From tea boy to prison reformer
LESLIE JERMAN, former air correspondent for the Scotsman, has died after a short illness.
Starting at the paper’s London office in 1938, aged 16, he rose from tea boy up through the ranks to become London news editor and deputy editor. He retired in 1996.
Born in east London, Leslie sold his first story at the age of eight to the East Ham Advertiser. He went on to report on a huge range of subjects, not just aviation, but covering gossip as well, contributing a reported 12,000 items to the Londoner’s Diary in the Evening Standard and earning the title “King of the Fleet Street Diarists”.
For the first two years of the Second World War he lived in the Fleet Street office, which was easier than attempting the seven miles home. In 1941 he volunteered to train as a pilot with the RAF but became ill and trained instead in ground control.
He was widely travelled, cycling to the south of France, meeting Gracie Fields at her home in Capri, reporting on the Berlin air lift and dining with Jayne Mansfield in a Hollywood nightclub. His one-time Scotsman colleague James Naughtie called him “an eccentric Fleet Street scavenger”.
Following a burglary at his home in the 1980s, Leslie Jerman was given the opportunity to meet one of the youths responsible. He did not want anyone to go to prison over material things and managed to get the boy a conditional discharge. He and the boy stayed in touch for nearly 30 years and the burglar never offended again.
From that, he was prompted to become a prison visitor, visiting and befriending some 60 prisoners. In 1991 he was awarded the Howard League for Penal Reform’s media award for his stories on offender/victim mediation and reparation schemes.
Leslie Jerman was a prodigious letter writer to local and national papers. He liked nothing better than to be in print, and if he was stirring things up, so much the better.
He wife Betty is a fellow NUJ member. They have three children.
Stacey Whatling