by Dick Kirby
In between times, Hill masterminded the Eastcastle Street robbery, where £287,000 was stolen, and two years later, a robbery of £46,000 in bullion. No one was convicted of these offences; not Hill and certainly not Spot, who was left out in the cold on both enterprises.
There were cracks in the Spot/Hill partnership and they were beginning to show. Spot had married Rita in 1954 and with his new-found domesticity, and the birth of two daughters, it was widely thought that he was ‘going soft’. The word was put about – possibly by Hill – that he was a grass, and when the colourful newspaper reporter Duncan Webb, who ghosted Hill’s autobiography, wrote a series of newspaper articles which tended to ridicule Spot, this led to a serious blunder – on Spot’s behalf. He arranged a meeting with Webb and knocked him down; the fall broke Webb’s wrist. Spot was arrested and Webb could not be straightened – obviously, Hill would not even try. Spot was fined £50 with 20 guineas costs, and worse, Webb sued him and received £732 in damages. Never underestimate the power of the press; Spot was now on a slippery slope.
Spot ran point-to-point racecourse pitches, and these should be explained so that the reader is fully aware of what it entailed. Jockey Club officials allocated most pitches and these were bound by the Club’s strict rules, which prohibited welshing or any other disreputable behaviour. However, on some courses there was ground available outside the Club’s jurisdiction, known as ‘the free side’. Spot had bought up some of these latter pitches and leased them out for £25 per day to his favoured associates; it meant that unprincipled bookmakers could erect a stand and make a book without any interference from the Jockey Club. This naturally attracted the most unscrupulous individuals, and competition was keen to acquire such pitches; deep resentment was also caused amongst those who were excluded.
The Italian Mob, under Pasquale Papa, wanted control of Spot’s point-to-point pitches. Born in 1894 in Islington, Papa, taking the ring name of Bert Marsh, boxed as a flyweight and a bantamweight between 1917 and 1925, winning thirty-nine of his fifty-nine bouts, although he was fortunate to have kept his licence, since in 1922 he was sentenced to six months’ hard labour for unlawful wounding. Marsh was thought to be the brains behind the theft of gold bullion at Croydon Airport in 1936, and the same year, after being acquitted of murder, he was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for the manslaughter of a gang member. Interned as an enemy alien with his allies, the Sabini brothers, during the early part of the Second World War, Marsh was a well-respected member of the Soho underworld and employed Albert Dimes as a strong-arm man. Now, at the Epsom August Meeting in 1955, Marsh demanded that Spot hand over control of his pitches; this might well have caused an ugly scene, except that the police intervened.
Spot decided to enlist the assistance of Reggie and Ronnie Kray, but they were not really interested. Like most feral animals, the brothers could smell fear; and with his power on the wane, although Spot may not have been shaking in his boots he was certainly apprehensive.
It was on 11 August 1955, when Spot was in his club, The Galahad, in Charlotte Street, right on the borders of Soho, that he received a summons – Albert Dimes wanted to see him. It was high time for the powder keg to explode, and it did.
CHAPTER 4
Strange Happenings in Frith Street
It was probably no more than a quarter of a mile from Spot’s club to Frith Street, and it was there at about 11.30 am that Spot – who was in a steaming temper – saw Albert Dimes talking to Sebastian Buonacore (or possibly Boonacore or Boonacote), a street commission agent.
‘Albert, I want to talk to you’, snapped Spot and the two men walked off together.
Buonacore would later say he saw ‘an instrument’ in Spot’s hand and then saw Dimes run off towards the junction with Frith Street and Old Compton Street Spot pursued Dimes and chased him into a continental fruit shop, where Spot repeatedly stabbed him with a knife in his face and body shouting, ‘You want to be a fucking tearaway, how do you like that?’
According to some newspaper reports, the shopkeeper’s wife, forty-five-year-old Sophie Hyams, hit Spot on the head with some very heavy scales – this was later denied by her – and her husband Hyman said there was so much blood flowing it was difficult to see what was going on and that Dimes seemed to be ‘all-in’ but then ‘he suddenly regained his strength and managed to get the knife from Comer. For a moment, Dimes hesitated and then he turned and attacked Comer, striking him in the side and neck.’
Dimes started to lean against a girder and Hyman Hyams thought he was going to pass out, whilst Spot slowly slumped to the floor. Bert Marsh rushed into the shop and took Dimes away in a taxi, while Spot staggered into a nearby barber’s, groaned, ‘Fix me up’ and fainted. The two men were taken to different hospitals, Spot to the Middlesex, where he was found to have a number of facial wounds, one over his left eye and others to his left cheek, his ear and his neck, as well as four cuts to his arm and two more to the side of his chest, one of which had penetrated his lung.
At Charing Cross Hospital Dimes was described as being ‘severely shocked’. He had a six-inch wound to the left side of his forehead which had penetrated to the bone and required twenty stitches, and two stab wounds, one in the stomach (which just failed to penetrate the abdominal cavity), the other in the left thigh, close to the knee, as well as minor lacerations to his chin and left thumb.
Now just for a moment, let’s leave the two battered warriors leaking blood over the pristine floors of two hospitals and consider this. There are various accounts of what happened in Frith Street – one is that Spot punched Dimes on the chin and another is that Spot stabbed Dimes – but whatever the circumstances, the undeniable fact is that Dimes ran away. This was witnessed by dozens of people (few of whom came forward to deliver their testimony to the police), but that does not really matter. The point is this: if, following the initial assault on Dimes, Spot had stood his ground and left Dimes fleeing down the street for dear life, it would have reflected very well indeed on him. Dimes, a reputed hard man, working for the very well respected Bert Marsh, himself a tough nut, would have been scorned by the underworld; and whilst it is by no means certain, it is likely that Spot’s reputation would have risen considerably from the depths to which it had sunk. There certainly would not have been a prosecution. But of course that didn’t happen, because Spot permitted his lunatic temper to get the better of him. Consequently, we now return to the afternoon of the affray, when Dimes was seen by Detective Inspector Eric Shepherd from West End Central police station who asked him who was responsible for his injuries.
‘You know as well as I do, it was Jackie Spot’, Dimes replied, adding, ‘but I’m not prossing [prosecuting].’ Later, he made a statement in which he said:
I was standing in Frith Street, reading a paper. I had a friend with me. A tall man came along. I don’t know his name . . . Without more to do, he pulled a knife from his pocket and attacked me. He cut me about the head and face and I was covered with blood.
That statement, prosecuting counsel at the Old Bailey would later tell the jury, with masterly understatement ‘was not quite true’.
The same officer interviewed Jack Spot, who told him, ‘It’s between me and Albert Dimes and nothing to do with you.’ Asked if he would make a statement, he replied, ‘It’s our business. Leave us alone to settle it.’
Dimes was kept in hospital for four more days, and on 20 August Spot was told he would be taken to ‘C’ Division’s West End Central police station for a chat with his nemesis, Detective Superintendent Bert Sparks.
At that time Sparks was forty-eight years of age and in his twentyeighth year of service. He knew ‘C’ Division, inside out – this was his fourth posting, and he would spend a total of over thirteen years there. At six feet, one and a half inches tall, Sparks was hard as nails; his nickname was ‘The Iron Man’ and this was underlined by an incident six years earlier when, whilst off-duty, he helped arrest three men, one of whom was armed with a loaded revolver
. It brought him commendations from Tottenham Magistrates’ Court, the Chairman of the Middlesex Sessions and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to add to his growing total of twenty-four commendations.
Ever since Sparks had broken up a gang fight in the 1930s – he carried a scar which had required seven stitches on his forehead as a memento – he had had a definite down on gangsters; and Spot was one of those at the top of his list. Just as the Prevention of Crime Act 1953 was placed on the statute books, so Spot was arrested for possessing an offensive weapon. Although he pleaded guilty and was fined just £20, Spot later claimed that he had been fitted up and morosely blamed ‘that cunt Sparks’, who had arrived at West End Central just a week before. In fact, Sparks had told Spot to ‘stay out of Soho’, wise counsel which Spot failed to heed.
The day following the talk with Spot, Sparks interviewed Albert Dimes, and this time Dimes declared that he wanted to tell the whole truth about the feud between Jack Spot and himself:
I saw he was holding a fairly long-bladed implement. I could not see whether it was a dagger or a knife. It cut me on the side of the hand. I turned and ran down Frith Street I realized that Spot was out to do me some terrible injury and I had nothing to help myself with. I went into the fruit shop and . . . I think I said, ‘Someone is trying to kill me.’ Almost instantly, Spot was on top of me again and I felt a jab in the stomach. I was beginning to feel very weak. I remember grabbing the hand and my left thumb was cut on the weapon . . . I don’t want to kid you, but in the struggle between us, I must have cut him with the knife. If I did use it, I was struggling for my life.
Both men were charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent to do so, possessing an offensive weapon and causing an affray.
Spot’s response was, ‘Why me? Albert did me and I get knocked off.’
Dimes reply was along the same lines: ‘Spotty does me up and I get pinched. That don’t seem fair.’
They appeared at Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court and having been remanded in custody for a week, on 29 August were committed to the Old Bailey for trial.
Dimes was represented by Billy Hill’s pet barrister, Patrick Marrinan (of whom we shall hear a lot more later), who told the court that his client had acted in self-defence, having been attacked by ‘this other murderous, treacherous rascal’. Dimes was allowed bail in the sum of £250 with two sureties in similar amounts.
Not so Spot; he was committed in custody after Sparks told the court that he had intimated that if released on bail he would abscond to Ireland. The following night, Spot was placed in a special cell at Brixton prison after he had been found with injured wrists.
The trial commenced on 19 September before Mr Justice Glyn-Jones. Reggie Seaton appeared for the Crown, Miss Rose Heilbron QC appeared for Spot and G.D. ‘Khaki’ Roberts QC for Dimes, but it was a short-lived affair. The judge decided upon separate trials for the two men and directed the jury to find both not guilty of causing an affray.
After ‘Khaki’ Roberts successfully argued, ‘Were the prosecution really saying he was in unlawful possession of the knife? It is grotesque in its absurdity. The man was defending himself for his life’, Dimes was found not guilty of possessing an offensive weapon. With Dimes free on bail, the trial against Spot – remanded in custody – recommenced the following day before the Recorder of London, Sir Gerald Dodson.
During the case for the Crown, Buonacore and, perhaps surprisingly, Bert Marsh gave evidence, as well as the Hyams family, the latter being undoubtedly amongst the few truthful witnesses, either for the prosecution or the defence. Despite Spot’s barrister, Rose Heilbron, suggesting that Dimes was the aggressor and that Spot had gamely hung on to his wrist in an attempt to make him drop the knife, fifty-year-old Hyman Hyams stuck to his guns.
‘No, ma’am’, he replied. ‘I was there. I saw enough, ma’am.’
Bert Sparks told the court that following an anonymous tip-off he had found a bloodstained knife in a paper bag in Soho Square. It certainly did not point to the guilt of Spot; he had collapsed 100 metres away before being taken to hospital. Frankie Fraser (of whom we shall be hearing a great deal more) subsequently claimed that the knife planting had been carried out by him and Bert Marsh.
Now Miss Heilbron outlined the case for the defence. She told the jury that Spot was a bookmaker who occupied a betting pitch at racecourses; in order to occupy a good pitch he found it necessary to book several, choose a good one and let out the others. However, a few days before the fight in Frith Street, Spot had received a note telling him that he had to keep away from all racecourses and point-to-point meetings and that Dimes would take care of him if he did not.
Giving evidence, Spot told the court that he had been going to racecourses for twenty years and that he would pay £300 for ground and let it out to other bookmakers, keeping a pitch for himself.
Asked by Miss Heilbron if anyone was jealous of him, Spot replied, ‘Yes. Bert Marsh, Basta3 and Italian Albert.’ Dimes, he said, ‘was a bit of a strong-arm man hired by Marsh. In August, Dimes said, “You have all the best pitches; I think it’s time you were finished”.’
Spot said he took no notice of that remark but later received a telephone message from Dimes which led to the confrontation in Frith Street According to Spot, ‘Dimes said, “This is your final warning. I don’t want you to go away racing any more . . . It’s about time somebody else had your pitches”.’
Spot claimed the two men started pushing each other until Dimes suddenly produced a knife and started stabbing at him. ‘I put my hand up and the knife went through my arm’, he said and went on to describe how Dimes stabbed him in the face with the knife. ‘I was trying to defend myself because he was definitely trying to kill me.’
And then it was the turn of a defence witness, Christopher Glinski, an interpreter who entered the witness box and corroborated Spot’s account, practically word for word. He had read about the case when it was reported at the Magistrates’ Court and, he told the jury, ‘It did not correspond with what I had seen, so I telephoned the defence solicitor.’
The following day, there was another surprise witness in the form of the Revd Basil Claude Hudson Andrews, an eighty-eightyear-old retired Church of England clergyman of 44 Inverness Terrace, Bayswater; he, too, had felt impelled to contact Spot’s solicitor after reading a newspaper account which failed to accord with his recollection of the incident. ‘I had read an account of the fight in a newspaper and was surprised to see the fairer man (Spot) described as the aggressor. It astonished me, I thought “Dear me!” because the dark man (Dimes) was the aggressor.’ He had not contacted the solicitor immediately, he admitted, but did so after the matter began to prey on his mind.
So what had the venerable gentleman seen? This is what he told the court:
Two men were pushing one another and the darker of the two had a steel instrument in his hand and he struck at the head of his opponent, a fair-haired man. The man Strange Happenings in Frith Street who was much fairer held up his arm to shield himself and in so doing, I imagine he got a pretty serious wound in the arm; I don’t know. What I do know is that I saw the dark-haired man strike the other man in the face and blood issued pretty freely from the wound. I felt pretty disgusted with the whole thing. I didn’t want to get mixed up in it so I cleared out and left Soho and went into Oxford Street
The jury took little time to acquit Spot of both charges – just sixty-four minutes, in fact – and with a complete lack of dignity he danced up and down in the dock, his hands above his head, celebrating his victory like the boxer he had once been, until he was rebuked by the judge: ‘Behave yourself, Comer!’
As Spot left the dock, so Albert Dimes stepped into it to face the same judge and prosecutor, who told the jury that they would have to ask themselves, having due regard for the injuries which Spot had received, whether Dimes was acting in self-defence or if one man had started the attack and the other had ‘taken it up’.
The wee
kend now intervened and on Monday, 26 September Reggie Seaton threw in the towel, telling the Recorder:
The prosecution has now had an opportunity of considering the position in the light of what happened in the other case. The conclusion we have arrived at, subject to your approval, is that it would be quite wrong, in the circumstances, to convict Dimes.
The Recorder agreed, saying:
From the moment that the verdict was returned on Friday, this position began to develop. Having regard to what happened on Friday, it would be manifestly unjust that this man should be put on his trial. It would be quite improper for the jury to be asked to find him guilty, especially when witnesses in the case said that the other man was the assailant.
The jury were brought in to be told by the Recorder of London:
It is better that I should say no more at the moment . . . so I won’t. There is much that could be said but it is enough that now, on my direction, you should return a verdict of not guilty.
The jury did so, and Dimes, too, left the court a free man.
The case became known as ‘the fight that never was’, but there was a lot more to it than that. With the ensuing, predictably mocking publicity – the Sunday Chronicle had already published Spot’s memoirs and he was also being championed by the Daily Sketch, whilst the People ran a story in which Spot was allegedly quoted by Dimes as whining, ‘Don’t cut me, Albert – please don’t cut me!’ – the Home Secretary was furious. Public confidence in both the police and the judicial system had taken a very hard knock indeed, and when Peter Kirk, the Conservative MP for Gravesend, asked, ‘If, in view of the evidence submitted at the trial, he would take powers to close temporarily any racecourse habitually frequented by known criminals’, the Home Secretary, realizing that this would mean the closure of every racetrack in England, plus a considerable loss of revenue to the exchequer, demanded that Scotland Yard conduct an enquiry into the whole affair. The Yard was ready for that one. No sooner had the commissioner put the telephone down on the seething Home Secretary than he appointed Ted Greeno to the task.