UNDERWORLD LIFE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 March 1939, Page 4

UNDERWORLD LIFE

CRIMINALS’ MANY SECRETS

REVEALED BY NOTED FLYING SQUAD CHIEF. QUEER TRADES IN LONDON.

In London’s Underworld, “moll buzer” is the term used for a pickpocket who robs women —a despised class, by the way; “hoisters” are those who engage in shoplifting, or “The Hoist ; and the “Pick Up” is the art of stealing from unattended motor-cars. Ex-Chief Inspector F. D. (“Nutty”) Sharpe, formerly head of Scotland Yard’s Flying Squad, tells about these queer trades in “Sharpe of the Flying Squad,” published in London by John Long. The Underworld, he says, speaks its own language, and the detective has to learn it so that he can converse with people whose conversation to the average man would be meaningless. Thieves in general are known as “Hooks” or “Tea-Leaves.” Anyone not of the Underworld is referred to as “a Steamer” or “Steam Tug,” which is rhyming slang for “Mug.” Men and women of the Underworld refei’ to themselves as “wide people” or “one of us.” The “wide boys” have many ways of earning a living and strange ways of describing them. Jack’s “at the blague,” for instance, means that Jack is a smash-and-grab raider; Bill’s “at the Creep” means that Bill steals from tills when a shop is momentarily unattended; Tommy’s with “The Push Up Mob,” means that Tommy is working as a pickpocket. Generally speaking, says Mr Sharpe, the crook is an intelligent person who thinks that working by the sweat of the brow is futile: — He wants to live like the more fortunate people around him, and, having no business intelligence, he • resorts to crime. They are very, very seldom successful. Hardly anyone makes a living in crime without paying, regular visits to prison. They regard it as a business, taking .arrests as a little “down,” and a good haul as a nice “up.” ( When a man is “down” there is. always the “Box.” This is a fund subscribed to by crooks when they are doing well. Sometimes it is deposited in a bank or Post Office Savings Account —and the women and children of the man who is “down” live on it. In some cases a trusted confederate or a receiver or wealthy crook is given the task of distributing the Box. There is generally a good deal of honour among thieves, and it is very rarely that the Box is not dealt out fairly. Very often when this fund is exhausted other criminals will keep a man’s wife and family until he comes out.

If one man is caught and others escape after a “job,” his share of the spoils is usually kept for him carefully and handed over after his release. And if he is popular he is met at the prison on his release by a party of friends who try to show him that he has not been forgotten. It will come as- a surprise to some people to know how much a successful “wizzer,” or pickpocket, can make. A good day may bring in as much as a hundred pounds. During their prosperous periods they may live at a rate of three thousand pounds a year or more: —

I have never known one, however, to make a fortune and keen it. They squander their money, and are very prone to gambling. There are quite a few “fairly respectable crooks” who don’t work on Sundays, and among these are pickpockets. They believe that on at least one day a week they should have a rest. When Mr Sharpe was a young detective, things were mighty tough in the East—down Aidgate, Shoreditch and Hoxton way: — As a friend of mine from Hoxton said to me the other day: “In those days, Fred, they used to hit you on the head with a chopper for a lark!” Rival gangs—particularly race gangs —frequently clashed with each other. On one occasion the Birmingham Boys decided to waylay the London Italian gang near Epsom during Derby week. Armed with choppers, hammers, bottles, bludgeons and bricks the “Boys” set upon their victims as they got out of a lorry. The battle lasted ten minutes. -- It wasn’t until their victims lay bleeding around their damaged tender that the Birmingham Boys realised that they had made a ghastly mistake. The men they had wounded so terribly were not their intended victims the Italians, but members of the friendly Leeds MobThe Flying Squad was soon on the scene, and found the Birmingham Boys’ charabanc outside a public-house in Kingston, The place was surrounded and the gang arrested. Twenty-eight men filed out of the public-house' and into the charabanc, which drove them to Kingston police station. They were charged and later, under a strong guard, were removed in seven motor-vans to Epsom. Of the men charged, five were acquitted, the remainder being found guilty and sent to prison. How the Italian Boys must have laughed. Arrests have been made in curious places, too. On one occasion Mr Sharpe

went to a boxing hall to arrest a former champion. “He was fighting that night, and the detectives agreed to wait until the end. The fight was over twenty rounds. It was a pretty good fight, and I felt rather sorry for that poor bloke hammering away in there, knowing that we were going to pinch him when he came out. Our man won. By the time the fight was over, ■ however, pretty well everyone in the hall knew that we were there. As the referee announced his decision a crowd of fifty or so boxing fans and thugs swarmed around the ring, and escorted our boxer out of the hall. We went round to the dressing-room, but he had got out of the building and away by then.