British Gangs by Paul Dettmann;

Author:Paul Dettmann;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: TRUE CRIME / Organized Crime
Publisher: Casemate Publishers & Book Distributors, LLC
Published: 2024-10-30T00:00:00+00:00

Billy Fullerton: a real gang leader in 1932

Billy Fullerton led the infamous Billy Boys gang. Fullerton was released from prison in 1932 after serving a sentence for assaulting the police. Around six hundred local residents had risked reprisal to sign a petition which, although somewhat coded in its phrasing, demanded protection from Billy’s violent gang. Fullerton was warned not to return to gang violence on his release from prison, or risk a much longer stretch in a remote, notorious prison up at Peterhead, with the added deterrent of penal servitude. Perhaps surprisingly, Fullerton did renounce his membership of the eponymous Billy Boys gang, and his role as King Billy. Surprisingly for the time, he then sold his story to the press. He used the article to renounce violence and requested he be left to a quiet life with his wife and children.

Fullerton’s early life bears closer inspection because of the clues it gives to the way individuals found themselves drawn to violence and crime. Until he was nineteen, there is no evidence that Fullerton was set for a life as a gang leader. He left school at fourteen, which was routine at the time, and completed his apprenticeship as a boilermaker. But his nineteenth year coincided with the difficult economic situation of 1925. His employer let him go when he qualified for adult wages, on the cynical excuse that a younger lad would be cheaper to hire and be almost as productive. This was a clear loophole in the labour laws, and one that advantaged the employers at the expense of the local lads trying to make a living. But Fullerton was not deterred. Showing his determination to succeed, he decided to try his luck in Canada. He set off as a ship’s fireman and all went well until the work ran out and he was laid off again, this time in Canada. Yet again, Fullerton demonstrated his resourcefulness. He managed to find a ship to take him back to Scotland where he moved in with his parents and worked in the local cinema. Even though this must have felt like a drop in responsibility for a qualified boilermaker, Fullerton took it in his stride.

Fullerton only slips into a gang, the suitably-named Billy Boys, after a violent altercation stemming from his work in the cinema. The gang was already established before they approached him to become their leader. After he helped eject a group of fighting youths from the cinema, they caught up with him near his home and attacked him with weapons including a hammer. Enraged beyond logic, Fullerton took on the gang members with his bare hands. When news of his bravery reached the Billy Boys, they suggested he join them so that they could offer him protection from the other gang. Although the precise details of this conversion changed over the years, there seems little doubt that Fullerton found himself sucked into the gang life inadvertently. His life until that point shows significant resourcefulness against a backdrop of economic hardship.

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