Paul Sykes – A Life of Chaos – Part 2

Wakefield & The Rise of its Most Notorious Thug

Wakefield

Wakefield, the West Yorkshire city where our story begins, and subsequently, where it will also end. I myself am a former inhabitant of Wakefield. I was born there in 1994 at Pinderfields Hospital, the same hospital where Paul Sykes died. I grew up in a small village called Ryhill, (considered a metropolitan borough of Wakefield, although it’s actually quite far out from the city) and lived there for over half of my life. I was educated in Wakefield, I met all my friends in Wakefield, and together we got up to all the mischief that most teenagers do, right there, roaming the city’s streets.  

Wakefield is a small city with a tight knit community consisting of mainly working-class people. It is famous for its cathedral and cobbled streets which date back to hundreds of years ago. It was a mining town back when Paul Sykes was a lad; and the Lupset estate he grew up on was, and still is, full of hard cases, some of whom dabble in bits of crime.  

The Wakefield I know now is a far cry from the Wakefield of Paul Sykes’ heyday. It has deteriorated since its glory days of the seventies and eighties, when it was booming, and people would travel from all around the country to party on the famous Westgate Run – a long road filled with pubs and clubs on either side. But still, it’s my city. I had the best times of my life there, and even though I don’t live there anymore, Wakefield will always hold a special place in my heart. 

When I was younger, out most days getting up to mischief, Paul Sykes had already passed away several years before, so I never got to meet the man, but I’m sure if he had been alive, we would’ve somehow crossed paths.  

Street drinking was something I loved to do back then and so I’m sure me and my mates would’ve run into him, especially if he’d continued to be homeless. But then again, I ask myself, would we have wanted to? After all of my research, I don’t think we would. 

A Hard Labour

Paul was born on 23^rd May 1946 to parents Walter and Betty Sykes at the now defunct Manygates Hospital. Manygates was Wakefield’s local maternity hospital for over six decades, in fact, my dad was also born there in 1963. Betty suffered an extremely hard labour with her first child Paul. She endured five days of torture trying to give birth to their son.  

Maybe this was an omen for what was to come, because he would go on to cause pain for his family throughout his chequered life. Eventually, the doctors grew so worried for her safety that they used ether to put her to sleep. Then, finally, whilst she was knocked out, Paul was brought kicking and screaming into the world but withheld from his mother’s embrace. She was so weakened by the labour and anaesthetic she couldn’t hold him for two whole days.  

Betty would reflect on this later in life and wonder if it had played a factor towards the man he became. It was a recurrent theme for Betty to theorise why her son had turned into such a monster. Her main source of blame was targeted at her husband though, because Walter Sykes had his own penchant for violence.  

Walter & Betty Sykes

Walter was a strict disciplinarian who had learnt to be regimented through ten years’ service in the army. Following this decade-long service, he became a prison officer at HMP Wandsworth where he would maintain his authoritarian persona.  

Rumours were spread that he had been a screw at HMP Wakefield too, but, according to my research, he never worked at the local prison after all. Not much is known about his work history after that, although, years later, he had developed an affinity for horse racing, and would go door-to-door to sell various items, making just enough money to place bets at the bookies. 

Betty had a more consistent employment record than her husband. All her life she worked as a market trader in Wakefield and would test her abilities at just about anything else – at one point working as a dinner lady at her children’s school. This tenacity to earn meant she always had money in her pocket, and she seemed to be the main bread winner for the latter half of their marriage. 

Betty was a pretty woman in her prime, and, due to her good looks, she wasn’t without male attention. This made Walter jealous, and he was known to attack other men for only looking at his wife.  

This was who he was, a man unafraid to use his fists. And he had no qualms about hitting her too, for reasons as petty as bringing him cold toast. He would lay his hands on anybody who he felt needed putting into line. He was a nasty man with an explosive temper, and when he and Betty took their new-born son back to their first home on the Lupset estate, 36 Dacre Avenue, Paul would eventually become a victim of his father’s fury. 

Childhood Abuse

Yes, Paul became the victim of many cruel beatings by his father. In the army, Walter had been on the boxing team, and would use his punching abilities to full effect on the boy. He wouldn’t soften his blows either. Walter didn’t differentiate between child and man. Instead, he would box him like an opponent in the ring.  

Left hooks, right hooks, uppercuts, and jabs, Paul would have taken it all, all those beatings being his first experiences of the sport. One particular punishment his father enjoyed was to whip Paul’s naked body with a belt whilst he cowered in the bath. And not with the leather strap no, it was the buckle Walter favoured.  

But let’s be forthright, Paul’s upbringing was one not uncommon for children back then, albeit he suffered at the hands of a particularly sadistic father and was further alienated by an emotionally detached mother, but often children decades ago were subjected to parental beatings.  

It was a different time wherein physical discipline was encouraged. Social services would only intervene in the most extreme of cases, and only then if the matter had been raised, which was rare due to tighter communities and loyalty to thy neighbour.  

But the thing with Paul was, he carried his childhood scars with him for the rest of his life. He could never forgive his dad for the violence he inflicted, and, due to those beatings, that scared little boy was shaped into a beast blighted by rage, who in turn, would go on to hurt so many others. 

An Interest in Boxing Begins

Aside from being a boxer in the army, Walter was also an avid fan of the sport. He consumed countless boxing magazines and became a bit of an expert on the subject. It was because of this passion, that, at the age of four, he bought Paul his first pair of boxing gloves and decided to mould his boy into a fighter.  

He started to encourage his son to exercise at home. Push-ups, sit-ups, star jumps, and weights – from an early age Paul was taught the benefits of training. In their garden, Walter would strap a pillow to his torso and let the young boy practice his punches against it.  

It was around this time Paul had his first run in with the police. A brick wall had been vandalised in the local area. It had been completely torn apart. Bricks laid scattered everywhere, demolished, as though it had been hit by a bulldozer. When word was received that the Sykes lad had done it, the police paid their first of many visits to Paul. They were shocked to find the culprit was only four years old. Little did they know the monster he would become, and just how much of a burden he would be for their constabulary. 

A few years later, at aged seven, he was taken to his first boxing club. Most days after school Walter took him there to train. Now, Paul wasn’t just being battered at home, he became a punchbag for the other lads in the gym too. As an adult, this caused resentment in Paul. He would contemplate how his father could have loved him. If he truly had loved him, why would he have allowed all those beatings to take place when he was just a little boy? 

Physically Gifted From a Young Age

Despite this inner turmoil though, Paul took to boxing like a duck to water. In fact, he excelled at any sport he tried. He could run, he could swim, he could kick a ball – he had a natural talent for anything athletic. During those years he made his dad nothing but proud. He idolised his son for being such a gifted athlete.  

As he grew in age, his size grew even quicker. He was always much taller and stronger than any of his peers. As a lad, he was even allowed to play for the local rugby team despite being too young. The reason he could play was that he was already as big as any man. 

This monstrous size made him a formidable junior fighter. Aged eleven he began to enter competitions, but between the ages of fifteen to seventeen was when he truly shined. His massive reach and powerful punch knocked out opponents left, right, and centre.  

In all, he had over fifty bouts during those two years, he represented Yorkshire & England at Junior level, and won many trophies. At sixteen he won the NABC title which granted him a trip to Germany for an amateur European bout. His opponent was a full-grown adult, and even though Paul spent the night before getting blind drunk, he still managed to put up a good fight, although in the end, he lost to the German.  

Reasons for a Volatile Future

His mother, Betty, would later theorise her son’s boxing played a significant part toward his propensity for violence. With this theory, well, the proof is in the pudding. Even at the age of four, the young Paul was toughening his physique, learning to dominate rather than be dominated, and when he was a teen, he would use the training his dad had encouraged to exact his revenge upon him, one time busting his dad’s nose in front of a gym full of people.  

No longer could Walter control his son, he was much too big and powerful and skilled in the ring. But what did he expect? With the violence he’d inflicted on him all those years, it should have been no surprise when his son went off the rails. 

Another potential catalyst for his future instability also occurred during this time. Apparently, he confessed to a friend that he was sexually abused from the ages of eleven to fourteen by two different people. Although this claim was never publicly verified by himself or his family, if true, it does explain many of his future actions, and why he used his boxing skills for the evil that followed. 

A Sister is Born

On Paul’s thirteenth birthday, 23^rd May 1959, Walter and Betty Sykes welcomed their second child into the world, a baby girl they named, Kay. She would be Paul’s only sibling. A little sister. The best present a brother could receive. But rather than doting on her like some older siblings would, Paul became instantly jealous, believing that his mother loved her more than him.  

Of course, she would be a much easier child to raise than their son. Even at birth, she gave her mum an easy labour. But that doesn’t mean their mum loved Paul any less. In fact, according to Kay, she loved Paul more, because her mother would tell her so after she’d had one too many drinks.  

Kay describes her childhood as being brought up like an only child. Paul was hardly around when she began to form her first memories. When she was two, and Paul was fifteen, in 1961, the family moved to their second home on the Lupset Estate, 29 Gloucester Road, which would be the family patch from then on. Trouble was imminent now Paul was a reckless hormonal teen. Shortly after moving, Paul would head down a dark path that he willingly traversed forever more.  

The First Chapters in a Life of Crime

He started to steal cars and go joyriding around Wakefield. He drank cheap alcohol and smoked cigarettes in Thornes Park (which is still the city’s best escape for underage drinkers); as did I when I was the same age.  

He bought a pellet gun, which at first, he used to shoot at stray pigeons, but then, more chillingly, he used it to rob garages. He would go into a garage and pretend the gun was real, which should have been enough to scare the employee behind the register to hand over the cash, but simply robbing them at gunpoint wasn’t enough for Paul, he would beat the cashiers senseless just to get his kicks.  

At school, his grades began to suffer. Snapethorpe School, which he attended throughout his primary and senior years, had little trouble with him before this time. Now though, his grades dipped and so did his attendance, and he was even known to assault his teachers.  

He gave up caring, developed an appetite for impulse, and his anti-social personality exploded into fruition. The boxing skills he learnt in the gym became his weapon of choice. He made it his mission to give people reason to bully him just so he could beat them up.  

He wore silly hats so that other youths would make sly remarks, then, before they knew it, Paul would set upon them with uppercuts and jabs until their jaws were broken, their noses bloodied, and their pride had been shattered into pieces.  

He realised that hurting people was something he loved. He’d been abused himself for so many years, and now, it was time to be the abuser. The bullied became the bully, and his violence towards others only continued to grow.  

He graduated high school in 1962, and it wouldn’t take long for his crimes to catch up to him. The following year, in 1963, Paul would be convicted of a string of twenty-two offences committed over the last two years.  

This conviction landed him his first prison sentence of seven years, and his first headline in the local paper. Now, Paul would be incarcerated for the first time, and the prison system wasn’t prepared for the animal they were throwing inside their cage.