LONDON’S THUGS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18613, 8 July 1930, Page 13

LONDON’S THUGS.

HAUNTS OF SNEAK THIEVES. ATMOSPHERE OF SUSPICION. It can be quite exhilarating to lose one’s sense of security. You and I lead our ordinary lives with a policeman, so to speak, at our elbows, writes the special representative of the London “Daily Express.” If a friend introduces us to a third party we do not worry about this party’s antecedents; we have no concern —other than possible boredom—about meeting him again. The parties whom I encountered on the third of my visits to London’s underworld with Lewis Richards w r ere, however, provocative of strange emotions in me. They have their policemen, not at their elbows, but some distance behind them. The non-commit-tal but inquisitive eye of authority is always bent on their doings. An outsider, entering their haunts, is regarded naturally with suspicion. I felt that .suspicion for the whole of one night, and, as I say, it induced in me an abnormal alertness and a faculty of looking out of the corners of my eyes which I had not known I possessed Richards and I met in Soho. Thereafter I followed him from place to place. We did not converse; discretion was the better part of verbiage. When I had seen enough I left. A few minutes later Richards would emerge and I would get on his trail again. His last remark to me before we started was: “Now you’re going to see some thugs—guys that’ll beat you up and leave you no place.” (nowhere.) Imagine a coffee bar with stools i against it and some tables and chairs j set about a fire. The click of - bil- : liards balls comes faintly through a | haze of smoke and a murmur of talk, j The distant players become distinct i and vital as they lean across the tables , under the blaze of the lamps; they ; recede impersonally into the shadows ' when they have made their strokes. ! There was an elderly woman behind i the bar and two girls. The woman was j miscast in life; she should have been 1 acting mothers in sentimental films. She cooed at me when I ordered some . coffee, and she cooed at me when she j handed me the sugar. Stone In the Pond. Richards was perched on a stool at the other end of the bar. He had nodded to one of three men who were gossiping at a table —so much I saw as , I came in. My entrance was like a stone dropping into a pond. Ripples appeared and washed across the room; then i peace returned, but it was a broodingpeace, and my exhilaration began. I was a stranger—more, I was of a type alien to the place. I lit a cigarette and looked at a notice which stated tersely that guests would be well advised not to ask for credit as “a refusal might give offence.” When I looked found again the three gossipers had gone. There was a rather strained silence. Then a clothcapped man, with a face that might have been carved out of dirty wood, set us at our ease. “Nice dawg you got,” he said to the woman behind the bar. One of the girls replied that it was a very nice dog. The man turned to another who was warming his hands at the fire, “Seen Harry?” he remarked. “Urn,” said the other. There was another silence. Apparently it was a little tactless to allude to the absent Harry In my suspicious pre-

sence, so I got off my stool and drifted into the billiards hall. For a time T escaped comment, for I was in the darkest part of the place. Then a thick-set man remarked to a sinister, spick-an-span Jew that it “must be very hinteresting leanin’ against a wall, eh, Sammy?” A lively conversation was proceeding on a settee and a young man was describing, with a -wealth of alcoholic detail, a poker game in which he had recently taken part. Suddenly a name was inserted» and the reciter seized on it. “Joe?” he cried. “Why I seen ! him only yesterdee. And if he didn't , have a lovely cauliflower! Coo! He tole : me . . . .” I All his listeners interrupted him with j a sibilant “Sh-sh-sh!” Eyes raked me ; fore and aft. The origin of Joe’s cauli- | flower ear was to remain a mystery so i far as I was concerned. I have fre- ! quently prided myself on my ability to ; take a hint, so I withdrew my support I from the wall and drifted slowly to- | wards the door. There I was met by ' a hatless man who addressed me practically without moving his lips: “Care for a game, mister? Looking for a game, mister?” I shook my head and regained the street; it was no purpose of mine to be drawn into any game with a selection of hard-bitten racecourse and alleyway j thugs. The next resort I entered is the par- ! ticular favourite of all the cheap sneak-thieves, shoplifters and women pickpockets in London. Overcoat Charlie. Again there was a long room and a coffee bar, but the tables and chairs were set out more formally in respectable tea-shop fashion. The room was packed, and I wondered how many of the hands I saw wielding cups and sandwiches had snatched bags from i the harassed housewives of London. I This is Overcoat Charlie’s haunt: he j finds it extremely comfortable —and so 1 did I:: the coffee was excellent.

> Again I was inspected closely, and J this time I buttoned my overcoat j tightly round me. i I crossed Shaftesbury Avenue, and | within three minutes of doing so I had , ; actual experience of the underworld ' at work, though obvious reasons pre- ; ! vent me from giving the name of the j | public-house concerned. This house j ! has several entrances —a not uncom- • ! mon convenience. I was passing one of . them with a man who had left the ; house by door A, shall I say? shot by i j me, peered through the glass of door 1 j B, withdrew, and slipped in again by j door C. A second later a confused j i noise was heard within, and a woman, (far from sober, was ejected on the pavement. “I want my bag,” she screamed in a flat soprano, “I want my bag!” Then a man, followed by the I man I had just observed, came out. assisted the soiled woman to her feet, j ; and led her away, reassuring her con- i tinually that it would be “all right.” I Richards’ expert knowledge of trickery and double-dealing solved the problem of what I had seen. “I’ll bet you,” he said afterwards, “this is what happened. Those two guys had a \ third standing outside whom we | passed without taking count of him. They must have. Then, having got that ! frail pretty well oiled up, the boy we saw shooting in through that door grabs her bag, outs with it, slips it to the third guy, he beats it quick, the boy we saw comes back, and it all happens before the dame knows she’s lost her bag. Then she gets sore, but —w-e-11 —you saw her condition. Who'd take any notice of her? And her two friends —I’ll say they were friends!—lead her away. A dirty trick, isn’t it?” And yet there is a large section of the underworld which would consider that trick not dirty at all; smart would be the word for it —clever, entirely paiseworthy. There is no]

trust, no honour among the men Who have their being beneath the crust erf society, which is patrolled for you and me by the police. And there is little trust among the women—what little there is being inspired by the compassion, the passionate compassion, which is instinct, and which must show sometimes in every woman, simply as the female, the potential mother of her breed. Now I have said that I would qualify it; I would say there is a great deal of trust and generosity among the white women who associate with coloured men—but they reserve it for the coloured men. There is a publichouse which Is crowded every night by negroes, varying in tone from black to pale coffee, and by the women who associate with them. I went in there, ordered a drink, and w’atched. There were coloured men and coloured women in I one bar; white women, some harmless | citizens, and less obviously coloured men were in another. I The negroes were treating the white [ women with familiarity that would make an American explode with rage. There is a problem—racial but not only that; pathological and psychological as well —which may never be settled so long as there are white races and coloured races.