When I first came across newspaper accounts of the Hyde Park Hotel robbery, I was puzzled to read that the villains had attacked their victim with a “life preserver.” For Americans a life preserver (or life jacket) is a flotation device. My difficulty in understanding what the papers meant by the phrase proved once more the truth of the line (often attributed to George Bernard Shaw) “The English and the Americans are two peoples divided by a common language.” I soon discovered a “life preserver” in 1930s Britain was a truncheon, or what North Americans would call a “blackjack.” Helpfully, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that Anthony Trollope and Arthur Conan Doyle often used the term. The life preserver (cudgel, baton, truncheon, cosh, nightstick, or bludgeon) was a short club, heavily loaded with a lead weight at one end and a strap or lanyard at the other. Easily concealed, it was purportedly designed for self-defense, hence the name “life preserver.” A single forceful blow could cause concussion and even prove fatal. The type of weapon used in the Hyde Park Hotel robbery was of scant legal importance. Nevertheless my stumbling over the curious term “life preserver” pricked my curiosity and drew me to the case. And as I tracked the jewel thieves through police reports and press accounts, I realized, to my surprise and excitement, that an investigation of the public response to their misdeeds offered a fresh perspective on many aspects of 1930s British society.
But should I devote a book-length study to the misdeeds of wastrels and scoundrels? George Orwell, who warned that the author was besmirched by the material he handled, might well have viewed even the desire to launch such a project as betraying “a kind of spiritual inadequacy.”a Friends and colleagues were more understanding. Taking time out of their busy schedules, Lucy Bland, Stephen Brooke, Brian Dippie, Jack Little, and Nikki Strong-Boag read early versions of the entire manuscript. Adrian Bingham shared his unrivaled knowledge of the interwar press. I owe special thanks to Robert Nye. He not only read several drafts, but his enthusiastic support of the study also lifted my spirits when, like many authors, I reached that stage of wondering whether the project made any sense at all. I am also grateful to Judith Allen, Peter Bailey, Paul Delany, Catherine Ellis, Michael Finn, Matt Houlbrook, Jim Kempling, Kathy Mezei, Tom Saunders, and Tim Travers for peppering me with ideas and suggestions. Terence Greer offered to help with the cover illustration. More contributions came from Susannah and Richard Taffler and Aimée and Michael Birnbaum, who were, in addition, wonderful hosts during my repeated stays in London.
I owe much to the helpful staffs of the National Archives, the Archives of Kent State University, Wellington College Archives, Harrow School Archives, Oundle School Archives, the libraries at the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University, and the British Library. Jaimee McRoberts at the British Library News Room was particularly considerate. Willi Lauri Ahonen generously translated a Finnish passage for me; Tineke Hellwig and Dick Unger did the same from the Dutch. Jill Ainsley was an imaginative and industrious research assistant, and at the University of Victoria, Karen Hickton has been an ever-helpful departmental secretary. My previous books were all supported by the Social Science and Research Council of Canada, which allowed me to make several overseas research trips. I am happy to acknowledge once more the Council’s crucial role in generously encouraging historical research. This study was launched with the funds left over from my last major grant.
And finally, no words can adequately express all that I owe to Arlene, who has supported me in so many ways. One trifling example: I’m embarrassed to think of the number of times I have interrupted her in the midst of writing or reading to “share” with her yet another anecdote relating to playboys or Mayfair men. She not only tolerates these countless intrusions and hears me out; she often has a better notion than I do as to how such material could be most effectively used. It is due to her aversion to the use of the strained or artificial that I do not conclude these acknowledgments—as I had first planned—by lauding her as my “life preserver.”
a So Orwell said of Cyril Connolly for writing The Rock Pool (1936). See George Orwell: An Age Like This: 1920–1940, in The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), 1:226.