CULTURED CROOKS

Southland Times, Issue 21361, 6 April 1931, Page 2

CULTURED CROOKS

LONDON’S UNDERWORLD. DOPE DEPOTS AND ARSENALS. Somewhere in the East End of London, within the district bordered by Islington, Spitalfields and Pennyfields, are three of the greatest receiving depots that even the underworld of crime has ever known. One is an arsenal that exports guns to the Far East at the rate of nearly 500 a week. The second distributes cocaine and other drugs anywhere in London but the West End. The third is an Aladdin’s cave in which all the stolen jewels and art treasures find a temporary refuge before they are removed for sale abroad. The police know that these depots exist, and they know a great deal about the romantic and shadowy figures who control them. They have even raided two of these dens, but on each occasion the raid has been utterly defeated. For many years past a great doublefionted house in Islington has been suspected to be the biggest dumping ground for the proceeds of all the jewel thefts in the West End hotels and loot from many mansion raids. It belonged to a man who had long been a great financier of crime. He knew where the best goods were, and he sent his best men to get them. They brought them back to his depot. Scotland Yard heard of it and they secured a warrant enabling them to raid the place. They raided it, but this king of receivers beat them. He had friends on either side of him, and all the-<«tock-in-trade vanished as the police officers .walked in. The king of receivers is affable towards the police. He knows they suspect his organization. That was why, when they kept the most careful watch on all his best cat-burglars, he went one night and did a £30,000 cat burglary himself. He walked into his - house with all the jewels on him while officers were watching his agents. Within half an hour the whole haul was on its way to Amsterdam, and the “king” made a cool profit of £6OOO on the deal. To him it was just a keen business deal and nothing more. Gunmen’s. Headquarters. The gunmen’s headquarters are equally difficult to deal with. There are three or four agents in the East End who act as liaison officers between the gun factory in Belgium and the ships which come into the docks. Revolvers are easily smuggled in and out of the country, and are known to be stored at some of the most innocentlooking shops in the dockland district. Rifles and machine guns come and go in pieces for assembly at the consignees’ ena. From time to time Scotland Yard has received information about these arsenals, but rarely has a raid proved successful. Still the traffic goes on. The agents get to know about the raid, and within a few moments of the appearance of the police everything is cleared. Secret signals are given to the men inside, who are always on the watch, and when the officers get in they are met with false and barricaded doors which waste their time. Since the police instituted such a careful watch on the cocaine traffic in the West End, the traffickers have gone into the suburbs. The new night clubs of suburbia that have had a mushroom growth, have given them a new field which the police find difficult to watch. The- dope comes through Dockland to the depots in increasing quantities, The “carriers,” who are a very small gang, are highly paid and have greater opportunities for disposing of their wares than they formerly had. A Highly Organized Business. The trade in guns, dope and stolen valuables—because of the vigilance of the police—has become a highly skilled and highly organized business with headquarters in the East End as that is the district most difficult to patrol. The new school of detectives does not know the East End underworld as well as the old school did and information is harder to obtain. The criminal of the East End is no longer the old tough of a Dickensian age. He is a new product meeting the bandit’s demand for cheap but effective weapons, selling dope at a profit to a neurotic set and disposing of ill-gotten gains through a business channel as highly organized as any other industry in the country. All the leaders of the various gangs have a wide knowledge of the Continent, and two of them, at least, are cultured men who never engage directly in crime themselves. They just think out all the coups and see that the objects for which they formed their criminal companys are properly carried out. Their employees are well remunerated and adequately defended when the occasion arises. If the defence fails their services are remembered later and very handsomely rewarded.