TERROR FOR EVIL-DOERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20982, 19 September 1931, Page 2 (Supplement)

TERROR FOR EVIL-DOERS.

GANGS IN CONFLICT. TOLL FOR PROTECTION. London is uow being given a taste of racketeering of a kind that has been going on in the big American cities for many years. Some extraordinary details of a system of gangster terrorism that has sprung up recently in London, have coma to light. . Some of these racketeers are Americans. Others are Italians, one or two ar9 British. As yet they have not attempted to molest respectable citizens. They are confining their attentions to the ® oia peaceable of London's criminals, on thev are levying a heavy toil. -l n method is to demand sums of money return for "protection" or under threais of exposure. - • % "A confidence man was a victim these gangsters recently," an ex-conv stated. " What happened was tms. The racketeers ' tailed 1 the CO r?n dence trickster for several days, moment he had got a visitor s ro notes the racketeers colk.red him and manded half. In the end the man parieu with £so—half the sum he bad got irom his victim. , , "Another man —a bag snatcher and p pocket—refused to pay the monev j manded, and the next night he was unconscious iu a back street in the Und. He had been stabbed twice (> slashed across the face with a razor " It is stated that this form 01 ing is behind some of the recent g => battles in certain London districts, inals have paid one gang to protect tl against, the menaces ot another, , clashes between gangs of toughs; with knives and razors have resultea.