We set up home in Milton Road, a wide tree-lined street in a very desirable part of Herne Hill, south London. Maureen gave up her job as a presser once we got married, but she always pulled her weight. I used to joke that she believed manual labour was a Spanish wrestler, but she was never frightened of hard work. When I got nicked, she went straight back to work at Waterloo Station on the tea and buffet cars. The job was handed down to members of the families and it kept her going while I was in the nick. She was also very protective of me and never frightened to weigh in physically on my behalf.
In the past, I’ve had to do a bit of ducking from Maureen myself. When we had the Prince of Wales pub in Lant Street and a flat on the Brandon Estate, Kennington, she once threw flowerpots at me from the 14th floor after a row. Another time, I’d been out with George, Bertie Blake, Buster and Tommy Wisbey and got home late – having popped out for a quiet drink, we finished up in Brighton! Maureen steamed into me and I legged it back to my car – a brand-new Citroën DS 19, painted in racing green – dodging a hail of stones, bricks and small change from her handbag, which dented the car roof. From the 14th floor, these missiles were as dangerous and deadly as bullets, causing sparks to fly off the pavement, nearly penetrating the roof of my new car. (I hate to think what they’d have done to my skull.)
But I could be just as angry towards her. On one occasion I was several hours late for Sunday lunch. When I arrived home from drinking after hours with the chaps, the roast smelled wonderful, but Maureen had retired to her bedroom with the Sunday papers. ‘That smells lovely,’ I complimented her, and went to the dining room, expecting her to serve up the food. Maureen came into the kitchen and without a word to me, opened the oven, took out the roast and went straight out the back door to the yard while I sat expectantly with my knife and fork at the ready. Instead of a steaming hot roast being delivered on my plate, I heard the sound of a knife scraping the serving plate as she emptied the lunch into the dustbin. She then trotted back in, disdainfully looking past me, and went straight back to the bedroom and her newspapers.
I was incensed. I went to the yard, picked up the dustbin, carried it to the bedroom and emptied the contents over her as she sat fully clothed on the bed. I then walked out of the house and returned to my cronies and carried on drinking. When I returned home a couple of days later, we were sweet as pie to one another. Childish really, but that was typical of our early days together.
Even before we married, Maureen had witnessed gang fights involving me and our friends. It was all part of life in those days. The Harrises picked on Sammy Osteruran outside a pub in Camberwell New Road one Sunday morning. Sammy got a glass in his face as a result of this feud with the Harris family. A terrible fight followed – in fact, the feud went on for several years. Tommy ended up working with them after the feud and one of the brothers, with whom I had a straightener, even came to my wedding. Later in our careers, we’d drink together and help each other out if there were any problems. Many of my early rivals have over the years become solid friends and we still drink together sometimes.
On one occasion, there was a row between the Harris family and Tommy Shaw, a bookmaker, involving bets and street pitches. Tommy was a generous man with a charming personality and was very successful. If you were short of a tenner, he’d give it to you. Curiously enough, when bookmaking became legal in Britain, licences were only given to those people who could prove they were in the business. So, for some, the only acceptable proof entitling them to those much-sought-after licences was to prove they had broken the law and had convictions for betting!
One of my mates at around this time was Horace ‘Horry’ Dance. He was an old friend from Battersea and lived in a nice respectable street just off Clapham Common. His mother was one of those well-spoken ladies who would proudly show you a photograph of her Horry immaculately turned out in his cricket whites surrounded by the rest of the team. The bit she didn’t reveal was that the photograph was taken in Borstal.
Horry was a well-known face and married a beautiful girl called Barbara. But he was a right handful – always in trouble and getting nicked for assaults on police. He had a powerful BSA Thunderflash motorbike on which we rode to work. I would do a snatch on a night safe while he would wait down an alleyway or round a corner. We’d make sure the numberplates were covered up and we disguised ourselves with pilot helmets and goggles. (There weren’t any crash helmets in those days.) After the snatch, we’d roar off. There were rich pickings to be had. We robbed furniture stores such as Times Furnishings, where the day’s takings might be left in a drawer minded only by an office girl. The money piled up from people bringing in their monthly instalments for goods that they’d bought on the drip (hire purchase).
Later on, we nicked a Vincent Black Shadow motorbike (the fastest motorbike on the roads) and used that to snatch money off managers and cashiers as they went to put cash in night safes. Indirectly, I gave some of it back later when I bought a Times Furnishings bedroom suite – for cash.
There was nothing Horace wouldn’t do for you. He was once in hospital with peritonitis when he heard that I’d been nicked. He pulled out the tubes connected to his stomach, got out of bed immediately and went to the police station to bail me out at Catford Magistrates’ Court. That’s the sort of chap Horry was.
And there was nothing he wouldn’t steal. Wherever he went, he carried a screwdriver and nicked everything he could take home. He bought three houses and built a fourth one entirely from stolen materials. There was a violent streak in the family too, though. His wife Barbara, who helped him build the house, was involved in a hilarious brawl with Horry’s mum and dad. The argument began inside the house and spilled out into the garden of their lovely suburban street, with neighbours peeping through curtains at the commotion. The garden became a battlefield. Both sides picked up stones, bricks and gardening tools – anything they could lay their hands on. They used metal dustbin lids as shields to protect themselves against the missiles. You can imagine the din.
For all that, they were lovely people and good friends. I didn’t see Horry for years and then learned the sad news that he’d taken his own life with an overdose.
In the early days, Horry had introduced me to some heavier people who were into bigger paydays than we were getting. For me, it was like serving an apprenticeship. I was continually progressing up the scale with more experienced people to whom Horry had sung my praises.
One of Horry’s past acquaintances was ‘Mad’ Mo Jones. When Mo came out of Wandsworth Prison after serving five years for cutting up a copper’s face, he called on Horry’s mother. We reckoned there might be a problem, because he and Horry had a fight some time previously, and so we tooled up. Thankfully, the meeting was amiable. Mo was with another chap I knew, Lennie Morgan, so we all shook hands.
This was a relief, as Mo Jones was a fearsome man. He was built like a brick shithouse and had a nasty temper with it. Mo was always tooled up and had a terrible reputation in and out of the nick. Once, I was invited to work with him and Lennie and another chap called Bertie Blake. We did a few post offices, tie-ups and pay snatches. In those days there were still trams and trolleybuses and one evening Mad Mo actually did a raid on a tram! Believe me, this was a one-off in the annals of crime. We had been waiting for the cashier of the Super Palace Cinema at Clapham Junction to leave the building with the day’s takings. We missed him and someone pointed out that he was getting on a tram. Mad Mo jumped on the same tram and we followed. He walked down the gangway, looking from left to right for someone holding a cash bag. When he found him, he asked the chap if he was the cashier.
The geezer confirmed he was and Mo grabbed him out of his seat and said, ‘Give me the fucking money!’ The poor chap handed it over without hesitation. Mo had that effect on people.
Something was bound to give eventually, and it happened in an unexpected way. Mo raped Lennie’s girlfriend Rose, a good-looker with a voluptuous body. He went around to her place, threatened her with a knife to her throat and then raped her. She came screaming and crying to Lennie