Gangster Problems In Great Britain

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 86, 12 April 1941, Page 19 (Supplement)

Gangster Problems In Great Britain

IN the roaring 1920'5, when American gangsters were squirting their sub-machine guns like hoses, the gangs of Britain grew imitative. They used everything but tommy-guns. British hoodlums had a taste for brutality and mutilation, rather than the finality of death. Battered men can remember and pass along the lesson of silence. British thugs indulged in colourful names. Even minor baiids worked little rackets. One gang in its heyday had a good 1000 mobsters under its control. Simplest and most profitable of the rackets was the racecourse. Enormous revenues came from bookmakers, many of whom found it too expensive to go on the racing tracks at all. They were forced to buy from the gang their blackboards and their chalk for writing up prices, to pay for the privilege of wetting their sponges in buckets of water brought round by gangsters, and for the sponges themselves—all at fabulous prices. To refuse was to be beaten up and have tlie bookie's stand smashed. The terror grew to ominous proportions. Hammers, razors, bayonets and pokers were the instruments in innumerable affrays; sometimes the victim was knocked down and kicked—even fatally. In 1925 a n:an named Pommer was battered to death in Sheffield. One of the most lurid West End chapters in gangdom's history was an attack on the New Avenue Club in Ham Yard, London. A wedge of gangsters burst in, beat up customers and generally behaved like wild animals. But when Magistrate Frederick Mead, of Great Marlborough Street, struck the neighbouring Swan Club from the regis-

ter the boys lost one of their favourite lounging places. Scotland Yard statistics in 1925 insisted that something like 3000 men were associated in gangs of one form and another; they specialised in blackmail, intimidation and robbery. Favourite weapon was the razor— gripped by the handle, the blade being folded over the back of the hand and bound with a handkerchief. The idea was favoured by American negroes and had horrible results. Sir William Joynson-Hicks, then Home Secretary, began the big offensive against the gangs by declaring: "It may bo difficult to break up these gangs at oncc, but give me time. The responsibility is mine. I mean to discharge it. It is monstrous that in a civilised country this kind of rowdyism should take place." Once it had the power, Scotland Yard threw its shock troops into the battle, and the back-alley plug-uglies faded away. Carrying war into the gangsters' country, the Flying Squad gave the frightened thugs the beatings they handed out to everybody else but could not take. But the gangs did not die. In a sudden wave of terrorism they hit out again at the dog tracks in 1930. Chief Inspector Sharpe, of Scotland Yard, again led the police, broke up the organisations. Gangs stayed out of the picture until the war began. Now they are back again, hut in a far milder form, states the "News Review." Examples: The "Titanic Mob," operating in Shoreditch; the "Elephant Boys," the "Fulham Terrorists," the "Chapel Street Mob" and the "Nile Street Boys." War has endless possibilities for gangsters driven from the racecourses. The Help Your Neighbour schcme was abused in November when gangsters held up and robbed a casual pedestrian to whom

they had given a lift. Gangs are behind the constant food and tobacco robberies, and many little shopkeepers still go in fear.

In Bethnal Green, Bow, Hackney, Dalston, Xotting Hill, Islington, police are busy rounding up other gangsters. Most gangs work on similar lines. Restaurants dare not ask them the price of their meals for fear of having the places wrecked. The hoys fight among themselves to "protect" amusement centres from rivals, the price of their protection against the place being wrecked by other gangs being a "rakeoff" from the takings. In side streets off railway stations they waylay and rob visitors, raid coffee stalls and small shops indiscriminately. In some districts cafe owners and small shopkeepers have been provided with police whistles. Going out for bigger game, one Euston mob stole more than £1000 worth of tea from the Food Ministry. Others forge petrol coupons "on a large scale, or sell fake identity cards. In the last week of January this year, at the High Court of Justice, Harry Sabini came before Lord Chief Justice Caldecote, Mr. Justice Humphreys and Mr. Justice Tucker with an application for a writ of habeas corpus. Detained by Sir John Anderson on June 14, 1940, under the Defence Regulations, Sabini received on November 27 a document headed "Reasons for order inado under regulation ISB against Harry Sabini, alias Harry Handley," one of the reasons being that he was "a violent and dangerous criminal of the gangster type, liable to lead internal insurrections against this country." In 1928, it was alleged, Sabini joined in a racecourse brawl when some other men were kicking a drunken man. Denying that he had any knowledge of "Harry Handley," or that the allegations were true, Sabini heard Sir William Jowitt, Solicitor-General, say: "I liavo never heard of such shocking perjury on one side or the other, and I feel it my duty to put the matter before the Court in the plainest language." Refusing the application with costs, Mr. Justice Humphreys dismissed Sabini's statement that lie had no knowledge of the name "Harry Handley" as deliberate perjury intended to deceive the Court. Incidentally, a brother, Fred Sabini, of Hove, whose name has been known for years on racecourses, was detained under the Defence Regulations last July.