Murder & Crime
Page 8
From the ankle I lifted up her legs very suddenly. She slipped under easily, but to me, who was closely watching, she seemed to make no movement. Suddenly I gripped her arm, it was limp. With a shout I tugged at her armpit and raised her head above the water. It fell over to one side. She was unconscious. For nearly half an hour my detectives and I worked away at her with artificial respiration and restoratives. Things began to look serious, and then a quick change began to take place, and her pretty face began to take on the natural bloom of young healthy womanhood … She told us afterwards that immediately she went under the water with her legs held in the air, the water just rushed into her mouth and up her nostrils. That was all she knew, as she remembered no more until she came to and saw all our anxious faces bending over.
On 22 June 1915, Smith was tried for the murder of Bessie Mundy at the Old Bailey. The case was supported with evidence of the deaths of both Alice Burnham and Margaret Lofty, but it was still circumstantial – nobody had ever caught George Joseph Smith in the act. Smith’s lawyer, Edward Marshall Hall, argued that he was not the kind of man who could commit ‘one of the most diabolical series of crimes that any records of any country have ever produced’. Marshall Hall told the jury, ‘A man who could commit such crimes as are alleged in this case is not only a criminal, but a monster without parallel.’
Smith did not give evidence in his defence, but he could not restrain himself from shouting out halfway through the judge’s summing up: ‘You may as well hang me the way you are going on,’ he exclaimed. ‘You can go on forever – you cannot make me into a murderer; I have done no murder.’ The jury were not convinced by his protestations and found him guilty after deliberating for just twenty-two minutes. He was hanged at Maidstone Gaol on Friday 13 August 1915. According to the executioner John Ellis, Smith’s last words were ‘I am innocent!’
One question still remains however: why did George Joseph Smith bring his third murder victim to London, and Highgate in particular? There was no explanation given at the trial. But because the death of Margaret Lofty happened in the capital, it was reported by the national newspapers and was seen 240 miles away in Blackpool and 60 miles away in Herne Bay. Had he remained anywhere else in the country his crimes might have gone undetected for many more years, and many more women might have become one of those known as the Brides in the Bath.
Case Twelve
The Godfather
1943
Suspect:
Otavio Handley aka Darby Sabini
Age:
55
Charge:
Racketeering & Accepting Stolen Goods
Sentence:
Three years in prison
On 11 July 1888, two months before Jack the Ripper began his campaign of murder and mutilation in the East End, a child was born in the slums of Clerkenwell. Son of an Italian father and an English mother, the baby’s name was registered as Otavio Handley. But it was as Darby Sabini that he would establish himself as one of the most feared gangsters in London. His criminal empire was built not on the smuggling of drugs or alcohol but on the racecourses, where the rich and titled gambled away their wealth. In the 1920s, at the height of his powers, it was estimated that he was raking in between £20,000 and £30,000 a year, the equivalent of more than £1 million today. His fame is thought to have earned him a place in Graham Greene’s book Brighton Rock as the model for the gangster Colleoni. So how did an immigrant’s son work his way up to become the Godfather of London?
Sabini’s story began in an overcrowded dwelling at No. 4 Little Bath Street, only a short distance from the Middlesex House of Correction. It is now a characterless stretch of Eyre Street Hill between Summers Street and Warner Street, but in the late nineteenth century it was populated by Italian immigrants trying to scrape a living as ice-cream sellers and organ grinders. The census records for 1881 and 1891 show that during this period there were as many as twenty people crammed into the one house – the families of asphalt workers, painters and decorators, fish salesmen, ‘shopmen’ and locket-case makers. The turnover of tenants was high, and by 1890 the Sabini family appears to have moved down the road to No. 1. On 13 July that year, two days after Octavio’s second birthday, his father, Ottavio Sabini (also known as Octavio or Joseph), witnessed the murder of Ugo Milandi, a twenty-two-year-old Italian barber. Milandi had made a joke at the expense of his friend Marzielli Vialli, a twenty-four-year-old ‘looking-glass frame maker’ (‘What do you want to do business with that man for?’) at the Anglo-Italian club in Eyre Street Hill. Vialli didn’t see the funny side and plunged a knife into Milandi’s thigh, severing his femoral artery. Ottavio Sabini, who tried to help the victim, later told the Old Bailey, ‘I asked him how he felt – he said he did not feel very well. He died about five minutes afterwards, before we got to the hospital.’
An Ice-cream seller in Little Italy, by John Thomson, from Victorian London Street Life (1877).
Four years later, Ottavio Sabini again found himself giving evidence at the Old Bailey, but this time as the victim. On 4 November 1894, he was stabbed in the shoulder by a sixty-year-old pimp in Eyre Street Hill. Sabini, who described himself as an ice-cream salesman, told the Old Bailey that Thomasso Casella ‘wanted 2s from me to go with this girl, and I wanted 3s if I gave him the 2s, to be repaid in a day or two – he wanted to give me only two pence.’ It was against this background of casual street violence in Little Italy that the young Darby Sabini grew up.
His mother, Eliza ‘Elizabeth’ Handley, had at least six children before she married his father at St Paul’s Church in Clerkenwell on 14 December 1898. His father, now forty-two, described himself as a ‘carman’ or delivery driver living at No. 112 Central Street. Two years later, when the family was living at No. 29 Mount Pleasant, eleven-year-old Otavio was enrolled at Laystall Street School (now Christopher Hatton Primary School). He left on his fourteenth birthday to continue his education on the streets of Clerkenwell.
Darby Sabini would later claim that he joined the East Surrey militia at the age of eighteen, before taking up professional boxing under the name of Fred Handley in his early twenties. Other accounts suggest that he was making his name as a middleweight fighter from his teens, before graduating to ring-side security. It is claimed that he and his brothers led a gang of Italians in an attack on the rival ‘Titanic’ mob in Hoxton, known as the ‘Battle of the Nile’, in 1908. It was just one of a series of conflicts between competing criminal groups around London, including the Elephant Boys (of Elephant and Castle), the Brummagens, the Finsbury Boys and the King’s Cross Boys. Budding gangster or not, when the 1911 census came around Sabini, aged twenty-two, was living at home with his mother, his younger brothers Joseph, George and Harry, his sister Mary, a servant and three lodgers at No. 12 Bowling Green Lane in Clerkenwell. His occupation was given as ‘assisting in business’ to his mother, a coal dealer. Two years later, on 21 December 1913, he described himself as a carman living at No. 4 St Helen Street when he married twenty-two-year-old Annie Potter at St Phillip’s Church in Clerkenwell.
Darby Sabini’s rise to power is said to have begun with the humiliation of the leader of the Elephant Boys, Thomas ‘Monkey’ Benneworth, at the Griffin pub in Saffron Hill in 1920. When Benneworth ripped the dress of the Italian barmaid, Darby broke his jaw with a single knockout punch. But by this time the real action was on the racecourses. Like other gangs, the Sabini gang (otherwise known as ‘The Italian Mob’, even though Sabini could not speak the language) extorted money out of bookmakers using the threat of violence and, if necessary, a slash of the razor. It was such a lucrative business that rival mobs inevitably clashed over the spoils, with pitched battles, split lips and spilt blood at race meetings across the country. Typically, Darby Sabini would later claim that he was only involved as a steward with the Bookmakers and Racecourses Protection Association and was actually trying to stop Birmingham gangsters from blackmailing the bookmakers operating in the south.
The Sabini gang, show
ing Enrico Cortesi seated centre, with Darbi Sabini behind his left shoulder, (wearing a cap) and Harry Sabini over his right shoulder. (Islington Local History Centre)
At the same time, the Sabinis were also involved in running gambling and drinking dens. Yet somehow, despite being well known to police, Darby always managed to avoid prison. In May 1920 he was accused of ‘keeping a gaming house’ and bound over to the sum of £20 on condition that he did not frequent any such establishments for twelve months. The following year he was fined £10 after being caught with a revolver without a certificate, whilst trying to escape from the Brummagen gang at Greenford Trotting Track in north-west London. Sabini was cleared of the charge of ‘shooting with intent’ on the grounds of self-defence. Four days after that incident, on 27 March 1921, he invited the Brummagen leader, Billy Kimber, to London to discuss a proposal – he would stay away from the Midlands if Kimber’s group kept away from the South. The meeting at a flat at No. 70 Colliers Street ended with Kimber receiving a bullet in his side. The notorious villain Alf Solomon, who was allied to Sabini at the time, claimed that he had fired the shot accidentally and was subsequently acquitted of attempted murder.
Gang warfare erupted even closer to home in the autumn of 1922 when the Cortesi brothers, long-time allies of the Sabinis, started agitating for a greater share of the profits. A feud broke out, and Enrico Cortesi (known as Harry Frenchie) is said to have threatened to kill Darby Sabini, adding, ‘What have you ever shared with us apart from trouble? The Sabinis are becoming too big for their boots. We are the ones who pushed you up and we are the ones who can pull you down.’ The stage was set for a brutal confrontation.
Shortly after midnight on 20 November, Darby Sabini, then thirty-four, and his younger brother Harry, twenty-two, were talking at the bar of the Fratellanza club on the corner of Great Bath Street and Warner Street, Clerkenwell. The barmaid at the club, Louisa Doralli (according to some accounts the goddaughter of Darby Sabini), was about to close for the night when the Cortesi brothers arrived and asked for coffee. Augustus Cortesi, thirty-four, said to Darby, ‘Come on, this is the time to fight’ and pulled out a revolver. Miss Doralli managed to grab his hand as he pulled the trigger and the shot missed its target. Enrico Cortesi, thirty-nine, then pulled out a gun and aimed it at Harry Sabini. Miss Doralli later told the Daily Express:
I threw myself between them. I don’t know why except that I thought the man would not shoot at a woman. Quick as a thought Sabini drew me aside and at that moment the shots were fired. One hit Sabini in the stomach. He creased up and fell at my feet. I raised his head to my knee and he pointed at the wound, where the blood was beginning to stain his clothing. I do not know what happened after that. My head reels when I try to think of it and I can still hear the two shots.
Louisa Doralli, said to be the goddaughter of Darby Sabini, who saved their lives at the Fratellanza club in Clerkenwell in 1923. The man in the inset picture is Harry Sabini. Photos printed in the Daily Mirror in November 1922. (Author)
Harry Sabini was taken to the Royal Free Hospital in Gray’s Inn Road and was at first not expected to recover. Meanwhile, the police rounded up the Cortesis and searched for the leader Enrico, described in the newspapers as waddling like Charlie Chaplin and being ‘sharp featured, about five feet eight inches tall with sallow complexion, brown hair, grey eyes and a pronounced Roman nose’. Surprisingly, Darby Sabini agreed to give evidence against the Cortesi gang at the Old Bailey and told jurors how Alexander Tomaso, thirty-one, had bludgeoned him over the head with a bottle, smashing his false teeth. Tomaso had been a friend, he explained, but they had fallen out when Tomaso tried to lure him into the extortion racket, selling lists of horses to bookmakers for 5s each. ‘They earn £3,000 or £4,000 a year selling them,’ Sabini told the court, ‘sometimes as much as £100 or £200 a day.’
In their defence, the Cortesis complained that Harry Sabini had fired an automatic pistol in the club and that the Sabinis had been involved in a dozen cases of stabbings and shootings without prosecution. The judge, Mr Justice Darling, saw this as his opportunity to turn his summing up into a riff on the ‘Montagues and Capulets’ of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, who were always quarrelling among themselves. He also remarked on the origin of the ‘Sabini’ name:
Augustus and Enrico Cortesi, pictured in the Daily Mirror. (Author)
Paul and George Cortesi, pictured in the Daily Mirror. (Author)
When Rome was founded, there was a deficiency of women. The Latins invited the Sabines to a party, carried off all the women they fancied and married them. It is recorded that the Sabine women made excellent wives. Apparently the colony which now inhabits Clerkenwell is one of the results.
The jury acquitted Tomaso, Paul Cortesi, thirty-one, and George Cortesi, thirty-three, but convicted Augustus and Enrico of attempted murder. Mr Justice Darling sentenced them leniently to three years in prison, on the basis that the victims were not exactly of good character.
From this point, Darby Sabini began to withdraw from the front line and left the dirty work to Harry. He even attempted to sue the Topical Times for describing him as a member of one of the turf gangs. When he failed to appear at court the writ was dismissed, and he was pursued at the Bankruptcy Court for debts of £810. At this hearing, Darby again claimed that he was only paid around £8 a week as a steward with the Bookmakers and Racecourse Protection Society ‘to put down ruffianism at race meetings.’ It was suggested that he was ‘the king of the Sabini gang’ and earned £20,000 to £30,000 a year. ‘No, I do not admit that,’ Sabini replied. He was careful not to flash his wealth and is said to have continued to live in shabby housing and wear poor men’s clothes.
After being declared bankrupt, Sabini and his wife left Clerkenwell for good and moved to Hove in Sussex, directing operations from afar. Even fifteen years later, at the height of the Second World War, the authorities still thought him dangerous enough to lock up under Defence Regulation 1B, on the grounds that he had Italian sympathies and ‘is liable to lead internal insurrections against this country’. MI5 appear to have been suggesting that if Italy entered the war then ‘Italian consuls and leaders of the fascio will employ Italians of the gangster or racketeer type for certain violence’. A police memo from June 1940 added: ‘He is a gangster of the worst type with a heavy following in the Italian Colony of racecourse bullies. He is a man of very violent disposition.’ Five months later Darby pleaded his case, telling the committee that he had tried to join the Home Guard but was rejected on medical grounds: ‘I have not got Italian sympathies. I wish we could go and lick them. It will not be long before they run away. They are cowards.’ His wife also insisted that he was heavily involved in charity work and was the life governor of sixteen London hospitals – ‘The whole of his life has been spent in helping others.’ Darby was eventually released on 15 April 1941. Two years later he was jailed for three years for receiving stolen goods. He died in 1950, aged sixty-two.
Case Thirteen
Coronation Roses
1937
Suspect:
Frederick George Murphy
Age:
52
Charge:
Murder
Sentence:
Execution
The day after being crowned King, George VI and his queen consort, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, surprised their delirious subjects with an unexpected tour around London. The royal car set off from Buckingham Palace at half past two on 13 May 1937, and made its way through the West End towards Shaftesbury Avenue. Word quickly spread as the new monarch was sighted in Theobald’s Road and Clerkenwell Road, and by startled market sellers in Leather Lane. Then it was across to Old Street before striking northwards up Bath Street and Shepherdess Walk into Islington. Turning left on to Essex Road, the car drove past Harding’s Furniture at No. 22 Islington Green, before doubling back to Upper Street. By now the crowds were enormous. Shoppers, shopkeepers, workers and idle passers-by, enjoying the half-day holiday, rushed int
o the street to catch a glimpse of their King. The Mirror newspaper reported:
Tens of thousands of wildly excited children had the greatest surprise of their lives yesterday when the king and queen made an unannounced circular tour through fourteen miles of north London streets … Outside Islington Town Hall police officers had to jump on the running boards of the royal car while fifty other officers ran alongside for nearly a mile. Women rushed from a block of flats in Upper-street and waved their hands wet with soapsuds as the car passed. They had been washing when news of the visit reached them …
Harding’s Furniture Store at No. 22 Islington Green. (National Archives)
The crowds lingered for a while before dissipating as the royal car completed its circular tour via Highbury, Offord Road, Caledonian Road, Kentish Town and Marylebone. The cheers and the smiles slowly faded as the men and women of Islington got back to work. King George VI and his queen returned to Buckingham Palace, blissfully unaware that they had passed the scene of a murder committed just hours earlier on Coronation Day itself. The victim’s body was still lying in the cellar beneath Harding’s Furniture Store when the royal car rolled through Islington Green and would not be discovered until the morning of the following day.
At around ten o’clock on 14 May 1937, the sales manager at Harding’s, Stanley Wilton, was handed a message scrawled upon a piece of paper. It appeared to have come from the caretaker, Frederick George Murphy: