Gangsters in Glasgow

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 840, 7 December 1929, Page 22

Gangsters in Glasgow

“Slashers, Gougers and Smashers ”

■ HICAGO on the Clyde is a new name given to Glasgow by resentful tradesmen suffering from tire blackmailing campaign of the city’s street gangs (writes James Dunn in the "Daily Chronicle”). The season of feuds and forays has now begun. There have been fights over girls In dance halls, and bottlethrowers and razor-slashers are appearing in the dock as heroes. A really good bottle-thrower is almost as valuable as a third-rate professional football player, for the Glasgow gangs have a transfer system similar to that existing*in Association football. When a feud is ripe for development champion smashers, gougers and slashers are bought foias much as £2O a head. Money to pay for these “transfers” is provided by small shopkeepers and publicans, who pay a weekly levy of 2s and more to keep their premises intact. When “subscriptions” are overdue a hint is conveyed by a brick through the window. Out-of-Works These street gangs, which are known by such picturesque titles as “The Nudie Boys,” “The Pikers,” “The Kelly Boys,” and “The Billy Boys,” are composed of youths aged from 17 to 22 years who are professional out-of-works. While fights among the different gangs draw attention to their unsavoury existence, they are really formed to provide for their members a living without working. Pilfering, gambling, and robbing tradesmen by blackmail, they are a menace to the ordered life of the city, particularly in Bridgeton and Govan. Shopkeepers are afraid to appeal to the police because of the threat of reprisals: and the police themselves are handicapped in their crusade against the gangs by the strict code which prevents a member of one gang from giving information against any member of a rival gang. Each gang has its “Queen,” with her flapper attendants, and since the “female of the species” has introduced her abbreviated skirts into the fights and feuds the gangs have become bolder in violence and more resourceful in tactics. Swearing-in Recruits Recruits to the gangs are obtained

by voluntary enlistment or by intimidation. Boys from respectable homes are persuaded or forced to join their local gang, and made to swear fearsome oaths. Idleness aDd street associations are the direct causes of the increase in gang membership. Stipendiary Smith frequently warns parents of the danger in allowing

their young boys to sell chewing gum and chocolates at football grounds, where they meet the scum of the streets. Thousands of Glasgow children are learning evil in the school of the streets.

Every night the main thoroughfares of the city contain companies of child beggars, who with cupped hands and whining voices solicit alms.

These child beggars have the professional manner. They are of the type recently seen at Bow Street, where Mr. Herbert, the court missionary, remarked that it was a common practice for provincial beggars to pay their railway fares to London for the purpose of exploiting the charitable. Bred in crowded slum tenements, these children of the poor have little chance to escape the dangers and temptations of the streets. Their heroes are the bullying captains of the gangs, their inspiration inter-gang fights, and their ambition to lead a life of exciting and profitable idleness.