THE SHEFFIELD
GANG WAR
TOSSING RINGS AND THE MOONEY GANG
Boxing Day 1924, and instead of being filled with goodwill, the People announced on its front page a ‘New Phase in Feud of Race Gangs’. It centred on Sheffield, which, like London and Birmingham, was scarred by its race-gang pests. Terrifying citizens and taxi-drivers with free fights and ‘rough stuff’ tactics, they had necessitated a special watch in the city centre and all-round police vigilance. A feud between two gangs had been raging for several years, but recently the conflict had become more frequent and desperate: ‘Revolvers, truncheons and razors are used by the gangs and the police know that many men have received dreadful injuries from razor-slashing attacks, but are powerless to prosecute because the victims are scared, and dare not give evidence against the assailants’. The rivalry had blown up over leadership of Sheffield’s premier race gang, and so bitter was the feud that several original members had fled the country. Most worryingly, the Birmingham hammer gang, possibly the best-known gang of racecourse ruffians in the country, was thought to be ‘taking a hand’ in the Sheffield warfare.521
Despite its sensationalism, the article was correct. There was a vicious gang war in Sheffield between the Mooney Gang, led by George Mooney, and the Park Brigade headed by Sam Garvin. Both were racing men and previously they had been partners in crime, but after falling out their animosity knew no bounds. To make matters worse, the feared Thomas Armstrong of the Birmingham Gang had now arrived in Sheffield to support Mooney. But unlike other gang conflicts throughout the country during this era, this war was not fought over racecourse protection rackets; it was over control of a lucrative gambling site at Sky Edge, a high ridge of wasteland looming over Sheffield’s city centre.
The gambling here concerned the tossing of coins. Centuries old and easy and simple to play, this game was deeply embedded in male working-class culture and was widespread across England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, as well as Australia, where it was called two-up. Illegal as it was, it could be played between a group of a few men after they had left the pub or between large numbers in what was termed a school, usually found in remote locations, which provided more safety from the police. Often these bigger tossing schools were controlled by local hardmen, who took a cut from the winning gamblers, and they were highly profitable, sometimes leading to confrontations when takeovers were attempted. The gang war in Sheffield was the most bloody and infamous of all such conflicts and was one of the reasons why the Home Secretary would declare war against the race gangs in 1925, a move to be discussed in the next chapter.
Tossing involved men gathering in a ring around a largish space into which stepped one of them who would be the banker. He gambled that he could toss two ha’pennies or pennies into the air to land heads upwards. If they came down tails he would lose, while if they showed one head and one tail there would be another toss. The banker himself might stake any sum, depending upon the size of the school. This could be covered by one person from the crowd or several, and side bets could also be staked amongst those watching. Before each toss, the coins were examined to make sure that they were not two-headed or weighted. Then they were placed tails up on the index finger and middle finger of one hand, although in some tossing schools, predominantly those in Ireland, they were rested on a piece of wood known as a feckin (throwing) stick. When tossed, the coins had to turn all the time at a reasonable height to ensure no cheating. This was because some men surreptitiously ‘flammed’ – put their thumb to the side of one coin to stop it spinning and ensure it stayed heads up.522 If there was any doubt about the throw, anyone in the ring could shout out ‘bar that toss’ before the coins touched the ground, and there would have to be another throw. Bets were paid out at even money.
In Scotland, there were numerous big birling (spinning) schools along the Clyde, as well as in the woods and pit banks of Lanarkshire; whilst the gamblers of Swansea met on the beach or in the local quarries. In the Midlands and the North there were also large tossing schools in secluded spots near to urban centres. Coldwell on the moors in East Lancashire was notorious in the early 1920s. Just over three miles from Nelson, it had big and little rings depending upon the stakes gambled. Most days, about a hundred youths and men attended, some walking there in their clogs and weekday attire, others arriving by car or a special bus. Gamblers could even purchase pies, cakes, cigarettes and hot tea for refreshment.523 Isolated rings elsewhere in England included Tudhoe Wood in County Durham. Here the hoying (spinning) of the coins was taken on by someone referred to as a ‘bebber’, a professional spinner who was paid by winners. To ensure fair play, he tossed his own supply of ‘jubes’ – Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee ha’pennies. Such larger schools were protected from police raids by ‘crows’ or ‘pikes’ (scouts), often paid 10 shillings a day, and were run by ‘tollers’ who levied a fee of around 2s 6d in the pound from winning punters.524 These tough-nut ‘masters’ of the ring were like ‘Two Ton Titley’ of Cannock, strikingly portrayed by Arthur Hopcraft, a child of a respectable and chapel-going working-class family.
He was holding money in large quantity. He was the pivot around which the other men conducted themselves. They brought him coins and notes, and sometimes he gave them some back. He kept up an encouraging, belching banter, his puce face prickly with pinheads of sweat nestling in its creases. ‘C’mon lads, yer luck’s in. Doa be frit. The wife woa know.’ He had money in his hands, in his pockets and often between his teeth and tucked between his trousers-top and his swelling midriff . . . He was a picture of godlessness, rampant with beer and blatant in his love of money – of the feel of it, of its corrupting desirability. He was immodesty personified. He was wicked. Two Ton looked gigantic and unassailable in this setting. He was at work, selling sin with a grand flair.525
The prevalence of tossing during this period is clear from the sheer spread of the activity. It was also very popular in Ireland and large gatherings were commonplace in Dublin, unlike the big cities in England. Mick Doyle recalled several tossing schools in the lanes near to Townsend Street, down by the quays south of the River Liffey, prevalent even during the hard days of the 1930s when unemployment was rife. Big money was involved and they were very much organised, with each one having a ring man who controlled everything.
He was a heavy and he looked after it. Oh he’d have a belt, swing his belt, take off his belt and swing his belt and that’d keep order. They’d give him so much depending on how much they’d win. Always ha’pennies and they wouldn’t say heads or tails like you’d say [in England], they’d say heads or harps. Heads or harps. ‘Harps, harps a hundred pound. Heads a hundred pound’. If you had your money to put down you could get in. So long as you got your bet down he’d cover your bet, right. That’s on the ground . . . You put your money down say twenty pound and he covers it. The man who’s throwing he covers it, right. The ring man, he’s the boxman and he looked after everything.526
One of the best-known boxmen in Dublin was Sartini. He and his partner ran the school in the Greenhills, beyond Griffith Bridge. Máirín Johnston evoked him as if he were the ringmaster in a circus . . . ‘he stormed about the centre of the toss-school circle wielding a short-handled dray driver’s whip. The lash of the whip was about three feet long, and Sartini would use it mercilessly to enlarge the circle so as to enable the other boxman to get the bets down for the tosser, who would then throw up the two ‘makes’ (coins) off the ‘feck’ (stick).’527
Sartini’s control was lucrative and, on one occasion, he had to fight off a challenge from the notorious Animal Gang from the Corporation Buildings and surrounding neighbourhood in inner city North Dublin.528 Similar events happened in Yorkshire, where the Mexborough Boys of racecourse rogues tried to take over tossing schools near Huddersfield, an attempt that was successfully resisted.529 But the worst violence arose between 1923 and 1925 over the control of Sky Edge, leading to Sheffield becoming dramatised as the ‘little Chicago of Britain’.530 This gang war was unusual both in its intensity and length, as most tollers gave up the control of their rings as younger and harder men came along, or else in a straight fight.
Sky Edge had both large and small rings and had been notorious for some time when it was raided in 1917 by the police and military looking for deserters.531 The stakes gambled were high and many hundreds of pounds were won and lost, so extraordinary measures were taken to secure the school against surprise. Paid as much as £5 a week, ‘crows’ were stationed at all the important approaches. Aware of this, a large body of soldiers and police approached it from ten different directions and managed to collar over fifty men out of the two hundred gathered there. The ringleader made a desperate but unsuccessful attempt to escape by jumping about 40 feet over the cliff into an adjoining brickyard but sprained his ankle and was captured.532 Most of the arrested were working men from Sheffield and fines of £3 each were handed out.533 That makeup expanded in the gambling boom straight after the First World War, with Sky Edge drawing in businessmen and others from a wider area. It also pulled in the Mooney Gang, which had been involved in a smaller way in protection rackets at local tossing rings within the city.534
The gang’s ‘generalissimo’, George Mooney, was of Irish descent and from West Bar, a district just to the north of the city centre that was associated with the Irish. In 1891, when he was a toddler, he was living in a lodging house with his mother and older brother but no father.535 A decade later, the family was reunited, but Mooney was already set on a life of crime. Fined for theft when he was eleven, over the next twelve years he was convicted of stealing, shop breaking, conspiracy, assault and loitering. He had also been arrested seventeen times for drunkenness and swearing, and been discharged from unlawful wounding.536 Married at sixteen to Sarah Wigley, they separated a year later. His wife had one child and was expecting another, but she was frightened to live with him because of his cruelty. He had thrown her out of the house more than once, saying ‘Take your hook; I don’t want you.’ Once, she and the baby had even been turned out half-dressed in the middle of a rainy night. He also kept her short of money, sometimes giving her a penny or two for breakfast, or perhaps tuppence for supper.537 Sarah later returned to Mooney but died in 1921.
By 1911, and ostensibly a barman, he was involved with the local Spring Street Gang, which terrorised publicans into giving them free drinks and sometimes money. Within two years it had become ‘the notorious Mooney gang’ when he and his henchman, Peter Winsey, were convicted of assault.538 That year, 1913, Mooney was damned as ‘a dangerous character’ and was imprisoned for two months’ hard labour for punching a woman and kicking her on the ground after he had attacked her husband.539 He seemed to revel in his notoriety as a ‘newspaper hooligan’. In another assault, when his various convictions were referred to, he quipped, ‘You will have me put down as a modern Dick Turpin if you go on’.540 What Mooney could be put down as was a dirty fighter. In 1914, in a stand-up scrap outside a pub, one of his gang kicked away the legs of his opponent. Mooney then bit off part of the man’s ear and, going back into the pub, punched his friend with such force that he knocked out four teeth. Despite the familiar story of victims withdrawing charges and witnesses changing stories or being too fearful of giving evidence, Mooney was imprisoned for two months’ hard labour.541 Within weeks of his release, he was back inside for hitting a policeman so hard that he knocked him out.542
During the First World War, Mooney deserted from the York and Lancashire Regiment. Going on the run, in 1918 he was arrested for frequenting in Liverpool and pickpocketing in Leeds. Described as a commission agent, he was 5 foot 8 inches tall and was marked with tattoos of a dancing girl and a banjo on his right forearm.543 The next year, he was back in Sheffield and in control of Sky Edge. He took over with the support of his older brother, John Thomas, Albert Foster and William Furniss, three hardmen with shocking records who lived in the Park district, which was overlooked by Sky Edge.544 Three other key members of Mooney’s gang were John James ‘Spud’ Murphy, Frank Kidnew and his childhood friend, Winsey. Another was Sam Garvin, although this relationship was soon to become something altogether uglier.
THE PARK BRIGADE ASCENDANT
Apart from controlling Sky Edge, Mooney also extorted protection money from legal off-course credit bookmakers and associated with the Mexborough Boys at local races such as Doncaster.545 In September 1919, he was arrested there for loitering and imprisoned for three months. Through attending these meetings Mooney met Sam Garvin, another racing man, who in 1919 would be described as one of the Mooney Gang.546 Born in 1885, he was a little older than Mooney and, as a child, lived nearby in Acorn Street with his maternal uncle and aunt and two younger brothers. By 1911, the three boys were with their mother but their father was again living elsewhere. Garvin was now a coal heaver working underground, but soon he became a career criminal. In 1909 when he was twenty-five and a ‘burly-looking individual’ of no fixed abode, he was convicted of assault.547 Thereafter he would lead a life of violence, intimidation and thieving. Quickly he became a travelling rogue, and in 1910 was fined for frequenting at Doncaster and for gaming with dice at Gosforth Park races near Newcastle.548 A year later, he was living in Brightside in Sheffield’s East End with his wife in her parents’ home when he was named as a bookmaker’s clerk and the leading figure in a ‘terrorist gang’. Like Mooney’s mob, Garvin’s also went to pubs to cause mayhem or be paid off. On this particular occasion, Garvin had severely beaten a man who had tried to help the landlord eject him. The victim did not appear in court, and although he was damned as a terror to the whole neighbourhood and a menace to society, Garvin was merely fined for refusing to leave the premises. 549 He was not so fortunate in 1912 when, without provocation, he knifed Billy Foulkes, Sheffield United’s former goalkeeper, and was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment to be served consecutively with a similar term for another assault. Disdainful of the law, some of Garvin’s friends threatened one of the witnesses before he left the court and he had to be escorted home by the police.550
Strangely, three years later, and describing himself as a racing man, Foulkes appeared as a witness on behalf of Garvin when he was accused of burglary in Cardiff. But with the police reporting that he belonged to an expert team of housebreakers, he was found guilty and imprisoned for twelve months.551 After his release, Garvin went back on the run to avoid military service, and in December 1917 a warrant for his arrest was issued in Liverpool. Standing 5 foot 7 inches, he was clean-shaven and of medium build, with light-brown hair and blue eyes. Very smart in appearance, he favoured a serge suit, Melton overcoat, black bowler hat and blue starched collar.552 Returning to Sheffield after the war, Garvin teamed up with Mooney in running the Sky Edge tossing rings, but he was not the kind of man to share ownership of anything where large sums of money were to be made. And there was a lot of money to be made. The school attracted gamblers not only from Sheffield but also from Rotherham, Barnsley and elsewhere and there could be 200–300 in a ring. Mooney himself had once won £200 and he knew of a man who had picked up £1,000. After he lost control, the ten tollers at Sky Edge each made £2 a day, and that was after they had paid out two shillings a head to touts, lookouts, which were mostly unemployed men. Over a week, that gave a substantial total of £140, on top of which was the big cut taken by the chief of the gang.553
Although now living in Crookes, on the other side of the city to Sky Edge, Garvin plotted to oust Mooney. He rounded up fighting men in the Park district, riling them up against the outsider from West Bar who was running what should have been their tossing school.554 Amongst those hardmen was William Furniss, who deserted Mooney’s gang. With Furniss’s backing and that of other street fighters, Garvin gathered a large force known as the Park Brigade. In April 1923, they congregated on Sky Edge, simply pushing out Mooney and his handful of gangsters. On this occasion there was no serious fighting but this would not last.
Determined to hit back, on 29 April, Mooney ordered an attack on his one-time ally, Furniss. His house was broken into in the middle of the night and whilst in bed, he was badly beaten with a poker by Spud Murphy and Frank Kidnew. Furniss declined to take proceedings, but revenge was swift, and on 27 May, Kidnew was found on waste ground in the Park district.555 To an eyewitness he ‘looked as if he had been in a slaughterhouse’, with his face and hands one mass of blood and his hair clogged with blood. His coat was in ribbons and his right trouser leg was cut open. Through the slit was a wound six inches long: ‘It was horrible; you could lay two fingers in it. The front of his skull was battered in, you could hardly see his nose for blood.’ Despite his wounds, Kidnew was smoking a cigarette and casually observed, ‘I reckon they’ve spoiled my suit.’ Seriously injured, he was hospitalised.556 He told the police that he had been walking with John Thomas Mooney and Spud Murphy, and on turning a corner he was struck on the head with a blunt instrument and knocked to the ground. He named Garvin, his brother, Bob, and Furniss amongst the men whom he saw but declined to prosecute any of them.
On the evening after Kidnew’s beating, Mooney’s second wife, Margaret, rang the police asking for special attention to be paid to their house, as she was scared of an attack. Mooney sent similar messages. The police complied but ‘nothing extraordinary happened’ until about 1am on 16 June, when Furniss and others of the Park Brigade tried to storm Mooney’s house in West Bar.557 With trouble expected, it had been barricaded and, inside with Mooney, his wife and brother were Winsey and Foster. Cries of, ‘Come out and fight, you Irish –’ were heard, along with threats of setting fire to the house with petrol. Shots were fired from both sides and one of the attackers was injured. He was George ‘Ganner’ Wheywell, an extremely dangerous man regarded by the police as a ringleader of the new gang. The windows of Mooney’s house were broken and its doors smashed and grates wrenched. Despite the violence and shooting, both sets of gangsters were merely bound over to keep the peace by the courts on 26 June.558
That afternoon there were ‘exciting scenes’ when ‘women relatives of members of the two parties took a hand in the game’. About six of them went to the Park district to confront the wives of their husband’s enemies. They were armed ‘with such things as pieces of furniture and domestic implements and a battle took place between them, lasting nearly an hour’. Receiving an urgent message, the police sent a strong force, including three mounted officers. The Park Brigade women were the aggressors, as the only woman injured was a Mrs Smith, the mother-in-law of John Thomas Mooney. Her head was cut open by a blow from a potato masher, although the wound was not serious.559 This brawl between the wives of gangsters was a rarity. There is no evidence whatsoever of the wives of Kimber, Sabini or any other of the race-gang leaders taking an active part in their criminality, let alone their fights. Brian McDonald’s intriguing study, Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants, has brought to the fore an all-female gang of pickpockets in London, but the clash in Sheffield is more reminiscent of how some young women associated with the street gangs of the peaky blinders in Birmingham and the scuttlers of Manchester and Salford.560
A day after the ‘bust-up’ between the wives, a report was received on 27 June that Mooney had shot at members of the Park Brigade near his house. This could not be corroborated but it led to a police search of his home. They found a small rifle, sporting gun, revolver and rounds of ammunition. Mooney was arrested along with the other men in the house. They were Murphy, Winsey, Foster and Thomas Rippon, who, as soon as he was released on bail, was assaulted by Ganner Wheywell. Wheywell was arrested but Rippon withdrew the charge. Badly outnumbered by the Park Brigade, which was strong enough to attack him in his own neighbourhood, Mooney had decided on a radical move – to give his story to the Sheffield Mail. It was published on the same day as the arrests, 27 June. Mooney revealed that there were only five in his gang, the same number as those running the Park Brigade, but because its leaders were afraid they went about with a crowd.
They think that if they can get us to slash with razors, or kill, whatever is going to done – and they are trying hard to provoke trouble – we shall be out the way and that the Park gambling ring will be left to them and their claims will not be tampered with. But we do not want to clash, and we do not want to interfere with them. There is no need for trouble to put us out. For four years we have been trying to live down the title of the Mooney Gang.
The Sheffield Independent wryly noticed that ‘the spectacle of Satan rebuking sin is always entertaining’. Mooney had painted an appealing picture of outcasts trying to live down their past and having been prevented from doing so by the unwelcome attentions of their former, and temporarily victorious, associates. But the correspondent asked if this laudable desire would have been so evident if Mooney and his friends had not been precariously placed and forced to retire to their castle.
To rid the city of the gangs, the newspaper called upon the local authorities to follow the example of Birmingham, which had always treated such lawlessness with a stern hand. Twenty years previously, peaky blinders had ‘inspired terror by their operations and outbursts of open warfare but though their ramifications were peculiar and extensive and for a time they were a law unto themselves the police eventually cleared the city of them’. 561 Sheffield’s chief constable, Lieutenant Colonel John Hall-Dalwood, was indeed alert to the local gang problem, having previously expressed his concerns that there were too few police in the city whilst the sentences passed by the magistrates were too lenient.562 The same issues had been raised in Birmingham during the 1890s, when the ruffianism of the peaky blinders had seemed unstoppable. As it was, the Sheffield police believed that they had taken every possible action and ‘in fact have gone beyond their strictly legal powers in endeavouring to deal with the circumstances as they have arisen’.563
On 28 June, a day after Mooney’s interview, Albert Foster, another one of his gang, was attacked. His assailant was sentenced to two months’ hard labour. After the case was finished, Foster went into a pub where he was beaten by Wheywell, Furniss and two other men of the Park Brigade. One of them struck Foster with a billiard cue, causing a severe wound and much bleeding. All four attackers were committed to two months’ hard labour. In gangster terminology, ‘it was on top’ for Mooney’s Gang and now his closest pals turned on him for ‘coming the cop on us in the paper’ – naming them. The same day as Foster was first attacked, on 28 June, Mooney and his long-time pal Spud Murphy fought in the street. Murphy got the worst of it. He and Winsey were then accused of throwing bricks at Mooney’s house, one of which struck his wife. Found guilty of assault, Murphy, calling himself a bookmaker, was imprisoned for six months’ hard labour. After the sentence was passed there was a disturbance when some women tried to get at Margaret Mooney and her witnesses.564 This was another rare example of women connected to gangsters becoming embroiled in gangland rivalries.
Abandoned by his mates, over the next few months Mooney mostly remained in his fortified house, but even that was breached on Christmas Eve 1923. He was lying ill in bed when, at about 5.45pm, the back window and locked-and-bolted door were smashed in by several men. Inside the kitchen was Mooney’s fifteen-year-old daughter, Mary, his sixteen-month old son, his ten-day-old baby, asleep in a pram near the fire, and a Mrs Flynn, who was helping his wife. The toddler had been playing on the floor, but fortunately when the shattered glass and framework of the window crashed into the kitchen, he was shielded from the flying splinters. One of the intruders mockingly told Mary, ‘I have come to wish your father merry Christmas.’ She and the older woman ‘pluckily tried to prevent the intruders getting upstairs’ but were pushed back. Mary fell to the ground but shouted to alert her father. One of the men called out, ‘Give him some razor,’ but as they had to climb two awkward flights of stairs, Mooney had time to switch off the electric light and hide in a wardrobe. Thwarted at not finding him, the intruders smashed several sacred images, which had belonged to Mooney’s mother. Hearing that the police were coming, they ran off. The four men were quickly arrested. They included Sam Garvin and one of his top fighters, Charles ‘Sandy’ McKay Bowler from the Park district. Another was Frank Kidnew, who had been badly slashed by the Park Brigade but who had since switched sides. All four were charged with wilful damage. Garvin was acquitted whilst Kidnew and Bowler were each sentenced to three months’ hard labour. For the assaults on Mary Mooney and Mrs Flynn, each was fined a paltry 50 shillings.565 Such sentences justified police complaints about the leniency of the magistrates.
Throughout the Racecourse War between the Birmingham Gang and Sabini Gang, the Racecourse Feud between the Camden Town Gang/Titanics and the Sabini Gang, and the feud between the Cortesis and Sabinis, no attacks had been made on any of the homes of any of the gang leaders. The forced entry of Mooney’s house was another unusual feature in the Sheffield Gang War and it was more reminiscent of the Garrison Lane Vendetta in Birmingham, fought as it was by people who lived close to each other. It also underscored the bitterness between Mooney and Garvin and the maliciousness of Garvin’s ‘win at all costs’ mentality that made him oblivious to harming women and children. None of the 1920s gangsters were to be admired but Garvin was a particularly odious man.
By the start of 1924, Mooney’s gang had broken up. Two of his main fighters had turned coat, he had fallen out with his best friends, his brother had emigrated to America, and Foster had fled to Birmingham. Now Mooney left Sheffield for Glasgow.566 Unopposed and in the ascendancy, Garvin must have felt as untouchable as had Alf White – and he acted as if he were. In September 1924, he beat up a man who then refused to prosecute, and he and his gang stole £100 from an employer as he was leaving the bank with the money to pay his workers. Found in a pub sharing out their ‘loot’, Garvin and his accomplices were arrested, but the victim failed to identify them and they were discharged. He and his men even had a charge of obstructing the police dismissed in October.567 Their absolute contempt for the law was displayed on 8 December when they assembled in Fitzalan Square in the city centre and marched three quarters of a mile to attack the home of Thomas Rippon in West Bar, where former associates of Mooney had gathered.
Craftily, Garvin and his brother stayed back, letting others take the initiative. A shot was fired, a brick was thrown through the window and the front door was forced off. As the Park Brigade charged inside, a general melee ensued. Most of the Mooney Gang managed to get upstairs to safety. Henry Dale did not and he was beaten severely with the leg of a stool. His wife was with him and appealed, ‘Don’t kill my husband. I have five children and am expecting another.’ Ordered to get out of the way, she was told, ‘We shan’t hurt you.’ Subsequently, Sandy Bowler, ostensibly a miner, and three others of the Park Brigade were arrested and charged with causing grievous bodily harm. The police found a revolver and bullet and other weapons including an iron bar, razor and hammer. According to one officer, the attack was ‘old broth being warmed up’.568
This did not end the violence. In fact it was the catalyst for its escalation. Ganner Wheywell, a friend of Garvin and a top man in his gang, had refused to take part in the ‘tanning’ of their West Bar enemies at Rippon’s house, saying he had three children to look after and was going home. Enraged, Garvin had threatened that, ‘Alright, you are on one. We will cut you up a bit. We will tear you to pieces when we have done with that mob.’569 The next evening, 9 December, the gang tried to carry out the threat. Wheywell was pounced on in a pub by six men. Whisky was thrown into his eyes and he was punched on the chin. He caught hold of one of his attackers, John ‘Jack’ Towler, and struggling they got outside and fell on the floor. Towler was on top, choking Wheywell, who was kicked by other men. He managed to get up and run off and, soon after, the police found him bleeding from a wound to his upper lip. His coat was off and his trousers were badly torn. A fearsome fighter, though outnumbered, Wheywell had inflicted serious wounds on Towler, some of them allegedly with a knife.570 Charged with wounding, Wheywell was found not guilty, the jury finding that he was not the aggressor. It was a verdict with which the judge agreed.571
Wheywell was now the one to change sides, quickly palling up with Mooney’s former men. On the afternoon of Christmas Day, he was with Dale when they were spotted and chased by Garvin, his brother and about a dozen others. They were caught and assaulted. In defence, Wheywell pulled out a revolver. The police were quickly on the scene to break up the fight. At a later date, Wheywell was discharged from having a firearm without a certificate and Robert Garvin and another man were each sentenced to one month’s hard labour with assault. Then, on the evening of Christmas Day, a bookmaker called Newbould was accosted by the Garvins and three others. He was ordered to hand over £10 to obtain a solicitor for some of the gang who were in trouble. The bookie refused and he and a friend were beaten. Newbould brought a prosecution but also fetched in a bruiser from Birmingham to take reprisals on the Garvin Gang. He was the dreaded Thomas Armstrong of the Birmingham Gang and he quickly went to work, threatening Sandy Bowler.
Given this upsurge in violence, it came as a surprise to the public when, on 1 January 1925, the Sheffield Daily Telegraph announced that the previous evening, the Sheffield gangs had met and ended their feud. It reported that all the responsible leaders had been involved directly or through representatives. After ‘as much palaver as at the conclusion of peace between Germany and the Allies’, an Armistice had been agreed, whereupon each side was to appoint six men as ‘delegates’ and both gangs would share the profits of the tossing rings at Sky Edge.572 This was a seemingly strange development. There was no need for a truce, as Garvin and the Park Brigade had clearly won, as the police realised. Having made inquiries as to whether the arrangement was genuine, the Chief Constable was emphatic that ‘no reliance whatever could be placed upon the word or promise of these men’.573 As J. P. Bean discerned in his work on the Sheffield gangs, the truce was a ruse. Four of the top men in the Park Brigade were due in court for the attack on Dale, and so too were Garvin and others for assaulting Newbould. All of them faced imprisonment if found guilty. Consequently, as part of the agreement between the gangs, Newbould dropped his charges.574 In the other case, Dale, who was the chief prosecution witness and a friend of Newbould, went missing. Despite his absence, the four Park Brigade men were found guilty. Bowler was sentenced to nine months, two others for six months, and a fourth for twelve months. Yet even with their loss, Garvin’s gang remained stronger, and of course he soon reneged on the deal to share Sky Edge.575 It was with justification that a judge called him the deus ex machina pulling the strings for the puppets to dance.576
Albert Foster of the Mooney Gang had now returned to Sheffield, and on 22 January, he and Armstrong went with two others to Sky Edge to meet the ‘head ring man’ to fix a meeting for a share out as had been previously agreed. They didn’t know that Garvin had gone back on his word but quickly found out as they were emphatically told that he had changed his mind and was going to run the ring himself. Mooney’s men were angered and challenged the Park men: if terms couldn’t be agreed then they would settle matters in ‘a stand-up fight to take place at a pre-arranged place in the country’. The Mooneys were then stoned and bricked by about fifty youths attached to the Park Brigade. Armstrong, Foster and the other pair fought back but the numbers against them were overwhelming and they bolted into a nearby house, ‘somewhat astounding the occupant’, as it was put by a local newspaper. Inside, they barricaded the top of the stairs, ‘collected a few ornaments, and prepared for the worst’. The stairway was very narrow, so that only one of the attackers could go up at a time. It was not something that any of them fancied, given the frightening reputation of Armstrong. Gathering outside the house, the Park Brigade was dispersed when a posse of mounted and foot police arrived.
Soon afterwards, Mooney’s eldest son boasted that his father was back in town and was going to clear off all the Garvin Gang.577 It was true: Mooney was back and it wasn’t long before he was embroiled in an altercation that sparked a series of violent conflicts between the two gangs. In early February 1925, Mooney was with Albert Foster and Ganner Wheywell and his brother when they came across Frank Kidnew of the Park Brigade. Breaking down an advertisement board, they threatened him with obscene language. Days later and in retaliation, another former gang member was beaten up by Garvin amongst others – but again he walked free from a charge of assault. As he left court, the Park Brigade lined one side of the street. Opposite them, they were faced off by the revived Mooney Gang.578 The conflict intensified. On 1 March, the bookmaker Newbould answered the door to his house in West Bar to three members of the Park Brigade. One of them was Jack Towler, the man who had fought with Wheywell. They asked if Armstrong was in and, when told otherwise, Newbould was hit on the head with a beer bottle by Towler before they left the scene. Towler was soon arrested and his defence argued that Newbould employed Wheywell and was financing the Mooney Gang and paying Armstrong to assist them. Having been found guilty, Towler was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment. A day after the assault on Newbould, one of Garvin’s chief supporters was hit on the head so severely with a heavy instrument that his life was endangered. He pulled through, but in July 1925, his assailant, Albert Foster, was sentenced to eighteen months in prison after he had been arrested in Birmingham, indicative of the connection between the Mooney Gang and the Birmingham Gang.579
The police described the men involved in the Sheffield gang war in disparaging terms. It was a description that would have also held good for the members of the Birmingham Gang, Sabini Gang and Camden Town Gang.
They frequent race Meetings for various purposes, engage in tossing, promote boxing contests, and generally prey upon bookmakers, publicans and similar persons who are in some instances too easily terrorised by them. Some of them engage in breaking into shops, warehouses etc. and others provided means for the disposal of stolen property, Samuel Garvin being suspected of being particularly active in this direction. On every occasion they appear before the magistrates they are most ably defended; the evidence adduced in their interest almost invariably coming from members of their own party is often tainted, if not altogether perjured. They appear to have acquired quite a contempt for Police Court proceedings . . . these men have committed many acts of violence; on nearly every occasion the persons they have attacked have been members of the opposite party.580
Whilst the violence between the gangs was despicable and destroyed the peace in the city they called home, events took a devastating turn when a man not at all involved in the gang wars was attacked.
THE GARVIN GANG AND MURDER OF A HERO
William Plommer was the antithesis of the gangsters and a positive example of a tough, hard-working family man. A Glaswegian aged thirty-three, he was well built and muscular and, until 1912, had served in the Army, where he had a good boxing record. Two years later, he was called up and served throughout the war, becoming a sergeant. After he was discharged, he was always in regular employment and he and his wife, Elizabeth, settled in Princess Street in the Norfolk Bridge neighbourhood of Sheffield’s East End. On Sunday night 26 April 1925, their friend Harold Liversedge came to their house covered in blood. He had been drinking in the Windsor along the street, and at closing time had been hit without provocation by Wilfred ‘Spinks’ Fowler. One of Garvin’s Gang, Fowler had been in the group that had besieged Armstrong and Foster after they had been chased away from the tossing ring at Sky Edge. Returning to the pub with the Plommers, Liversedge challenged Fowler to a fist fight, and Plommer was heard to say, ‘Let them have a fair fight.’ Fowler was knocked down and, as he was helped up by the sporting Plommer, he was hit on the head from behind by an unknown person. Fowler blamed Plommer and cursed him as, ‘You Scotch bastard. You’re in for a tanning tomorrow.’
Early the next evening, Sam Garvin and three others went into the Windsor. He talked about Plommer and another man, then swore, ‘We’ll kill the bastards.’ By now, some of his gang were parading up and down Princess Street and Wilfred Fowler was overheard saying, ‘He’s done our kid (younger brother). He’s done our kid and we’ll do him in.’ Knowing that mischief was brewing for him outside, Plommer left his house unarmed and on his own to bravely front the men looking for him. Obviously worried, his wife watched him and recounted what happened.581
I saw my husband standing at the junction of Princess Street and Attercliffe Road. I saw 7 or 8 men go up the street to him and attack him. I was at my door, about 50 yards away. It was light. I saw a man with a bandaged head strike my husband who seemed to break away from the lot of them. I can’t say what the man struck with or where he hit my husband. I commenced running up the street and as I got there I saw Lawrence Fowler strike my husband with a poker hitting him on the back of the head . . . He was wearing a tweed lightish overcoat and had no cap or hat on . . . My husband then tried to get on a passing motor-car and was pulled off. My husband then walked round the corner by the Rawson’s Arms and passed close to me. I heard him then shout to the men ‘Come one at a time’. Wilfred and Lawrence Fowler were stood against me and Lawrence Fowler said, ‘Let’s do him in whilst we’ve got him’. My husband then began to run down the street. The two Fowlers ran after him. Wilfred Fowler picked up a scooter and threw it at my husband. But it did not hit him. I saw my husband go into our house. In 2 or 3 minutes I joined my husband in our house . . . When Wilfred Fowler said ‘Let’s finish him’, he had a razor in his hand.
Only ten years old, Thomas Plommer witnessed the cowardly attack on his father. Going outside ‘to see what some men who were walking up the street would do to him’, he must have been traumatised to see his father hit with a poker, then with a leather cosh by Wilfred Fowler, whose head was bandaged. In fact all the attackers had weapons, including heavy chains and thick rubber tubes with lead in one end, whilst one of them had a bayonet. Even so, and outnumbered as he was, one neighbour declared that Plommer ‘stood like a hero and fought them all’. He knocked down Wilfred Fowler and then, slipping on the tramlines, fell to the ground, where he was beaten by the others and seemingly struck on his left side by Lawrence ‘Lol’ Fowler with something in his hand. The police arrived soon after Plommer managed to get into his house and was rushed to hospital where, tragically, he died. His waistcoat, scarf, shirt and vest were all bloodstained and there were cuts to his clothes. He had suffered three wounds to his scalp, a cut to his hand and two cuts to his stomach. It was these abdominal wounds that had killed him and they had been caused by a bayonet or something similar.582
William Plommer was buried on Saturday 2 May 1925. His coffin was draped with the Union Jack and it was estimated that 20,000 people turned out on the streets and at the cemetery to pay their respects.583 Ten men were tried for his murder. During the trial, witnesses were threatened and afterwards Elizabeth Plommer received an anonymous letter telling her that she would be ‘done in’. Courageously, she defied the warning, stating that ‘I shall follow my husband’s example. He did not run away, and nor shall I. I intend to carry on as best I can with my mother, who is seventy, and my four children, whose ages range from four months to eleven years. The police have been very good to me, and I have every faith in their protection.’584
Three of the accused were discharged for a lack of evidence. They included Bob Garvin and Frank Kidnew. Sam Garvin and another man were acquitted. On 31 July, three others were found guilty of manslaughter: two were given ten years’ penal servitude and the third, seven years. Although they had protested that William Plommer had been the aggressor and that they had not delivered the fatal wounds, the two Fowler brothers were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Both were from Brightside, a working-class neighbourhood in the East End adjoining the Norfolk Bridge area. William Fowler, the younger brother, had a very bad record, with convictions for theft and assault from when he was ten. Aged fifteen, he was sent to reformatory school. Reoffending after his release, he was ordered to Borstal for three years. He was discharged early in 1922 as someone reliable who ought to be a success. Still, there were concerns about him returning to his parents’ locality and attempts were made to settle him elsewhere. They failed, and after returning to live with his wife and young daughter at her parents’ home, he could not find work. As feared, he drifted back into crime and, according to the police, he was not known to do any honest work and was continually seen in the company of thieves. The company he was drawn to was that of the notorious Sam Garvin.
Lawrence Fowler was two years older than his brother and was believed to have led him astray. A bookmaker’s clerk, he had convictions for theft, assault, malicious wounding and street betting, and he was suspected to be a receiver of stolen property. When sentenced he shouted, ‘I am absolutely innocent. This is an impossible thing.’585 Both brothers appealed unsuccessfully against their sentences. Wilf Fowler then petitioned the Home Secretary. He emphasised that he had never had an opportunity to prove himself a good citizen, as he had not had the influence of good training like most youths. After his release from Borstal, he had found work, contradicting official reports, but the police informed his employer that he was a Borstal boy and he was immediately discharged. He concluded that, ‘I can assure you I have not had a single chance. I humbly beg of you Sir on behalf of my wife and two little children, to give me one chance to live the life of an honest and respectable citizen’.586 His youngest child was a few days old. The petition failed.
In letters to his wife and friends, Lawrence Fowler had focused his hopes on people in the know coming forward to divulge the name of the man who had actually stabbed William Plommer. It seems that they finally did so and his solicitor sent this information and relevant documents to the Home Secretary. In his final letters, Fowler also wrote that his innocence could be proved by his brother, who was going to tell all. Just before he was executed, Wilfred Fowler did reveal the name of the murderer to his solicitor. He was one of the men who had been convicted of manslaughter. Calling him the kindest husband possible, Fowler’s wife said that he had not disclosed this information in court because it would have meant giving a pal away and he had not thought the case would take so serious a turn for him. His statement was also sent to the Home Secretary, who later denied knowledge of it.587 Wilfred Fowler was hanged on 3 September and Lawrence Fowler the next day.
The three men convicted of manslaughter were George Wills, Stanley Harker, and Amos Stewart. All three were in their early twenties and, like the Fowlers, they lived in Sheffield’s East End in the lower valley of the River Don.588 A wide industrial area including Brightside, Attercliffe, Norfolk Bridge, Darnall and Tinsley, it was crammed with polluting factories and badly built, insanitary back-to-back houses. As such, it had much in common with the older, central parts of Birmingham, from which the members of the Birmingham Gang were drawn. But like those districts, Sheffield’s East End was not an abyss filled only with a frightening, criminal people. As one former East Ender recollected, it ‘may have had its darker side, but I don’t remember it as unpleasant or dangerous’, whilst another stressed that despite the terrible poverty in the 1920s, ‘the people in the area had remarkable spirit and independence’.589 Born in 1904, Frank Harris also came from the East End and was associated with the Alfred Road Gang, noticeable for its members wearing a white silk scarf knotted at the front, as opposed to the red silk of the Park Brigade.
He had knocked about with the Fowlers and recalled that Lol Fowler had been involved in running a local tossing ring during the First World War. Afterwards, he and his brother Wilf took bets illegally on the streets for a bookmaker and also went racing. Always well dressed, they were not really tough, and on the afternoon when Plommer was killed, Wilf Fowler had been to Uttoxeter races. Harris remembered that when Fowler returned home, Amos Stewart told him, ‘Go up to Norfolk Bridge. Your kid’s in trouble.’ The two of them joined others to back up Lawrence Fowler against Plommer, who was on his own. A hard man and ‘straight battler’. Harris was certain that ‘he would have duffed ’em both up’ without the gang.590 In court, Wilfred Fowler had stated that he had been to Uttoxeter races and that he had gone to Norfolk Bridge with Amos Stewart, who was identified by Thomas Plommer as one of the men who had attacked his father. When sentenced for manslaughter, Stewart had bowed with mock politeness, thanked the judge and left the dock laughingly – obviously pleased with a ten-year term and not one of death.591 He belonged to a violent family and, in 1934, not long after he had been released from Dartmoor Prison on licence, he was convicted of assault and sent down for another twenty-two months.592
Whoever actually killed William Plommer, many people in Sheffield believed that Garvin was behind the murder. Harris was one of them, emphasising that Garvin had got to know that Plommer was running a local tossing school under Norfolk Bridge. Garvin ‘wanted to run all the lot or get summat out on it’, but Plommer ‘wouldn’t cough up’, and the Fowlers and their mates were sent to sort him out. Garvin and his brother, Rob, may have jumped on a tram before the attack but ‘they were the instigators and the Fowlers were only underdogs. They shouldn’t have been hanged. The Garvins were useless on their own, tha’ knows it. If they was with the gang they was like lions. They ruled by force, fear. Man to man Plommer would beat them.’ Unlike him, the Garvins would use razors and other weapons, a despicable thing because ‘if tha’ can’t fight with fists what use are thee’.593
The prosecuting counsel in the murder trial had also maintained the importance of ‘King’ Garvin, as he dubbed him, in the murder. However, in his summing up, the judge informed the jury that as Garvin had not been alleged to have been at the affray itself, if he were to be found guilty they had to be satisfied that he had been ‘privy to the instigation or the directing mind of the actual assault’.594 Although he was acquitted on this legal basis, there can be no doubt that he was the ringmaster not only of the Sky Edge tossing school but also of other criminal activities across Sheffield. Since the start of the gang war, he had expanded his activities and was reputed to be a receiver of stolen goods. The Park Brigade had been essential in gaining control of Sky Edge and it was also unchallenged in the city centre. But it was now one element in what had become Garvin’s Gang. He lived distant from the gang wars, though, in a three-bedroomed terraced house in Walkley, over three miles from the city centre, where there was a much better standard of living than in the East End and Park district. Yet far as he was from these poorer working-class neighbourhoods, it was from them that he pulled in gullible and criminally prone young men. Garvin gave the orders, but when it suited him he would pull away from them – as he did with the Fowlers, for in court he said that he had only ever spoken to them a few times.
Garvin was cunning and it was well known that, whilst he hadn’t been convicted of assaults by his gang, he had sometimes been in the vicinity.595 But the day after his acquittal for murder, he was finally prosecuted for violence. Leaving Princess Street shortly before the killing of William Plommer, Garvin had been seen with a razor in his pocket and was heard saying that he was going to do Spud Murphy of the Mooney Gang. He and his brother Rob then left and, a short time later, joined up with other gang members. Coming upon Harry Rippon, another of Mooney’s men, Garvin whipped out his razor and tried to slash Rippon’s face. He warded off the blow with his hand, which was cut, but was then struck violently on the head with a life-preserver by Bob Garvin. Dazed, Rippon was taken to hospital with severe scalp wounds. The Garvins were charged with malicious wounding. As usual, Sam Garvin denied any involvement and defence witnesses testified that he had been in a different place at the time of the attack. But their evidence was inconsistent and, without retiring, the jury found the Garvin brothers guilty on 1 August 1925. Sam Garvin, one of the cleverest criminals in Sheffield and the mastermind of the gang, was sentenced to twenty-one months’ hard labour. His brother Bob was given nine months because his ‘character had been very good until recently and his downfall was due to the bad influence of his brother’.596
Though hating each other, the lives of Garvin and Mooney were inextricably linked. They had come to blows at Lincoln races in March 1925 and now Mooney was imprisoned soon after his enemy.597 On 1 August, the day of Garvin’s trial, Mooney fought on a train with a Sheffield bookmaker called William Cowen. Mooney protested that he had been attacked first but the jury preferred the evidence of witnesses and Cowen, who had not wanted to press charges and had been forced to attend court by a subpoena. He had been punched, knocked to the ground, kicked several times and had three of his ribs broken and part of his left ear gnawed off. Mooney was sentenced to nine months’ hard labour.598
The murder of William Plommer and the ongoing problems caused by the gang war led to radical police action. In May 1925, Chief Constable Hall-Dalwood formed a Sheffield Flying Squad with the sole purpose of suppressing the gangs. Led by Sergeant William Robinson, it was made up of twelve tough and strong policemen.599 Complaints about their rough tactics were soon made when prisoners appeared in court with black eyes, noses bandaged and other injuries, and in January 1926, one solicitor asserted that the squad had been formed to give ‘pests’ ‘a tanning’.600 It had, and a few months later it was given free rein by the new chief constable, Percy Sillitoe, who vowed to fight force with force. The Flying Squad were taught ju-jitsu and other methods of attack and defence, but as Sillitoe stressed, ‘It was surprising how little teaching they needed.’
Divided into small teams for patrol work, one of the most famous pairings was Loxley and Lunn. Walter Loxley was 6 foot 3 inches tall and weighed eighteen stone. In Sillitoe’s words, there was ‘not an ounce of soft flesh on him. He was granite hard, and to hit him, even with boxing gloves, was like striking a brick wall.’601 Herbert ‘Jerry’ Lunn was a military hero. A sergeant with the Royal Garrison Artillery, he had been gassed and awarded the Military Medal in 1917 for keeping communications intact and rescuing wounded men under heavy shellfire.602 Not quite as tall as Loxley, he ‘was a beautifully balanced man who could hit like the kick of a mule’. As the two of them walked down the streets, ‘they looked like a battleship with an attendant destroyer’.603Another celebrated team was that of Sergeant Robinson and Patrick Geraghty, ‘a giant of a man’ who was ‘the dread of wrong doers’.604As Frank Harris remembered, ‘Geraghty, Lunn’d come round in taxis and’d break ’em all up. They’d set about them. If the gangs were in a pub the landlord’d ring up. Two’d come in and order ’em out and two would be outside and give ’em some hammer. That broke the gangs up. People appreciated it. The coppers were all big ’uns. Six foot, fourteen, fifteen stone. They wouldn’t let them rest.’605 Nor did they, and the police relished the chance to fight the gangsters.
From all his memories of those troubled years, Sergeant Robinson remembered best of all the night the Flying Squad as good as challenged one of the mobs, probably Mooney’s.
We heard that they were going to get us because we had turned them out of a pub the night before. I decided not to wait for them to come to us and I took Loxley and Lunn to a pub in West Bar. Sure enough they were there, about a dozen of them. I knew we would be in trouble, so I told them I was going to search them. We found razors and coshes on them, but they knew we were out to settle it once and for all. Then the fun started. It was quite a set-to, and I shall never forget it. It was the only way to settle them, and we three showed the twelve of them what for. That’s how we stopped it. We kept after them all the time. I told them that three or more was a crowd and I wouldn’t let them get together in the bars. If I found them together my boys split them up. We harried them until we wore them down.606
Accounts like these are vital in illustrating how the police dealt with the gangs. However, not all are as well informed as Robinson’s. In his self-glorying life story, Sillitoe claimed that the Mooney and Garvin gangs each had hundreds of members.607 Like the supposed numbers in the racecourse gangs, these were exaggerated. Robinson’s assessment of about a dozen main men in each gang is more realistic, although hangers-on could increase this total by twenty to thirty.
The fighting fire with fire tactics of the Flying Squad seemed to work, but with Garvin’s release from prison the gang war looked set to erupt again in 1927. Mooney was already out of prison and he and his old friend, Spud Murphy, had made up their differences and, in March, they and Ganner Wheywell went into a pub where the Garvin brothers were drinking. Insults and threats were thrown about and Wheywell shouted at the brothers, ‘You have got two young ones hung and we will get you yet.’ The police were called and they left, but later that evening Mooney and Murphy were arrested for assaulting Sergeant Robinson. Each of them was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment. It is more likely that they were the ones assaulted, with their solicitor asserting that ‘at one time Sheffield was noted for its gangs, but now it is more notorious because of its organised gangs of police, who chase these men from one licensed house to another, and will not let them behave themselves when they want to’.608
Yet the Flying Squad’s rough tactics did prevent the gang war reigniting upon Garvin’s release, but towards the end of the next year, there were renewed fears. On 18 November 1928, Mooney, Spud Murphy and a third man forced themselves into the house of Sandy Blower, a key figure in the Garvin Gang. He was out but his wife was warned by Murphy, ‘We are going to have him. We are going to murder him.’ Panic-stricken, she fled into the street crying, ‘Murder’. Her fifteen-year-old son ran after her to protect her and was said to have been hit by Murphy and Mooney, who was carrying a piece of lead.609
On 12 December, Chief Constable Sillitoe called Mooney and Garvin in to meet him and cautioned them that he would not tolerate a gang war. That very afternoon, the Mooney and Garvin gangs clashed but it would be for the last time. Mooney and Murphy were with Gilbert Marsh and George Sawdon, both of whom had been in the Park Brigade but had switched sides. They came across Garvin and Bowler with ‘a Jew from London’, alleged to have been ‘imported’ to get Mooney into trouble. When he saw Mooney, he went up to him saying, ‘You took advantage of me yesterday, and I will have you today.’ He struck Mooney, who hit back, but was kicked at by Garvin, who was then chased off by Mooney. The Jewish man pulled a knife, which was knocked out of his hand by Sandon with his umbrella. Mooney and his men and Garvin and Bowler were each bound over keep the peace.610 Thus ended the Sheffield Gang War and the Flying Squad was disbanded at the end of 1928.611
A year later, Mooney was involved in an affray with the police when his friend, Spud Murphy, was badly beaten up by officers; and in 1930, he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour in Dublin for loitering at an international rugby match.612 Thereafter, he appears to have become law abiding. In 1939, he was living with his wife and their youngest children in a terraced house in Rose Street (now Roselle Street) in Hillsborough. Formerly giving himself as a bookmaker’s clerk he was now a file cutter’s labourer. He died in 1961.613 Sillitoe had seen some decency in Mooney but no such spark in Sam Garvin. It seems there was none and he did not change.614 He carried on travelling the country, sometimes bookmaking and often pickpocketing, for which he was sentenced to six months’ hard labour at Nottingham in 1930.615 And he continued to be vindictive and vengeful. He fell out with William Furniss from his gang and attacked him and his friend in October 1931. As usual, Garvin did not act alone, having with him his son-in-law and Bowler. Nor did he fight fairly. He hit Furniss with a beer glass and then kicked him on the ground, whilst Bowler used a razor. Garvin and Bowler were each sentenced to six months’ hard labour. Aged forty-seven, Garvin was now living in the Park district in a terraced house like that of Mooney. Incorrigible as he was, in April 1937, Garvin was sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour at Lincoln for theft. 616 Two years later, he said he was a bookmaker’s clerk and he and his wife had managed to move to a council house in Cemetery Road, probably under the first phase of the clearance of bad housing in the Park district. He died in 1952.617
Neither Garvin nor Mooney had made enough money from their criminality to become prosperous and move their families permanently into a middle-class lifestyle. In that respect they had much in common with the leaders of the small groups of thugs making up the Birmingham Gang. In sharp contrast was Billy Kimber, who would buy respectability for his children with his criminal proceeds. So too would Harry and Darby Sabini. In 1925, at the height of the Sheffield Gang War, Darby Sabini had begun to edge away from his gang and towards semi-legitimacy. That move would soon be followed by a relocation away from London to Brighton and Hove on the south coast. This slow but marked change in Sabini’s circumstances opened up opportunities for his enemies. An alliance of the Elephant Boys and Bethnal Green Mob quickly took advantage of his loosened grip on the capital’s gangland, leading to a new racegang war, which quickly drew the spotlight of the newspapers.