The Mammoth Book of Gangs by James Morton

Author:James Morton [Morton, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781780330891
Publisher: Constable Robinson
Published: 2012-04-18T22:00:00+00:00

It was this sort of attitude which would eventually lead to his downfall but for the moment things went accordingly and, by the end of the war, Spot was doing very well for himself. He claimed he had met with the American gangster Sam Clynes, said to be a former member of Murder Inc., and received a good deal of advice from the great man. The advice included how to treat members of his team if they went to prison. Clynes suggested a weekly pension of £20 for wives at a time when a policeman’s wage was between £9 and £11. Unfortunately, too often Spot failed to pay and in turn paid the penalty for it. After Clynes’s death, he claimed, he paid for a funeral service and a headstone.

One problem with this story is that it is another almost total fabrication. The name Clynes is probably an amalgamation of James Hynes and Harry Kleintz. Hynes was certainly an American and, it was claimed, he was shot when the gangster “Little Augie” Orgen was killed. Later, together with Kleintz, he came to England where, following a robbery on a jeweller’s they both received five years on 28 June 1928 at Newcastle Assizes. Further long sentences followed and Hynes died in Parkhurst on 12 April 1943. Spot can never have met him. But why should that get in the way of a good story?

What was much more accurate was that Spot was running Botolph’s, a gaming club masquerading as the Aldgate Fruit Exchange in the daytime, on behalf of Abe Kosky, now a black-market millionaire, and running it extremely profitably.

During the daytime clerks in white collars and bowler hats arrived at their desks. At 5 p.m. they put on their hats and coats and left, and the transformation began. The desks were shifted into an anteroom, the blinds were pulled down and soft lights were switched on. By seven o’clock the place had been turned into what Spot described as, “the biggest gambling club London had ever known”. Play continued until seven o’clock the next morning. “We never had an argument much less a fight,” claimed Spot. This was not surprising because, apart from Spot, on the door was the fearsome Arthur Skurry who, despite fearing “he would look like a poof”, had been persuaded to exchange his cap and choker for a suit. The fact that he had half an ear bitten off only enhanced his status.

If there was a big winner Spot would arrange for him to be seen home by little Hymie Rosen, Moishe “Blueball” Goldstein – so-named because of the colour of one of his testicles – or George Wood. Quite apart from the pretence of masquerading as the Aldgate Fruit Exchange the real reason Spot’s club stayed open and untouched were the huge sums being paid weekly in bribes to the police.

By now Spot’s then friend Billy Hill was out of prison and it was time to oust the Whites who had taken over from the Sabinis in the West End and on the racecourses.

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