CROOK'S NEW TERROR

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3373, 3 October 1931, Page 2

CROOK'S NEW TERROR

RACKETEERS IN LONDON. TOLL FOR PROTECTION. London is now being given a taste of racketeering of a kind that has been going on in the big American cities for many years. I learned recently some extraordinary details of a system of gangster terrorism that has sprung up recently in LOnddh, states a Sunday Chronicle representative. Some of these racketeers are Americans. Others are Italians, one or two are British. As yet they have not attempted to molest respectable citizens. They are confining their attentions" to the "more peaceable of London's crooks, on whom they are levying a heavy toll. Their method is to demand sums of money in return for "protection" or under threats of exposure. "A confidence man I know was a Victim of these gangsters recently," an ex-convict informed me. "What /happened Was this: The racketeers 'tailed' the confidence trickster for several days.

"The moment he had got a visitor s roll the racketeers collared him and demanded half.

"In the end the man parted with £so—half the sum he had got from his victim.

"Another man—a bag-snatcher and pickpocket refused to pay the money demanded, and the next night he was found unconscious in a back street in the East End. He had been stabbed twice and slashed across the face with a razor." I learn that this form of racketeering is .behind some of the recent gang battles in certain London districts. Crooks have paid one gang to protect them against the menaces of another, and clashes between gangs of toughs armed with knives and razors have resulted.