By this time, I was looked upon as a very suspect soldier and I remember once when I was working in some lieutenant’s office I found a half-dozen old lemonade bottles in a cupboard I was cleaning out. I took the bottles out to the NAAFI van that came round every day and cashed them in for an orange drink or something. This little lieutenant practically accused me of stealing them and I felt really embarrassed. If I’d known he was so skint I would have loaned him a few quid. Finally I just got fed up with the whole childish carry-on and took off for London. Goodbye army and good riddance too! Why didn’t they just chuck me out? That would have been the easiest solution for everyone. My main problem was that I just could not generate any respect for them because I knew they were treating me unfairly. So fuck them: I went AWOL.
Chapter Nine
Tea Shops for Two
It was 1958. I was 21 and back living in London again. I was lucky to be able to move in with Jack at his cousin’s house in Kensal Rise, but I knew that this could only be temporary. I could have gone to stay in Ted’s house in Bravington Road, but because I had been arrested there before, I thought it possible that the army authorities might come looking for me. So I moved into Liddell Gardens until I was in a position to get a place of my own.
Most days Jack and I just mooched about, getting up to the odd fiddle or quick piece of work here and there. Opportunist thieving was probably the best description of the way we were grafting then. I remember one stroke we pulled in the Dudley Arms pub, used by the cops who worked out of Paddington Green police station, which was just across the road. The Dudley was always full of loud-mouthed coppers and we were in the habit of going in there two or three times a week just to pick up the local police gossip about what was going on.
As happens in many pubs, the bar staff in the Dudley used to put all the banknotes, other than ten shilling and pound notes, in a tumbler standing on the shelf alongside the till. One night, we were in the Dudley and the tumbler was particularly full of fivers, with even the brown colour of £10 notes showing between the blue (the cops always had plenty of money for booze).
I had toyed with the idea of pulling this stroke before, but things had never been really desperate and the money in the tumbler was seldom that much of a lure. I knew it could be taken, but I had always shrugged the idea off. This night, however, money was a bit tight with us and the tumbler full of notes was really very tempting. It was a busy night and I saw yet another fiver stuffed away. I nudged Jack and indicated the tumbler.
‘I’m going to nick that, Jack,’ I told him. He raised his eyebrows at me over the rim of his pint then glanced round expressively at the noisy, clustered cops. ‘C’mon with me,’ I said and headed towards the toilet.
Up on the wall between the first door off the bar and the second door that opened into the toilet itself was the main electrical switch box. I pointed it out to Jack and told him to go into the toilet, have a slash and pull down the switch box handle on his way out. He gave me a long sideways look then broke into a grin, nodding his head in understanding. I made my way back to the bar and began psyching myself up.
I was beginning to think that Jack had got lost when suddenly the pub plunged into darkness. I was ready, with one foot on the brass foot rail and the second the lights went out I launched my body over the surface of the bar and stretched my arm across the space and grabbed the prize. There was a lot of good-natured shouting about putting the lights back on as I slipped away to meet Jack outside. There was over £140 in the tumbler when we counted it out and I’ve often wondered what the bar staff thought about it being stolen while the pub was full of cops.
That’s how it was then: something always turned up and we scraped along, one day good, another day poor, but always ready and on the lookout for that quick, sometimes split-second, opportunity.
Jack had been left an old Wolseley car by a friend of his who had got nicked and was in jail; we would pass the days driving around in it, keeping our eyes open and our hands ready. It was in the course of this prowling that we latched on to a series of jobs that threw us a few modest earners.
We normally went into a Lyon’s tea shop – there was a huge chain of them in London in those days – for our breaks and it didn’t take us long to notice that none of them was particularly secure. I suppose it was because they were only cafés and didn’t appear worth breaking into. A more critical eye, however, would have noticed that every Lyon’s tea shop sold cigarettes and as cigarettes were always a good seller for us we decided we would have a go at one of them.
When we made an inspection of several shops, we discovered another feature that made them even more attractive. Every tea shop had at least one emergency door and right in the centre of this door hung the key to unlock it. This meant that even if it was an awkward entry, we could get out nice and sweet through the emergency exit, usually on to a back alley or into a corridor that led to the street.
We decided to have a go at one near Kensal Rise and picked a branch on a main road. We got on to the flat roof at the rear of the building where we could work comfortably on the first-floor window bars. Once in position, we opened the jaws of our bolt cutters to their maximum and placed them over the bars. They cut through like strings of liquorice and once inside we soon found the storeroom that held the tobacco.
In those days, the tea shops carried a stock of about 25,000 to 30,000 cigarettes and getting rid of them was no problem at all. Sure enough, the emergency key opened the door out on to the same alley we had used to access the roof. It took only a minute to throw everything into the car boot and five minutes later we were stacking the cigarettes in Jack’s bedroom. We had hit on a good thing and began sorting out a Lyon’s tea shop to break into on about a weekly basis. I suppose we must have done about ten of them before their insurance company came to its senses and made them install burglar alarms.
We always sold our cigarettes to a café owner in Acton. We were getting paid six pounds ten shillings per thousand for upmarket fags – Players, Senior Service and Capstan – and five pounds ten shillings per thousand for ‘cheap’ fags – Woodbine, Player’s Weights and Park Drive. It seems very cheap compared to prices nowadays, but in 1958 that was good money. With things going so well, I decided to find myself a flat, or at least a room to live in. It so happened that a friend of mine, Les Beavis, who owned a licensed drinking club in Oxford Gardens, off Ladbroke Grove, knew a café owner who had a vacant one-room flat above his place in Portobello Road. The café owner got a tenant and I got a flat with special attention in the café for my meals. It suited me fine and I was happy to find a place of my own with an understanding landlord.
With plenty of free time on our hands and money in our pockets, our daily prowling tapered off to almost nothing and Jack started taking me over to Fulham where he knew a lot of people. Everyone knew everyone else’s business over there and Jack and I got a bit of respect from them because they knew we were grafters and doing quite well. In the criminal world this sort of socialising is important. It is through becoming known and earning a reputation as a good grafter and solid if it ‘comes on top’ that you become accepted by your peers and allowed into their circles. In this way you increase your knowledge of what work is available and who’s doing what, when and where.
Funnily enough, we spent more time socialising in the cafés over cups of tea than we did drinking in the Lion. I met a lot of up-and-coming villains in Fulham in those days, the most famous being, I suppose, the little ‘snouter’ firm of Mickey Ball, Joey Docherty, Charlie Wilson and Roy James – the last two went on to play major roles in the Great Train Robbery. Mickey Ball would have been on the train robbery too if he hadn’t got five years for his part in a pay snatch in Heathrow Airport. And Joey Docherty was doing a five for a snout warehouse in Weymouth, or he would have been there as well. It was about that time I met Bert Mathers, a pal of Charlie Wilson’s, who had just signed off from the merchant navy and was thinking about doing a bit of ‘work’. He asked about g
rafting with Jack and me, but we weren’t doing enough to require another hand.
Doing the tea shops had tapered off due to the new security precautions and because I had moved away from Kensal Rise I began to see less and less of Jack. I would meet up with him in Fulham and sometimes he’d visit Les’s club for a late drink. As well as this I had a steady girlfriend now, Jo Taylor from Ruislip, whom I’d met through a relation of Jack’s. Gradually Jack drifted away and soon a few weeks passed without my seeing him. I really didn’t notice it all that much as I was going out with Jo two or three times a week and travelling backwards and forwards to Ruislip took up a lot of my time. I was also spending a lot of time over in Fulham with my new mates.
It was at about this time something happened that reminded me of my army days. I used to visit Ted and his family at Bravington Road; one Saturday Mabel asked me if I would give her a lift up to Finsbury Park where she wanted to visit a friend. I was happy to oblige and soon I was motoring along Finsbury Park Road. I couldn’t help seeing the bright shop front of Ted Gerrard’s Cycles. I remembered that I had got things from him and never paid for them.
After I dropped Mrs Jones off at her friend’s, I made my way back to Ted Gerrard’s and went inside. It was a proper racing man’s shop with all the latest bikes and equipment on display. The owner was behind the counter. I introduced myself and told him I owed him for some equipment I had got from him months before.
‘Crosbie … Crosbie …’ he mused, his face wrinkled in thought after I told him my name. ‘You were in the army or something, if I remember correctly?’
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘That’s nothing to do with you. I only want to square up my bill.’ I looked up at the bikes dangling from their hooks in the ceiling. ‘And I want to buy a track bike.’ I had tried to train on the Paddington track with my road bike, but it wasn’t allowed.
‘Oh, I’m not concerned about your army business,’ Ted said, grinning. ‘But I sent you a letter and someone replied to it. Here, I’ve got it on file. I’ll let you read it yourself.’ With that, he went to his filing cabinet and in a moment or two he handed me a letter.
Dear James
I have been going through my accounts and find that you are four weeks in arrears. Would you therefore please leap upon your bicycle and pedal to the nearest post office and send me £2. This will serve (a) to keep you in my good books for any future orders and (b) to keep you fit.
Yours sincerely
Ted Gerrard
I smiled at the friendly tone of the demand and went to hand it back. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Someone typed an answer on the back.’ I turned the letter over and read:
Dear Mr Gerrard
I regret to inform you that Private Crosbie took your advice somewhat prematurely, leaped on his bicycle and has not been seen since. If he is still pedalling, he is either (a) very fit, or (b) nearly dead.
Yours sincerely
Sgt Laffy
It was about then that Bert put a proposition to me and we began working together. Eddie Matcham, a Co-op driver who occasionally passed on information to Charlie Wilson’s firm, wasn’t too happy with them. Apparently he had told them about a big delivery he had made and they had underpaid him for his information. He wasn’t very happy and wanted to know if Bert would speak to Charlie about it. Bert told Eddie that he didn’t think he could do that, but if he wasn’t happy about getting properly paid he should pass on his information to us and we would guarantee him his correct money. Bert and I became the recipients of Eddie’s valuable information.
Our first requirement, if we were to exploit our source of information, was good transport and this presented us with a slight problem. It had been easy enough with Jack and the old Wolseley – the registered owner of that car was in jail doing two years and couldn’t care less about the motor. Bert didn’t drive and I didn’t have a licence, yet a car was essential to us. It also had to be a car that I could explain away to the police if I ever got a pull or was involved in an accident. I couldn’t afford to be on offer – at serious risk of arrest – every time I drove the car and most of my day was going to be spent behind the wheel.
What I had to do was find someone who, for a small financial consideration, was prepared to ‘lose’ his wallet along with his driving licence and other identification papers. The loss would be reported to the police and this would cover the person against any problems which might arise later on due to the criminal use of the lost licence. The licence and another piece of ID material was then used to hire a car and that was us mobile. This meant that we could drive around without worrying about being stopped for any reason by the police. If we were stopped, I only had to produce the hire contract and driving licence to get waved on. It meant that the only time we would really be on offer would be when we were driving back from a job with the car loaded with snout. If the police spotted us in that situation I would just have to try to lose them, or at the very least get out of their sight long enough to abandon the car and escape on foot. Whatever happened, the police wouldn’t be able to trace us through the car and the chances were that the person whose licence I had used would not even be questioned. It wasn’t a bad deal all round and once we had a car our next priority was to find a safe lock-up garage.
A safe lock-up was, as they still are today, hard to come by. Certainly there were plenty of private house owners who didn’t have cars and sub-let their garages for the sake of the few pounds’ rent they could ask. But for people like us who needed a garage to store stolen goods and burglar’s tools, this sort of set-up was too dangerous. Private house owners tended to be inquisitive about who rented their garages and the odd hours we would be coming and going would make them even more curious.
We finally managed to track down and rent a lock-up in a small square of garages just behind Clapton railway station in East London. Now we could start taking advantage of Eddie’s information.
I worked with Bert on several of Eddie’s jobs and we never had any bother. On every occasion, entry was gained through the skylight on the roof. We would fold back the lead flushing and lift out the pane of glass in one piece, then step inside the skylight structure on to the framework ‘floor’ of steel bars. Bert would position the bolt cutters on a bar, letting one handle lie flat on the barred surface. He would then sit on one handle of the cutter and stretch up to grasp the other one with both hands. This was an ideal position to get his full weight and strength behind the pull and he could easily cut through the bar on his own.
Once the bar had been removed, I would lower myself down into the shop to locate the cigarette store, then pass the stuff up to Bert through the gap in the bars. We always tried to finish our work before midnight so we could drive to our lock-up and get the cigarettes put away while there was still plenty of traffic about. We did quite well working on Eddie’s information and always paid him as agreed.
As well as the work Eddie was feeding us, we also found jobs of our own. It was the same routine as when I worked with Jack, just driving about, keeping our eyes open and doing our police work in reverse: the police patrolled to make sure everything was secure; we patrolled to try and find anything insecure.
It is really quite strange the way you come across a possible job. All you do is drive about looking here and there, more often than not finding nothing of interest, then out of the blue you spot something and bells ring in your head. One time, it was a British Road Service lorry in the process of delivering cartons of cigarettes into a shop up Highbury Road, a sight that more than warranted a closer look. Once the premises came under inspection, we would check the outside for alarm bells and security precautions and whether the shop was a liver (persons living on the premises) or a lock-up – this could make or break a job for us.
If everything looks encouraging from the outside, the next step is to go inside and check the interior of the premises. A look at the inside of the shop can often expose a weakness that is invisible from the pavement and you might be able to look into th
e rear section of the shop and see what sort of stock they carry, or how secure the back door might be. Depending on the shop’s layout, you might even be able to go right up to the rear door to check it for an easy exit – a great asset for carrying out the cartons of cigarettes and if the door can be easily opened from the inside it means that the actual entry point only needs to be big enough to admit one person, involving a minimum of work and noise.
If everything from the front and the inside looks good, the next thing to check is access to the rear of the premises. Usually we would find a lane running behind the shop premises and the shop itself would normally have a small yard at the rear. A backyard was attractive because there would normally be a fence or a wall to protect the area and this would hide us from anyone who might use the lane – someone walking a dog, or maybe courting couples looking for a dark corner to canoodle in. A lane was always handy too for getting the car close up for speedy loading.
If everything looked good, we would make a similar check after dark to see how much activity we could expect and whether or not there were lights on in premises above or to either side of the target. If everything still looked good, we would go ahead as soon as possible.
Everything was going smoothly for us and we thought we were doing very well for a couple of snouters. I had made enough money in the last three or four months to rent a large unfurnished basement flat in Devonshire Gardens and I had bought furniture through a friend in Hammersmith.
I remember feeling a twist of envy when the newspapers headlined a job that had been pulled on a branch of Barclays Bank in Stamford Hill. Now that was a job I could admire. The villains had rented empty premises next door and broken into the bank through the dividing wall in the basement. Once inside the bank, they had cut open the vault using a thermic lance and had stolen a lot of money. Once they had cleaned out the vault, the crooks took off with the cash and the thermic lance, no doubt thinking of future uses for this magnificent burglar’s tool. They left the rest of their easily replaceable equipment behind –oxygen bottles, carbon rods, heat shields and the heavy protective clothing necessary when using the lance. As far as I remember, this was the first time a thermic lance had been used in a robbery and no one was ever done for the Stamford Hill job. I looked at the bank as I drove past it on my way to pick up my own more mundane burglary equipment and was conscious of what small fry Bert and I were compared to the men who had pulled off the bank job. Maybe one day I would be in on something like that.
Armed and Dangerous--This is the True Story of How I Carried Out Scotland's Biggest Bank Robbery Page 10
