NOT PROFITABLE

Hokitika Guardian, 25 March 1933, Page 6

NOT PROFITABLE

GRIME AS A PAYING PURSUIT

CAREER OF OLD GANGSTER

The master mind of a powerful gang S smash-and-grab raiders,' a notorious ' , crook, labelled at Scotland Yard “Cnm. j inal ‘A’—Desperate,” sat in a Brixton dat. There was a, hungry look i n his steely-blue' eyes, the huge shoulders If' ' vvere crouched in something like despair, g His well-cut suit was shabby. Life had Dot been very rosy for “German Vic,” alias Frederick Wilson, alias Ja c kson, I since he had decided to go straight. ’ Time wa s when h e had spent £2O a a y> lived in lavish style in his Mayfkif fiat, and danced away th e nighty in a •riotous round of pleasure. ' Fred was ,loath to give awry the real t inside story about his “jobs,” but once going he was hard to stop. “We sent th 6 boy s to clean up. some stuff elsewhere,” he began, “hut-three of u s got win i of. -a £I3OO diamond ring in the Window of a Clapham jeweller.” “We drove up. Two women were looking in the window. One. of my pals i said, ‘Excuse me’ politely, smashed the window with a hammer and grabbed

th&. stone. “He had jutt reached the running board again, when a score of police ■dashed o ut of neighbouring shops and surrounded the car, It was a trap. I stepped on the accelerator, and sent them scattering. “A detective drove alongside. ~J switched .the wheel, and his, car turned turtle. We got away, afterwards learn;, ing. that the man who put us on the’, job was a polico informer. "'‘But w e did not get away the next time. Our object wa s a '£3oo pearl necklace in the window of n .small jeweller’s off Bond Street. My accomplice s njasbed the. window with a jemmy wrapped in straw. I collared th e ‘dibs/ and we made our getaway round Bond ‘Street. But there wag a traffic jam, and a Flying Squad van appeared from nowhere. I got out and ran. Then a rubbe r truncheon descended on my head— and darkness. ... It w as two years before I strolled , along ’Bond Street again.” “My biggest thrill wa s getting a man out of gaol,” he added. “My old pals ‘Blackie’ and .‘Scraper’ were both in gaol waiting to- be- transferred to Dart- j moor: ‘lroiiface’. and I got busy. We swore to get them out. For three days we hid in the cellar in a garden near the prison, spying out th e lay of . the land.

* "‘Then one morning, during the convicts’ exercise time, my face suddenly appeared over the garden wall. My pals know what it meant. They broke away ‘and ran for the dangling rop e ladd er I had slung over the wall. “‘Blackie’ got there first, and while lie climbed poor old ‘Scraper’ neat on the warders. ‘Blackie’ got clear, and wc took him in one car to Mitcham, and in another car to our hide out in j ■South London. And he- would have [ been free yet if hg hadn’t been given away by the other man’g wife.” “While working as an honest jeweller ■it struck me how easy it would be to ■ defraud the wholesalers. I forged’ the-' Mailers’ notepape r and sent boys to the 1 wholesale jewellers for anything I fancied in the way of necklaces,' rings and bra celets. “For eight years I was undetected, and when my boys knew tliey were heing tailed they would pull out ' a handkerchief as a signal for me not to I approach. Questioned, they would spill some tale about a grey-headed man in a blue saloon car giving, 'them the order ; “My litt-lg game was given away by a pal whom I trusted—a man the po]ic. e set up in business for his Judas’ bargain.”