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BRADY - Ian Brady was born, on 2 January 1938 in Gorbals, one of the roughest slums in Glasgow at the time. His mother, Margaret (Peggy) Stewart was a tearoom waitress in a hotel. Although she was single, she would always sign herself as Mrs. Stewart; as to be an unmarried mother at this time met with strong disapproval. Peggy never disclosed who Ian's father was, except that he was a journalist for a Glasgow newspaper who had died a few months before Ian was born. .
At the age of four months, Ian was unofficially "adopted" by Mary and John Sloane. Peggy signed over Ian's welfare payments to them and arranged to visit every Sunday. As each Sunday came around Peggy would bring gifts for her growing son but never told him that she was his mother. Mary Sloane was always "auntie" or "ma." As time passed, Peggy's visits became less frequent and finally stopped altogether when Ian was twelve years old. Peggy had moved with her new husband, Patrick Brady, to Manchester.
The ambiguity of his relationship with his mother and the nature of the arrangements with the Sloanes meant that Ian always felt that he didn't really belong. Despite the Sloanes' attempts to provide a loving environment, Ian showed no response to their care and attention. Throughout his childhood, he was lonely, difficult, and angry. Temper tantrums were frequent and extreme, often ending with him banging his head on the floor.
By the age of eleven, he was in trouble with the police. It was at this time that his fascination with the Second World War, particularly the Nazis, began to emerge. The books he read and the subject of his conversation was always related to Nazis.
Between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, Brady had been charged on three counts of housebreaking and burglary. On the third occasion, the court decided not to give him a custodial sentence, on the condition that he move to Manchester to live with Peggy and her husband Patrick Brady.
He attempted to gain a sense of belonging to his new family by changing his name from Stewart to Brady, and, although he did not get on particularly well with his stepfather, he took the job that Patrick found for him as a porter at the local market. The sense that he didn't belong persisted, however, and he searched for direction through his reading. Within books such as Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, the works of Marquis de Sade, and sadistic titles such as Justine, The Kiss of the Whip, and The Torture Chamber, Brady discovered something he could relate to, something exciting.
A little over a year after he moved to Moss Side, Brady had returned to a life of crime. He had left his job at the market and was working in a brewery when he was arrested for aiding and abetting. His employers had discovered that he had been stealing lead seals. The courts were not so lenient this time and he was sentenced to two years in a borstal, an institution for young offenders. There were no places available for three months, so he was sent to Strangeways Prison in Manchester, where at the age of seventeen, he learned quickly to toughen up.
A drunken scuffle with a warder landed him in Hull Prison. Here he actively set out to learn more of the criminal way of life, from which he intended to make a great deal of money. His expectations were so high that he even took courses in bookkeeping. When he was released in November 1957, his family noticed that he was even more silent and brooding than before. He was unemployed for several months before he obtained work as a labourer for six months. While he continued in his attempts to find a criminal scheme that would make him rich, he decided to put his bookkeeping skills to legitimate use. In 1959, he began work as a stock clerk with Millwards Merchandising. A little more than a year later, a new secretary arrived, that secretary was Myra Hindley.