Hugh Collins, a convicted killer from Glasgow, has spoken about the violence that defined his life, both in the city's gangland and inside Scotland's prisons. Collins was handed a life sentence at the age of 26 for the murder of gangland rival Willie Mooney.
During his time in prison, he says he was a monster who was out of control, determined to kill prison officers after suffering a beating at their hands. In the first few weeks of his sentence, he managed to stab three guards, one in the neck, cementing his unofficial title as Scotland's most dangerous prisoner. At the time, he admitted he revelled in it, as it separated him from the rest of the jail population and made him feel special, according to the Daily Record.
Gangland youth in Glasgow
Collins said: "It was a brutal world I fell into. All the razor gangs were forming, marking out territory, going out stealing and fighting." He grew up in the Roystonhill area of Glasgow, formerly known as Garngad, and by the age of 15, he was a key member of the Shamrock gang. His life revolved around fighting rival gangs, especially their main enemy, the black-clad Calton Tongs.
He said: "The whole scene was macho and violent, but certain people stood out because they never backed down. The Tongs never ran from a fight – and neither did we." A meat cleaver that opened up Collins' face from ear to neck in one fight, requiring 97 stitches, underlines the margins that determined whether people lived or died. If the blow had been an inch lower, it would have gone through his jugular.
Prison violence and beatings
Collins served time in many of Scotland's jails and was locked in cells, cages, and underground rooms that were effectively dungeons. He always tried to fight back and admitted he would have killed a prison officer if the opportunity and right weapon presented itself. His weapons were all makeshift, cobbled together from tape, string, razor blades and the odd potato-peeler stolen from the kitchens.
He said: "I think people might have difficulty believing how bad it was but I remember beatings where I was hit with truncheons so hard I woke with splinters in my head. I had my nose broken, ribs broken, my skull fractured." He was taken to hospital with the fractured skull, and medics wanted to know how it had happened, but officers were always present and he was still conditioned not to grass.
Enduring trauma
One thing stays with him that he describes as "torture": being whacked repeatedly on the soles of his feet. He said: "You knew when you were in for a doing because they always made you take your shoes off at the door so it was harder for you to hurt them. I was often handcuffed face down, sometimes stripped naked and I remember a time they were threatening to humiliate me with a baton, so I was relieved they used it to knock me out."
He added: "But the worst thing, which still causes me agony today, was being whacked repeatedly on the soles of my feet. They left me crippled for days at a time. Looking back, I know I was a monster. I felt like a monster. But how much of it was in me and how much they created is probably up for debate."
