Chapter 13

A Dangerous Man

n 1812 Lady Caroline Lamb denounced her former lover Lord Byron as being ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’; the same description could equally have applied to Maxwell Thomas Pigott, a century and a half later. The difference was that Byron delivered a stinging rebuke to her ladyship (described as ‘brutal, even for the heartless period in which it was written’), and he had his chums to back him up. Pigott was not so fortunate; few people – judges, police officers, his victims or fellow criminals – had a good word to say for him. Even today, over thirty years after the events which brought him to prominence, only a small select few at New Scotland Yard know the details of what might or might not be his current identity or whereabouts. He may or may not be in this country, and his features may have been altered by plastic surgery – if that is the case, it would have been a prudent move, since he incurred the displeasure of his former associates who placed a price on his head, an underworld contract for his demise.

When Detective Sergeant Henry – always known as Harry – Charles Clement was asked to run the ‘B’ Division ‘Q’ Car in 1965, he was given the courtesy of being allowed to choose his own crew. The driver was easy: Police Constable 480 ‘B’ John – known as Jack – Methven, a local officer with great experience of the area and a Class I driver. The choice of aid to CID, Police Constable 396 ‘B’ Dennis Meade Boyse Bartlett, raised a few eyebrows, simply because of his inexperience – he had only been an aid for nine months – but Clement, a former sergeant during his six years with the Grenadier Guards and the veteran of a previous tour with the Flying Squad, was unerring in his judgement of men. “I knew instinctively he was made of the right stuff,” he told me many years later, and he was right; twenty-six-year-old Bartlett might have had only three years’ total service in the Metropolitan Police, but prior to that he had served for five years as a second mate in the Merchant Navy. On Monday, 6 September 1965, the crew of the ‘B’ Division ‘Q’ Car were on patrol when thirty-five-year-old Clement, who had been based at Chelsea police station for the previous twelve months, received an R/T call from the local Area Car, ‘Bravo Two’; as a result, PC Methven turned the car towards the Cromwell Road, a thoroughfare containing a number of hotels, including at No. 111, the Ashburn.

On their arrival, Clement saw the two police officers from the Area Car talking to the hall porter; also present were two other men, Maxwell Thomas Pigott and William White, and all the men walked up to the first floor and entered room 37. Because Clement was not fully conversant with what was being discussed, he introduced himself to the group and asked what was going on. The hall porter replied that he thought he had recognised Pigott and White as being responsible for a theft at the hotel some two or three weeks previously and showed Clement the hotel register, in which one of the men had given his address as ‘Montreal, Canada’. Both men said that they would wait until the manager returned to the hotel, when their identity could be verified.

However, PC Bartlett had slipped away and made enquiries of his own; he discovered that Pigott had been charged with housebreaking at Chelsea police station on 27 July and on 5 August he had been committed to the Inner London Sessions for trial. Despite strong police objections, he had been given bail. Bartlett had a quiet word with Clement, who unequivocally stated to the suspect: “Your name is Pigott. You should have attended the Inner London Sessions today, and there’s a warrant in existence for your arrest. I’m arresting you and taking you to Chelsea police station.”

At that, twenty-two-year-old Pigott thrust his hand into his jacket pocket, and Clement immediately grasped his wrist, turning it towards his body. Forcing Pigott’s hand from his pocket, Clement saw a yellow ‘Jif’ plastic lemon, a favourite with housewives in its natural form and also with robbers, in its adapted form – filled with ammonia. Clement shouted to the two uniform officers to hold White, whilst Bartlett seized Pigott’s left arm. White broke away from the officers, jumped on to the bed and assumed the fighting stance so beloved of followers of martial arts films. As the officers advanced towards him, White suddenly reached into his jacket pocket, withdrew another plastic lemon and, unscrewing the cap, shouted, “Move, move, or you’ll get this in your eyes, you bastards!” He immediately started squirting the contents at the police officers, and with the acrid stench of ammonia filling the air Clement shouted that acid was being sprayed and that everybody should clear the room. White was now squirting the ammonia at the head of Clement, who sheltered his face behind Pigott whom he was still holding, and for the second time Clement shouted for the others to get out of the room. He then pushed the struggling six foot of Pigott across the bed towards White, and as he did so White squirted ammonia straight into Clement’s eyes.

The pain in Clement’s eyes was unbearable, and he made his way towards the door to get out, while ammonia was still being sprayed at his head and neck. Managing to open the door, he staggered on to the landing and fell to the ground, unable to see. He was convinced that all the officers had left the room, but he was wrong; the two uniform officers had left but not Bartlett, who fought on alone; ammonia was squirted into his eyes, he was savagely struck on the head with an axe, hit with a stool and viciously kicked into unconsciousness. Pigott and White then ran to the fourth floor of the hotel, broke into a room and scrambled out through a window. More police had been alerted, the men had been chased, and fifteen more officers arrived, some with dogs.

Now the fugitives broke into room 409 of the adjacent Frobisher Hotel, where the twenty-two-year-old receptionist Julie Gardner was washing her hair. Alerted by her screams, the hall porter, Stuart Anderson, dashed upstairs and pulled the terrified young woman from the room. “Two men ran past me,” said Anderson, “and one squirted me with something from a lemon.” The men kicked in the door of room 420, climbed out of the window and on to a ledge.

Clement, meanwhile, put up a call on the car radio, and then became conscious of the presence of an unknown lady, whom he always described as “possibly of Kensington or Chelsea and who smelled wonderful, held me, pulled my head down to her bosom and said, ‘My poor darling, what have they done to you?’” Clement savoured the moment only briefly; the next thing he heard was a man’s voice calling out, “Stand back, lady,” and with that, he received a face-full of water; now he could at least vaguely see out of one eye. Muttering thanks to his anonymous benefactor, he ran into the Cromwell Road, where he saw several police officers and heard one shout, “There they go, along he parapet.” Clement ran into the yard of the Adelphi Hotel, 127 Cromwell Road, and then a voice called out: “They’ve come down; they’re in here!”

Still with very limited vision, Clement dashed into the hotel and through the glass doors into the lounge; in the room were two police officers and Derek Harding, the hotel’s accountant. Also present were White, who was holding the axe which he had used with devastating effect on Bartlett, and Pigott, in the centre of the room, spraying ammonia from two plastic ‘Jif’ containers and screaming, “Get back, get back!” With that, a battle royal commenced.

White flung the axe at Clement; he jumped clear, the axe missed and smashed into one of the glass doors. Pigott threw a coffee table at Clement who threw one back, hitting Pigott in the legs. White then retrieved the axe, flung a table at the window and climbed on to the window sill. Pigott was still squirting ammonia at Clement, who picked up a heavy cuspidor on a stand and flung it at Pigott, striking him on the head. Pigott screamed and fell to his knees, still squirting ammonia, but was subdued by other officers, who dragged him from the room.

White found his escape route was cut off – he had been confronted by police officers outside – and now he turned and jumped back into the lounge. Screaming, “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!” he rushed at Clement. As the accountant, Mr Harding, commented later, “One man put up a tremendous fight. He was swinging his hatchet in real earnest, he was really having a go.”

White certainly was ‘having a go’; as Clement closed with him, so White swung the axe. The blow went over Clement’s left shoulder and, locked together, the two men fell over a table then on to an armchair, which toppled over, bringing the fiercely struggling men crashing to the floor. With Clement on top, White kept trying to hit his back with the axe, but Clement pressed his head into White’s upper arm. Salvation, in the form of Police Constable Methven, then appeared. Drawing his truncheon, Methven struck White several times on the head, and as Clement later drily recorded, “White dropped the axe and ceased to struggle.”

It was all over. As well as Clement’s and Bartlett’s debilitating injuries, Police Constable Wall had been hit with a chair and had a possible fracture of his hand; Police Constable Amey (one of the crew of ‘Bravo Two’) had also been assaulted. All were conveyed to St Mary Abbot’s hospital, Kensington, for treatment.

Press photographs at the time show Clement, wearing dark glasses, being assisted across the road by a colleague; fortunately, he sustained no lasting damage. Unfortunately, as it eventually transpired, the same could not be said for Bartlett.

Four days later, Pigott was sufficiently recovered to appear at the Inner London Sessions, which was where he should have been on the morning of his confrontation with Clement & Co; had he been there, he would undoubtedly have saved himself a great deal of trouble. He pleaded guilty to housebreaking and false pretences and asked the court to take into consideration ninety-five other offences, comprising housebreaking, receiving stolen goods, false pretences and credit by fraud. For his first conviction he was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment.

On 4 November 1965 Pigott and White appeared before His Honour Judge Bernard Gillis QC at the Old Bailey. Both men pleaded guilty to two charges of housebreaking, with Pigott pleading guilty to wounding Bartlett and White, not guilty to a miscellany of other charges. The trial commenced, but on the third day both men asked for the remaining charges to be put to them again and offered pleas which were acceptable to the prosecution. In addition, the men had been an industrious pair of housebreakers. Whilst Pigott had been on bail, following his initial arrest on 27 July, he and White had carried out what was later referred to as ‘an absolute spate of housebreakings’, usually at good-class hotels, and it was clear that the men were proficient in entering rooms with the use of celluloid and false keys. Also found in their possession was a doctor’s stethoscope, which, when placed against a hotel room door, indicated whether or not the room was occupied. Pigott had booked into a room on 16 August at the Ashburn Hotel, giving the name ‘Michael Johnstone’, and it was this identity which had been queried by the hall porter on 6 September and which led to the mêlée and the pair’s arrest. Both men now asked the court to take fifty-eight other offences into consideration: forty-nine cases of housebreaking, five cases of larceny and four cases of receiving. The value of the property (most of which was recovered) amounted to £4,939 5s 2d.

For the two cases of housebreaking and wounding Bartlett with intent both men were sentenced to a total of six years’ imprisonment. For throwing a corrosive fluid with intent at both officers they were both sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, and for causing actual bodily harm to another officer Pigott was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment; all the sentences were to be served concurrently, making a total of seven years’ imprisonment. Before they were led away to the cells, Judge Gillis called the officers before him and told them:

The court has heard in the course of the evidence an account of the manner in which these officers were executing their duty in circumstances and conditions of great peril and great violence. In my opinion, all these officers conducted themselves both courageously and in accordance with the highest tradition of their service. I desire to commend each of them. Especially I desire to commend, in addition to what I have already said, the exceptional bravery of Police Constable Bartlett and Sergeant Clement.

The prosecution counsel, Mr Brian Leary, undertook to pass his Lordship’s comments on to the appropriate authority, and so he did; Clement, Bartlett, Methven, Wall and PC Evans from ‘F’ Division were highly commended by the commissioner for ‘outstanding courage and determination, resulting in the arrest and conviction of two dangerous criminals armed with offensive weapons whereby each officer sustained personal injury’. Six weeks later, Clement and Bartlett were each awarded a cheque for £20 from the Bow Street Metropolitan Magistrates’ Reward Fund, and on 16 August 1966 the London Gazette informed the officers that they were to be awarded the British Empire Medal for Gallantry.

It was a time of great satisfaction for Clement, coupled with enormous sadness. Four days previously, Clement, now serving with the Regional Crime Squad, had been called to Braybrook Street, Shepherds Bush. The crew of the ‘F’ Division ‘Q’ Car, ‘Foxtrot One-one’ – Detective Sergeant Christopher Tippett Head, Temporary Detective Constable Stanley Bertram Wombwell and the driver, Police Constable Geoffrey Fox – had been murdered there. Clement was one of three officers deputed by the detective chief superintendent to wrap the bodies where they lay in the road and place them on the grass verge. He grieved for the officers who had been so mercilessly gunned down. He had taught Head beats when they were in uniform at Walham Green, Fulham, later working with him as an aid to CID, and had served as a detective constable on ‘F’ Division, from where he knew Fox. Of the three killers who were later caught, only the ringleader, Harry Maurice Roberts, is still behind bars.

Clement was delighted to discover that his British Empire Medal would be presented to him by Field Marshal The Right Hon. The Earl Alexander of Tunis, KG, GCB, OM, GCMG, CSI, DSO, MC, CD, PC (UK), PC (Can), who was one of his heroes. Mentioned in dispatches on no fewer than eight occasions, this gallant soldier immediately identified Clement as a former guardsman; it was the icing on the cake for Harry Clement.

Unfortunately – and undoubtedly because of the severe and sustained injuries he had received – Bartlett’s personality underwent a change. Appointed detective constable, he was posted to the Yard’s Interpol office – understandably known, because of the non-dynamic nature of the department’s activities, as ‘Sleepy Valley’ – but although, as Clement later told me, “Senior officers, to my personal knowledge, leant over backwards to help him,” it did no good. Bartlett had been a good, keen, intelligent officer, but after fifteen months at Interpol he was posted to ‘L’ Division, south of the Thames, and ten months later he voluntarily resigned. Aged twenty-nine and having served six and a half years in the Metropolitan Police, he left with a small gratuity and no pension. “My view, that was shared by others,” Clement told me, “was that Dennis could have gone on to senior rank, for – until the axe injury – he was made of the right stuff.”

In the same year that Bartlett resigned, Clement received an urgent call on his RCS radio to return to the Yard immediately. There he was issued with a service revolver and ten rounds of ammunition; Pigott had escaped from Wormwood Scrubs Prison, was believed to be in possession of a firearm and was swearing vengeance against Clement.

Pigott did not immediately appear, but the following year a detective constable from Brighton was investigating a long-firm fraud; he went to an office and asked the occupant if he would mind accompanying him to the police station to answer some questions. The man was affability itself, but when he got to the office door he remarked that he had forgotten something and went back to his desk. There was something about the man that put the young detective on his guard, and as Maxwell Thomas Pigott (who by now was understandably using an alias) reached inside a drawer, so the officer kicked it shut with Pigott’s hand inside. The desk drawer proved to contain an automatic pistol, and at Lewes Assizes Pigott was sentenced to a total of six years’ imprisonment. Following his release he started associating with East End hit-man Alfie Gerrard and one or two other notorious characters; then Pigott took a further step up the ladder of criminality.

In the meantime, Clement got on with his life and career. He visited a Harley Street eye specialist, Mr Marzetti Shaw, who told him that his left eye resembled ‘the surface of the moon’ – where the ammonia had burnt minute craters. Mr Shaw was a member of a family of advocates: his brother Erwin was a respected solicitor and his other brother a formidable judge. The ophthalmologist later told Clement that he had mentioned the case to his brother and had suggested that the imposition of more severe sentences in cases of this nature might be appropriate. Sadly, for the violent offenders who had the misfortune to appear before the hard-line Sir Sebag Shaw PC, this prophesy turned out to be only too true.

Another incident occurred at this time which stuck indelibly in Clement’s memory. The Beatles had each been awarded the MBE in 1965. There were a number of people who thought that ‘The Fab Four’ should not have been honoured, since they believed them to be just a bunch of cocky, talentless youngsters. Such outraged citizens regarded the awards as a sop from a gutless government, and many recipients of similar awards returned their own medals, including a Second World War veteran who possessed a row of twelve. They were, of course, in the minority, because the vast majority of the country was in the grip of an adoring ‘Beatlemania’. But in 1969, when John Lennon returned his medal with an accompanying, insolent note to the Queen stating that it was ‘as a protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigerian-Biafra thing’, the protesters who had been furious when the awards had been bestowed on the Beatles in the first place, became incandescent with rage; and Harry Clement was one of them. Striding out into the garden of his home, Clement threw his medal away into the darkness – it is possible that strong drink took a hand in this arbitrary decision – and stalked back into the house.

On 7 May 1970, David Knight – member of a notorious family of scoundrels, including club owner Ronnie Knight, who was then married to the actress Barbara Windsor – was stabbed to death in the Latin Quarter nightclub, Leicester Square, by the barman, Alfredo ‘Eyetie Tony’ (or ‘Italian Tony’) Zomparelli. Opinions differ as to why this confrontation came about; the Knight family claim that they went to the club to demand an explanation of why David had received a severe beating whilst drinking in the Angel, Islington. The opposing faction allege that the Knights were attempting to muscle in on the club, owned by the West End gangster Albert Dimes. But whatever the truth of the matter, David Knight was dead and Zomparelli escaped. Six months later he gave himself up, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment; but that was not enough for Ronnie Knight, who wanted revenge.

None of this yet had anything to do with either Harry Clement or Maxwell Thomas Pigott – who was now calling himself George Bradshaw. Circumstances, however, would shortly change.

Meanwhile, Clement was promoted to detective inspector, then detective chief inspector and was commended by the commissioner for the arrest of a gang of international drug traffickers and for courage in effecting the arrest of four men for conspiracy to rob. He was also awarded a certificate from the Society for the Protection of Life from Fire after he and his Flying Squad driver, Police Constable Gordon Reynolds, repeatedly entered a burning house and rescued two children aged three and four, who were trapped with their father on the first floor.

Released from prison, Zomparelli was murdered on 4 December 1974. He had been playing the pinball machine at the Golden Goose amusement arcade, Old Compton Street, when two men entered the premises and four .38 bullets were fired into the back of Zomparelli’s head, killing him instantly. Naturally, the prime suspect was Ronnie Knight, who was arrested but released after he was found to be impressively alibied; and there, for the time being, the matter rested.

In 1977 Bradshaw – alias Pigott – was arrested for a series of robberies and for using a firearm with intent to resist arrest, and in February 1978 he was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. However, a year into his sentence, Bradshaw decided to try to broker a deal by turning supergrass, and the bait that he offered was a tempting one. He was moved from the austerity of Wormwood Scrubs Prison to the relative comfort of Twickenham police station, where he commenced his lengthy de-brief. It was at this time that Harry Clement, now a detective superintendent, walked into the office of Detective Chief Superintendent Bob ‘Tug’ Wilson and glanced at a photograph on his desk. It depicted Pigott, and Wilson hastily snatched it up and slammed it facedown on the desk, saying Clement should not have seen who it was. Clement replied with some asperity that this was the man who had attacked him in 1965; telling him he was aware of that, Wilson swore him to silence because of what Bradshaw had had to say.

Bradshaw had named 105 criminals who had been involved in armed robberies, and in 74 separate statements under caution he had detailed other serious offences which he had committed; but the jewel in the crown was that he had participated in the murder of Alfredo Zomparelli. He alleged that Nicky Gerrard – son of the notorious Alfie – had been paid £1,000 for the killing by Ronnie Knight, and Bradshaw had earned £325 for keeping lookout. And if £1,000 seems a little miserly for a gangland hit, there were fringe benefits attached to the contract; it appeared that Nicky Gerrard had been having an adulterous affair with Zomparelli’s wife (soon to become a widow), a former stripper named Rozanna.

Now, on 17 January 1980, Bradshaw appeared at the Old Bailey and pleaded guilty to the murder of Zomparelli. In addition, he pleaded guilty to arson at the Directors Club, Drummond Street, Camden, between 8 and 11 June 1976, robbing Michael North of £10,000 on 21 January 1976, robbing Edward Rootes of £25,000 on 9 June 1976 and shooting David Cahill with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm on 19 August 1974. He also asked for a further 107 offences to be taken into consideration.

Richard Du Cann QC for the prosecution told the court, “The assistance given by the defendant towards solving serious and organised crime can only be described as invaluable,” but Mr Justice Comyn stated that the courts could not be bargaining places for informers. He remarked, “There can be no fixed tariff for informers – a tariff for a grass, a lower tariff for a plus-grass and a lower tariff still for a supergrass.”

In sentencing him to life imprisonment for the murder, six years for the robberies, five years for the arson and four years for the shooting, all of which would run concurrently and concurrent to Bradshaw’s existing ten-year sentence, Mr Justice Comyn told him: “Yours is a terrible and terrifying story of years of grave and wicked crime, often involving the use of firearms. You know you will be a marked man for the rest of your life.” However, when Ronnie Knight and Nicky Gerrard were both acquitted of the murder, Bradshaw, who was said to have shot or injured fourteen people and had amassed a quarter of a million pounds during his criminal career, was viewed as an unreliable witness, and his desirability as a supergrass tempted his handlers no longer. Instead, he spent ten years in Wakefield prison on Rule 43 – or, as it is known in prison parlance, ‘behind the door’ – and following his release he slipped below the radar and vanished. His whereabouts to this day – save to a chosen few – are unknown.

With just under twenty-eight years’ service, Clement retired as a detective chief superintendent. He moved a long way away from his native London and now immerses himself in charity work. And long after his retirement he received an unexpected present. One evening his wife handed him a small case; inside it was his missing British Empire Medal with the oak leaf for gallantry. Following his fit of pique all those years previously, his wife and daughter had searched the garden by torchlight until they found it and hid it away, until the most propitious time came to reunite it with its owner.