Borstal Club in Great Britain in Feltham Young Offenders after the War and got Margaret Rutherford, Dame Margaret Rutherford, to be the Patron and she was very fond of my father and in her autobiography,  she had my father as her adopted son as such so she was a great family member, she was at my mother and father’s wedding,  Because he started the Borstal Club up and on a Thursday and on a Sunday night he, on a voluntary basis, cos when he went to see the Governor  he said “can I start this club up?” and the Governor said “well, you can have an outhouse  and you can use that but I don’t give it two weeks” but it lasted about 30 odd years and it was for the best behaved boys and, yeh, it was, I used to meet up with the villains  and I thought they were nice characters actually.  It was called the Compass Club and they used to have billiard tables and darts, could play their records on the mono record player, shove half-penny, a little canteen for tea, coffee, you know sandwiches or whatever, rolls and it was, yeh, it was an interesting time because he was a great believer in, I suppose because he was a prisoner of war for such a long time, of rehabilitation and that locking people up isn’t the answer.