by Dick Kirby
Frank Mifsud had initially vanished with the others in October, but information was received that he was in Southern Ireland. Ed Williams and Detective Inspector Brendan Byrne flew to Dublin, where they liaised with officers from An Garda Siochána.
‘Dublin CID officers took us to Mifsud’s bolt-hole, which turned out to be a very ordinary house on a bleak Dublin estate’, Williams told me. ‘They agreed to keep covert surveillance on the property and we flew back to London.’
But when Silver was arrested, the squad were shocked to discover that Mifsud had slipped away just prior to the arrival of the arrest team. He would not resurface for some considerable time.
However, both Ellul and Spampinato gave impressive evidence at the Magistrates’ Court, sufficient to commit Silver and Mangion to the Old Bailey on a charge of murdering Smithson. Afterwards, they returned to their respective homelands, promising to return to give evidence at the trial.
The murder trial was listed for 16 September 1974; it was postponed indefinitely after the Crown made an application for Mifsud to join the other two accused in the dock. But on 19 September, the trial of Silver and ten other men – mainly Maltese – commenced. They faced charges of living off immoral earnings, assaulting and attempting to imprison a witness and perverting the course of justice.
The trial lasted exactly three months; on 19 December, seven men were jailed, with Silver receiving the heaviest sentence for conspiracy to live off immoral earnings: six years’ imprisonment and a fine of £30,000. Mangion was sentenced to five years, with a fine of £10,000.
And now Ellul and Spampinato reneged on their respective deals. According to rumour, Ellul’s non-cooperation had been purchased by the Syndicate for £60,000. Roger Stoodley was one of the officers who flew to San Francisco and discovered that significant and substantial improvements had been made to Ellul’s flat; the occupier refused to see them. Spampinato had allegedly received £30,000 – half Ellul’s payment, but then the cost of living was cheaper in Malta than in the United States. He was now living in a villa with a five-car integral garage which overlooked B’kara, and driving a very smart car. He, too, was disinclined to speak to the police.
Nevertheless, there was sufficient evidence for the murder trial to go ahead; and on 8 July 1975, whilst Mangion was acquitted, Silver was found guilty both of murdering Smithson and of plotting to murder him. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on the first charge and ten years’ imprisonment, concurrent, on the second.
Early the following year, John Lewis traced Frank Mifsud to Switzerland, from where he was extradited; he stood trial for Smithson’s murder at the Old Bailey in March 1976. Denying that he had told a detective that ‘Smithson was a blackmailer and he got what he deserved . . . he was always trying to make me look small’, Mifsud told the court that not only did he know nothing about Smithson’s murder, but that ‘I liked him very much. We were friends.’ He also stretched veracity to near breaking point when he described Billy Hill as ‘a kind gentleman who lent money’, but by now Billy Hill’s star had waned and perhaps some of the Old Bailey’s jurors were unaware of his fearsome reputation.
Mifsud was acquitted of Smithson’s murder; he was found guilty on a separate charge of perjury, sentenced to five years’ imprisonment and fined £50,000.
On 18 October 1976 Silver successfully appealed against his murder conviction, after Lord Justice Lawton said that the prosecution had built its case on the evidence of disreputable witnesses: ‘A conviction based solely on such slender foundations cannot be regarded as safe or satisfactory.’ Thirteen months later, Mifsud, too, successfully appealed against his conviction, sentence and fine.
And to put the tin hat on matters, in January 1977 Thames TV broadcast a programme called ‘An Exercise at Law’. In it, both Ellul and Spampinato claimed they had never met Bernie Silver and that he had nothing to do with Smithson’s murder.
So in that case, why say that he did? Did they commit perjury the first time they appeared in court – or the second? It must have been one or the other. And were their statements to the police the truth – or an attempt to pervert the course of justice? It was a case involving conspiracies and incitements to murder, as well as murder itself, and also perjury, assault, kidnapping and attempts to pervert the course of justice. A line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet suggests, ’Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ – or was it closer to home, such as at the Old Bailey?
CHAPTER 3
Jack Spot & Billy Hill
A great deal – and a great deal of nonsense – has been written about the gang leaders Jack Spot and Billy Hill, especially in their vainglorious autobiographies. However, because both played such a decisive part in bloody gang warfare in London, especially in the 1950s, their backgrounds merit a mention.
William Charles Hill was born on 13 December 1911, in Cleveland Street, St Pancras, London, one of twenty-one children of a mostly villainous family. Unable to remember all of his siblings’ names, it was inevitable that young Billy would become a thief, and so he did. Aged fourteen, he broke into a tobacconist’s kiosk and was sent to an approved school for five years. A petition was hastily collected by the neighbours, and on appeal his punishment was reduced to one of two years’ probation. It was an ill-deserved act of clemency, because with a father who was a fighting drunk, a mother who was a receiver of stolen goods and an older sister who was one of the notorious ‘Forty Elephants’ gang of shoplifters, there was nothing in Billy Hill’s family background that could even remotely be described as stable.
By 1928 Hill had been responsible for a series of burglaries and in January 1929 he was sentenced at the Inner London Quarter Sessions to three years’ Borstal Training. It was his first taste of custody and Hill didn’t like it, not one little bit. He whined, believing that the harsh regime he was experiencing was somebody else’s fault. Eight months later he escaped, broke into a house, was disturbed by a maid and savagely attacked her; he was sentenced to nine months’ hard labour, plus twelve strokes of the birch, which he liked even less than Borstal. Following his release, Hill carried out a couple of burglaries, then was arrested for being a suspected person and received twenty-one days’ imprisonment, after which he was sent back to Borstal.
Early in 1932, he was arrested once more for being a suspected person and collected ‘a carpet’ – for the uninitiated, three months’ imprisonment, the time it took to weave a carpet on a prison loom.
Incidentally, Spot and Hill were not the only ones to embellish their legends; Billy Hill was still a well-known name in 1959 when Fred Narborough published his memoirs and he jumped on the bandwagon when he stated that as a Flying Squad officer he had provided Hill with ‘his first gaol sentence’, claiming responsibility for Hill’s second arrest for ‘sus’. However, not only had Hill served two prison sentences and a Borstal prior to that arrest but Narborough’s tenure on the Flying Squad did not commence until ten months later.
More burglaries followed, for one of which, in January 1934, Hill was sentenced to three years’ penal servitude. He met up with Charles ‘Ruby’ Sparks on his release and between them they carried out a series of smash-and-grabs as well as safe-blowings; Hill also found time to meet Agnes Kirkwood, and she became his loyal and long-suffering wife.
However, Hill had little time to get used to domesticity; he was arrested for shopbreaking, perhaps unwisely given bail and then again arrested, once more for shopbreaking. At the County of London Sessions in October 1936, he received twenty-one months’ imprisonment for the first offence and six weeks later, at the Middlesex Quarter Sessions, four years’ imprisonment, concurrent, for the second.
So to summarize Hill’s achievements during the first thirty years of his life: he had learnt a great deal about criminality and stolen a goodly amount of valuables, but since he had been sentenced to over eleven years’ in the penal system, including hard labour, penal servitude and a birching, he had had little time to savour the fruits of his labours. In addition,
he let no insult go by unpunished; he carried a razor or a knife, which he would use to great effect when slashing or ‘chivving’ an opponent on the face, leaving a V-shaped scar. Now let’s leave Hill for the moment and concentrate on his contemporary, Jack Spot.
*
A couple of years younger than Hill, Spot was born Jacob Comacho on 12 April 1913, the youngest of four children and the son of Jewish parents originally from Poland. He was also known as John or Jack Comer but was eventually referred to as Jack Spot, either because of the large mole on his cheek or because, as he was prone to say, ‘I was always on the spot.’ He was brought up in Myrdle Street, Whitechapel, an area of grinding poverty. The houses were overcrowded, dilapidated and so damp that their rear walls bulged outwards.
The borough surveyor was asked if he considered this dangerous but laconically replied, ‘Not that they’ll fall over; they prop each other up.’
The young Spot had a series of employments and indulged in a little petty larceny; by the time he was sixteen he was running protection rackets in the Petticoat Lane area, taking a ‘pension’ from the stallholders. He was now over six feet tall, a good boxer and a better fighter.
Aged twenty, he was arrested for being a suspected person and was simply bound over to be of good behaviour in the sum of forty shillings. His next brush with the law came two years later, when for housebreaking he appeared at the Middlesex Quarter Sessions and was placed on probation for two years; once again, he was bound over to keep the peace in the sum of £10 for a period of two years.
That was the extent of the punishment for his thieving criminality, and he was lucky – his next conviction for dishonesty would come many years later, and as with his two previous convictions, he would be humanely dealt with.
But Spot’s claim to fame came on 4 October 1936 at ‘The Battle of Cable Street’, an all-out clash between Sir Oswald Mosley’s fascist blackshirts, Jews, communists and the police. Some 6,000 police officers were on duty and in the civil disorder which followed 150 arrests were made and 175 people were injured, including women, children and 73 police officers.
Charging the black-shirted hordes who menaced the Jews whom he had sworn to protect, lashing out left and right with a chair-leg which he had lined with lead, flattening Mosley’s bodyguards before he was knocked unconscious and later sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, Spot was battered but unbowed and became the hero of the Jews of Whitechapel.
Unfortunately, none of this was true: no squashed bodyguards, no chair-leg and no prison sentence. But it was a convincingly told tale and many people believed it. Billy Hill might have been a prolific and much admired thief, who paid the families of his gang a pension when they were in prison, but he had not yet become a legend in his own lifetime. Spot had, and all without the encumbrance of a prison sentence. However, matters were about to change.
*
Two of Spot’s staunchest friends since boyhood were Morris Goldstein (aka Moisha Blueball) and Bernard Schack (also known as Schechter, Shackter and ‘Sonny the Yank’). They had been running a series of lucrative protection rackets when Nat Simmons decided on a similar enterprise which spilled over into Spot’s territory. Simmons had previously been an ally; in fact, Spot had given evidence against Jimmy Wooder, one of four men sentenced to hard labour for slashing Simmons at Fox’s Club, Dean Street in 1937. But now there was bad feeling between the two factions and blood spilled on both sides, which culminated in an attack at the Somerset Social Club in Little Somerset Street, Whitechapel. Simmons was slashed with a razor and Hymie Jacobs was hit with a milk bottle; the police were called and Spot, Goldstein and Schack were arrested for inflicting grievous bodily harm. When their case was heard on 31 March 1939 at the Mansion House Justice Room, Goldstein’s case was dismissed but not so Spot’s and Schack’s; both were sentenced to six months’ hard labour.
Upon his release from prison, Spot’s marriage in 1936 (it may have been what used to be described as a ‘common law’ marriage) to Mollie Simpson, who had born him a son, collapsed. However, on the credit side, he had made friendships in prison, including an alliance with the greatly feared Upton Park Gypsies.
Shortly after Spot’s release, Hill was about to re-enter the penal system. He was arrested on 26 June 1940 for a smash and grab; he was in company with Harry Bryan and George Ball, but not Charles ‘Ruby’ Sparks. Although Hill and Sparks often worked together, Sparks was on the run from Dartmoor, having granted himself a little unofficial parole during a sentence of five years’ penal servitude. Hill received a visit from the head of the Flying Squad, Detective Chief Inspector Peter Beveridge, and a conversation between the two men took place. Was a little horse-trading carried out? Well, look at it this way. The very next day, Sparks, who had been at liberty for five months and sixteen days, was arrested in a Flying Squad ambush – they knew exactly where to find him. And although Hill was the undisputed leader of the smash and grab offence (and had the convictions to prove it), whilst Bryan and Ball went off to prison for three years apiece, Hill pleaded guilty to an offence of conspiracy which carried a maximum of two years’ imprisonment – which is what he received. Blimey.
*
In 1940 Spot joined the Army and served in the Royal Artillery for three years; he was not posted overseas and his service was not particularly distinguished, since it was interrupted by incidents of fighting and disruption in barracks. He was discharged on medical grounds in 1943 and moved north, to Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham, where he ran protection rackets, before returning to the club scene in London’s West End.
As previously mentioned, the head of the White family, Alf, had been a hard man in his time; in 1935 he and two of his sons had been jailed for twelve months, with hard labour, for assault, but now his power had waned and he died in 1942. Nevertheless, in 1946 the remainder of the White family tried their luck on Jewish bookmaker Moses Levy, who was also past his sell-by date, attempting to force him off his pitch at Yarmouth racecourse. Levy appealed to Spot to help him, and Spot did just that. The White faction backed down, and it would have been better if the gang had dispersed immediately – but they did not. Perhaps both sides were at fault; Spot, referring to the White family, would later say, ‘I made a mistake. I let the fucking King’s Cross mob come back. I should have wiped them out.’
Meanwhile, no sooner had Billy Hill been released from prison than he was scooped up once more for being a suspected person and sentenced to one month’s imprisonment. It was not very much longer before he was again arrested, this time for robbery with violence, and given his previous record he was fortunate to be weighed-off with just four years’ imprisonment.
It was following his release that Hill and Spot got together to force a confrontation with the White family and their gang. This was supposed to take place on the night of the Joe Baksi/Bruce Woodcock final eliminator at Haringey for the world heavyweight title, but the head of the Metropolitan Police’s No. 2 District, the newly promoted Detective Superintendent Peter Beveridge, heard of it and waved a big stick in the combatants’ direction. It worked on that occasion, but within a few weeks a confrontation did take place between the two factions and the Whites retired defeated. They probably fared better than Bruce Woodcock – knocked down three times in the first round (when his jaw was broken) and twice more in the second, he gamely struggled on until the referee stopped the fight in the seventh. Woodcock suffered a detached retina and was nearly blinded by the bone splinters from his smashed jaw; he was out of the ring for eighteen months.
However, the Hill/Spot merger was short-lived because Hill was arrested for a warehousebreaking, of which he always claimed he was innocent. Once again unwisely granted bail, Hill took the opportunity to flee to South Africa, but not for long; upon his return he was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment.
Whilst Hill was incarcerated, Spot financed (but did not participate in) what, on the face of it, was a rather spectacular coup: a raid on the newly built Heathrow Airport. Goods worth
£224,000 were stored in a warehouse, together with a safe containing jewellery valued at £13,900; gold bullion valued at £250,000 was also due to arrive. With the help of an inside man it was decided to drug the guards’ coffee with phenobarbitone and gain possession of the safe keys. Fine in concept but doomed to failure, as the eleven men of Spot’s and Hill’s gangs discovered. The plan had been infiltrated from the start; the three ‘drugged guards’ were members of the Flying Squad and a great many of their colleagues were secreted behind packing cases in the warehouse. During the battle royal that ensued, shocking injuries were inflicted on both sides, and whilst three of the gang escaped, at the end of the confrontation eight of the remaining robbers lay unconscious on the ground. Heavy sentences were imposed: gang members received a total of seventy-one years’ penal servitude.2 Spot was not arrested and consoled himself with Margaret ‘Rita’ Molloy, a beautiful Irish girl whom he had met at Haydock Park races prior to the abortive raid. They moved into Flat 12F, Hyde Park Mansions, Cabbell Street, just off the Edgware Road, a four-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment with two reception rooms, at today’s prices worth £1,700,000. So besotted was Spot with Rita that he neglected to pay pensions to the families of his incarcerated gang; that was a big mistake.
According to whom you believe, upon Hill’s release from prison he was met either by Spot in a Rolls-Royce or by Aggie in a more mundane vehicle. Hill now leased the New Cabinet Club; he and Spot also ran a club at Southend. These were good years for the two, but less so for Hill’s marriage. In 1951 he met Phyllis ‘Gypsy’ Riley and following an unkind remark about her made by ‘Belgian Johnny’ aka Jean Baptiste Hubert, a convicted ponce, Hill striped him with a razor so badly that he was obliged to get Spot to visit Hubert in hospital to placate him – and ensure his silence – with a sizeable wad of cash. Getting Spot to clear up after his excesses would become a habit. It happened with Tommy Smithson a couple of years later, and in 1954 Hill was acquitted of slashing Freddie Andrews after the victim conveniently lost his memory.