Hanging Out With the National Justice Museum’s Resident Jailer Nino

When I make my way up the steps on High Pavement and enter the National Justice Museum, one of the first people I meet is dressed as a jailer. Turns out this is Nino, my interviewee. We head straight through to the museum’s old Victorian Criminal court: “We've had a court on this site going back to the Middle Ages - the 1300s. But the court you see around you is from the Victorian era, from 1877,” he tells me. “It operated as a court up until the 1980s. That clock at the back was stopped at the end of the final trial that was held here in 1986.”

This is a room that Nino is clearly familiar with; it’s one that he spends much of his time in as an interpreter at the museum. “My general role is to play the jailer,” he says, which explains his interesting choice of outfit for the interview. “I come in at ten o’clock in the morning and then I go and dress up; my changing room is a prison cell! During the week, we have lots of school visits - we had ninety kids here today - and we also have the public in as well.” As part of their visit, they will witness a mock trial in the very courtroom that we are sitting in - Nino changes costume to play the judge for this performance - as well as a mock execution down in the men’s exercise yard (more on that later).

Prior to his role at the museum, Nino worked for an organisation that arranged workshops and activities for elderly people with Alzheimer’s and degenerative conditions, and before that he was a youth worker, so you may be wondering how he ended up here, as an interpreter. It all begins to make a bit more sense when he says, “I've performed in various capacities throughout my life. I started performing on stage when I was very young, I was about nine, and my father was a stage magician.” After years of not performing, he saw an advertisement for his current role in a newspaper: “It said ‘Do you like dressing up and playing characters?’ and I thought ‘Yeah, I can do that!’”

His long-standing interest in history has also helped him to approach the role with a passionate enthusiasm: “I've always been interested in history. All my books at home are about history. I think to do this job well, you need to both enjoy performing and be interested in history. I don't think you can do it with one or the other.” As well as this, Nino credits his ability to engage people as a skill that makes him successful at the role. “You have to be able to just walk up to a person dressed like this” - he points down at his costume - “and feel comfortable and confident that you can tell them about the museum. You need to be able to read people.”

The jailer is Nino’s favourite character to play, but he enjoys the variety that comes with being able to take on different personas: “The change is quite nice - if I was a jailer all day, every day, it would probably start to get a bit draining after a while! But I’ll always be the jailer.” A time when you may see Nino dressed in less unusual clothing is on one of his tours of the caves, when he shows up as his usual self: “I introduce myself as Nino, I talk in my own voice, and I get to be me!” As a preview of the caves for anyone who hasn’t been down to see them yet, without spoiling too much, Nino says, “You’ve got a thousand years of a history, and it all relates back to poo. The kids love that!”

In the lead up to Christmas, the museum will be putting on their Elementary! murder mystery event. “We run the same murder mystery over the Christmas period for various nights, but generally speaking, the murder mysteries are one-off events. The public really gets into it. Last time, I was playing a barrister, and part of it was about a will that had been signed, and someone was saying there needed to be a witness - all this legal stuff - and I just had to say ‘I'm clearly very good at law!’ because that wasn’t actually part of solving the case at all. But people get really into it and that's great fun.”

Nino has many fond memories at the museum, but I wanted to know if he had any spooky ones, since it is common knowledge that the Grade II listed building has been named one of England’s most haunted. This attracts people who want to carry out paranormal investigations; they have even been known to stay overnight in the dungeons in an attempt to witness the museum’s spirits and ghouls. Nino has no such tales of his own, however. “Generally speaking, any self-respecting ghosts give me a wide berth. I don't think any ghosts have come anywhere near me; they stay away!” This doesn’t mean his colleagues haven’t experienced the paranormal: “I've got loads of colleagues who say they’ve seen things and felt things,” he says, but it seems that Nino is immune to their presence.

The museum is like a labyrinth, making it very easy to get lost if you don’t know your way around. But Nino knows it better than most, meaning that he is privy to areas of the building that are beyond the small fraction of the site that the public are able to explore when they visit. So, what is Nino’s favourite secret spot? “There are nooks and crannies all over the place, but the governor's house is huge - five or six floors - and there's one floor we call the Alice in Wonderland floor because it's tiny. I'm six feet tall and I basically can't stand up in it, I feel like a giant.”

It’s at that moment that Nino is suddenly ushered away from where we are sitting and taken down a flight of stairs, which lead into the men’s exercise yard. That can only mean one thing: it’s time for a hanging! Eager to see him in action, I hurry behind him to join the small crowd of people who are gathered around the gallows, complete with a noose (you’ll be pleased to know that this is not used at any point during the performance - they’re “not actually allowed to hang anyone, because that’s health and safety laws for you,” Nino tells me). 

The interview may have come to a somewhat abrupt end, but his duty as the jailer calls! And just like that, he immediately transforms into his favourite character, almost as if he hadn’t been speaking to me as his regular self no less than five minutes ago. After the display is over, he slinks effortlessly into the dungeons below the museum, and it’s hard to believe at that moment that he isn’t part of the building’s history himself. The only sign that we still remain firmly in the present is the eager visitors who tail after him, desperate to learn more about this fascinating piece of history. 

nationaljusticemuseum.org.uk