Chapter 4

Cowards and Heroes

his chapter deals with a series of events which in one way or another are inextricably linked.

The story commences on 8 December 1944, when a stolen black Vauxhall saloon pulled up outside Frank Wordley Ltd, a jeweller’s shop in Birchin Lane in the City of London. Three young men got out, and one smashed the window of the premises with a long-handled axe and scooped out valuables worth £3,800 (by today’s standards, over £87,000); then the men scrambled back into the car, which roared away. As the Vauxhall accelerated towards the junction with Lombard Street a man stepped into its path, his arms raised in an effort to stop the raiders. He was Captain Ralph Binney, a fifty-six-year-old Royal Naval officer, close to retirement. The car smashed into him, knocking him on to his back, and the front wheels ran over him. The driver, twenty-six-year-old Thomas Hedley, stopped, reversed, then ran over Binney again, and as he did so Binney’s clothing became trapped in the car’s suspension. Hedley then drove off, scattering pedestrians and pulling Binney along underneath the car as he went. A motorist who gave chase heard Binney shouting, “Help! Help!” as he was dragged for over a mile through Lombard Street and across Tower Bridge, before he was flung from the vehicle in Tooley Street outside London Bridge Station. By coincidence, the noted pathologist Professor Keith Simpson was passing, and although he rushed Binney to the conveniently nearby Guy’s Hospital, it was too late to save him. His lungs had been crushed and punctured by his broken ribs when the car ran over him, and the battering and bruising that his whole body had suffered was sufficient to end his life within three hours of his admission to hospital.

The car was found abandoned near Tower Bridge and the hunt was on for the murderers. Hedley was soon arrested, as were two brothers named Jenkins. At the Old Bailey in March 1945 Hedley was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His appeal failed, but surprisingly his sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. One of the brothers, Thomas James Jenkins, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years’ penal servitude; his younger brother, twenty-year-old Charles Henry ‘Harry-Boy’ Jenkins, was not even charged. When he was brought to the police station to stand on an identity parade, he punched a police sergeant in the face, breaking his jaw. This might have been thought to be the height of folly, but young Harry-Boy had a hidden agenda. Having received a retaliatory beating from the police, which he knew was as inevitable as it would be painful, Jenkins insisted that his injuries be dressed with sticking plaster. He then demanded that the faces of every member of the identity parade were similarly adorned with sticking plaster, and to nobody’s surprise none of the witnesses from Birchin Lane picked him out. It was a ploy which might have suggested the acumen of a much older criminal, but Jenkins was nothing if not streetwise. He had first been convicted at the age of twelve and since that time had notched up seven convictions. He was, of course, sent to Borstal for his attack on the sergeant, but he undoubtedly thought that this was a better result than the alternative.

Binney’s friends and colleagues set up a subscription fund to commemorate his bravery, and the Binney Medal was struck, to be awarded annually to a member of the public – not a police officer – who demonstrated outstanding bravery in the prevention of crime, in assisting the police, or contributing to the maintenance of law and order. The medal shows an effigy of the gallant captain and it comes without a ribbon; it is not intended that it should be worn. At the suggestion of Sir Hugh Turnbull, the (then) Commissioner of the City of London Police, the naval officers who had collected the fund invited the Goldsmiths’ Company to act as trustees. As well as the medal, a number of Certificates of Merit are awarded annually – up to twenty – for similar acts of courage for which the medal cannot be awarded but which deserve special recognition. This decision is made by the Selection Committee, comprised of the Chairman, the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, the Commissioners of both the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police, the Chief of Fleet Support and the secretary of the trust, the Clerk of the Goldsmiths’ company.

Hedley was released after nine years and expressed contrition for causing the death of Captain Binney – which made everybody feel so much better. We have, however, not yet finished with the brothers Jenkins.

On Christmas Day 1946 Divisional Detective Inspector Robert Mold Higgins was forty-three years of age and had been a police officer for twenty-one years. A very tough character, Higgins served several tours with the Flying Squad (which would include being the Squad’s deputy chief), and by the end of his career spanning thirty-two years had been commended by the commissioner on fifty-eight occasions. Commander Hugh Young CBE, KPM described him as being, “the best informed detective on my staff’. So when Higgins’ home telephone rang at 12.30 on that Christmas morning, a call which would lead to an encounter with a man whom Higgins would later describe as “probably the greatest individual menace I encountered”, one of his sources of information would be put to the test and would not be found wanting.

Frederick Rowland Westbrook was born in 1919 and his life of crime had commenced at Crewe when he was just fifteen. Sent to an approved school for stealing, he escaped and later, for garagebreaking and theft at the Old Bailey in March 1939, was sentenced to two years’ Borstal Training. Released early, he was arrested for housebreaking in Surrey, wriggled free from his captors and was chased across country by police for five miles before swimming a river in order to escape. Stopped in possession of a bicycle, he threw it at the police officers’ legs and ran off. When he was finally cornered, he produced an automatic pistol and threatened the officers, but it was kicked from his hand and he was arrested. At the Old Bailey in January 1940 he was convicted of officebreaking, larceny of a gun and ammunition and making use of it to resist arrest, and was sentenced to three years’ Borstal Detention. Confronted by the police on Putney Bridge in 1942, he leapt twenty feet from the parapet and got clean away. Prison sentences of nine, six and twelve months followed. Arrested again, this time at Kingston, Surrey in April 1945, Westbrook made the following, astonishing statement:

I shall continue thieving until I am thirty. Then I shall have sufficient capital to keep me free from worrying for a few years and if there is a next time, when a copper comes for me, it won’t be so easy and I will have something ready for him.

These turned out to be prophetic words. Conscripted into the Army, Westbrook deserted from the South Wales Borderers in October 1946, and carried out at least forty-four housebreakings in the Thames Valley area. He was now twenty-seven years of age and the possessor of fourteen previous convictions. He was variously described as ‘short and skinny’ or ‘a smallish, lithe man with a rather reedy voice’, but it was clear that when cornered by police he would use any ruse to escape. What was less clear was that he could be provoked into violence with little or no pretext, and what was not known at all was that he was in possession of a fully loaded 9mm Browning automatic.

On Christmas Eve 1946 Westbrook arrived in Soho and met up with a blonde woman and her male companion. They went from pub to pub until they arrived at Esther’s, an all-night café in New Cavendish Street, just off Tottenham Court Road. Already in the premises were a group of Jamaicans, one of whom was twenty-seven-year-old Aloysius Abbott, an aircraftsman serving with the RAF and spending a few days’ leave in London. Westbrook demanded priority in being served before the black customers, and when the waitress refused he punched her on the chin; she, in turn smashed a plate over his head and demanded that he leave. Two of the Jamaican group, Emmanuel Williams, a medical student, and an RAF sergeant ejected Westbrook from the café before the violence escalated any further; Westbrook scampered away, but then stopped, produced the Browning and fired into the group of Jamaicans. Abbott was hit three times, once in the shoulder and twice in the lungs, and fell to the pavement, fatally wounded; he died an hour later. Westbrook fired more shots at the group before escaping with his blonde companion; they later booked into a hotel in Woburn Square, under the names of ‘Mr & Mrs French’.

With the descriptions of Westbrook and his companions, Higgins now put his expertise to good use; a prostitute who was a regular informant provided him with the name of the blonde’s original companion and a probable address. The man was spoken to, he identified Westbrook as the killer, and as a result, the cafés, boarding houses and hotels in the Bloomsbury area which Westbrook was known to have previously frequented were checked.

It paid off; on the morning of 27 December two aids to CID, Police Constables Bertie Joseph Charles Rowswell and Norman Harold Strange were on patrol in Woburn Place when they saw Westbrook and his blonde companion and realized that they fitted the descriptions of the wanted couple. The officers confronted Westbrook, told him they were police officers and asked to see his identity card. Westbrook immediately pulled out his automatic and rammed it into PC Strange’s stomach, saying, “If you come another inch, I’ll blow your guts in.” He then turned and ran, with the officers in hot pursuit.

Westbrook was pitted against two determined adversaries. Rowswell was thirty-six years of age and at one-eighth of an inch under six feet three and weighing sixteen stone, he was a powerful opponent. With fifteen years’ service in the Metropolitan Police, he had proved his abilities time and again. Within two years of joining he had received a commissioner’s commendation for effecting the arrest of two men for larceny and in 1939 another for ‘courage and promptitude in rescuing a woman from drowning whilst on annual leave at Skegness’; he was also awarded a testimonial on vellum from the Royal Humane Society. Two years later, he was awarded the British Empire Medal for ‘meritorious service in connection with war activities’, and now it was quite clear that he was determined to stop Westbrook. He jumped on to a passing taxi, but Westbrook, standing in its path, fired a shot at his pursuer which hit the taxi’s roof.

Norman Strange first jumped on to a passing lorry, but due to its slowness opted instead for a lift in a car to pursue Westbrook. Strange had joined the Metropolitan Police in 1925 and today was his forty-fourth birthday; he too was making it clear that the finest birthday present he could receive was the capture of Westbrook. Strange had been commended twice by the commissioner, first in 1929 for his action in a case of housebreaking, then two years later for effecting the arrest of a thief, on each occasion receiving monetary awards of 7s 6d. However, it seemed at one time that his career was about to come to an untimely end. Three months after his second commendation he appeared before a disciplinary board, in respect of two charges. The first was that he had omitted to proceed to a police station for duty, and for this offence he was fined one day’s pay. This amounted to 11s 6d, so at least that left 3s 6d from his two awards. However, the second charge was considered far more serious: he had failed to work his patrol and, to further aggravate the matter, he had been found in a police section house with his helmet off and his jacket removed. He was fined four days’ pay (£2 6s 0d), severely rebuked and cautioned. Perhaps his commendations acted as mitigation; other officers faced dismissal for similar offences.

But now, fifteen years later, his youthful impetuosity behind him, Norman Strange chased Westbrook as he ran in and out of premises, down back-alleys and over walls, firing at the two officers as he went. Householders were spilling out of their homes, passers-by stood and stared, as Westbrook dashed into a hotel in Cartwright Gardens, ran up the stairs and got out on to the flat roof. Following him up to the roof, Strange paused only to grab hold of a crowbar before emerging out of the skylight. By now, the police had been called and a hundred officers ringed the scene; but although, for all his Houdini-style escapes, Westbrook must have realized that a getaway was now impossible, he turned and fired at Strange, who was almost within striking distance on the slippery roof. Strange saw a flash and dropped the crowbar as he felt a tug at his arm; the bullet had passed right through the sleeve of his raincoat. A moment later, Westbrook fired again. The bullet just missed Rowswell but struck some brickwork which splintered and flew into his right eye, causing him to stagger, and he cried out, “I’ve been hit!” Nevertheless, he picked himself up and held a handkerchief to his bleeding eye while he and Strange followed Westbrook who, still firing at them, disappeared through the skylight.

Meanwhile, Higgins had been alerted and was racing to the hotel, armed with a service revolver. Meeting up with Police Sergeant Lacey, who was also armed, they searched the premises and found Westbrook in one of the rooms. “I give in,” he said simply – his gun, secreted behind a cushion, was empty. Even as he left the hotel he tried to make a final break for it; he was dissuaded from doing so.

On 13 February 1947 at the Old Bailey Westbrook was found not guilty of the murder of Aloysius Abbott, claiming that he had only fired his pistol to frighten the Jamaicans who, he feared, were going to attack him, and he was convicted of manslaughter. He had already pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm with intent to resist arrest and asked for the forty-four cases of housebreaking to be taken into consideration; the trial judge, Mr Justice Atkinson, listened with incredulity as Higgins outlined Westbrook’s criminal career. Told of his two Borstal Training sentences, the judge snapped, “That illustrates the futility of letting them out before training could have done any good at all,” but when Higgins informed the judge that following his conviction for twenty-four offences at the Old Bailey in November 1942, Westbrook had been bound over to keep the peace for three years, it was too much.

“And he was bound over!” gasped the judge.

Sentencing him to eleven years’ penal servitude, Mr Justice Atkinson told Westbrook:

If ever a criminal had a chance given to him when he did not deserve it, you were he. Not only Borstal but probation was turned into a farce by the way you have been treated. The jury have given you the benefit of a very slender doubt. It is plain you fired the pistol in a most reckless way and I imagine the jury thought there was an element of bad luck in that two shots killed Abbott. That crime was followed by two crimes where luck was all your way, where you might very well have killed two police officers, as well.

He then highly commended Rowswell and Strange, as did the jury, a commendation that was echoed by the commissioner three months later. Both officers were awarded £15 from the Bow Street Reward Fund, and on 5 September 1947 both men were awarded the King’s Police and Fire Services Medal for Gallantry.

Strange never did realize his ambition to become a permanent member of the CID; he failed his second-class Civil Service examination (a necessity, then, to join the CID) on three occasions. He retired after twenty-five years service and died aged seventy-four.

Rowswell’s damaged eye had to be removed but he was assured that he would keep his job, and he did. On 15 December 1947 he was appointed detective constable and was given duties in the office of the divisional detective inspector on ‘J’ Division. Not that this proved to be a purely sedentary duty – seven years later he was commended by both the North London Magistrates’ Court and the commissioner for ability and initiative in arresting two persistent housebreakers.

He soldiered bravely on until 30 September 1963 when, still serving but off-duty, he collapsed and died from coronary thrombosis and a gastric ulcer. Married, with two sons, he was fifty-three years of age and had served with the Metropolitan Police for almost thirty-two and a half years. The Force turned out in droves to salute the memory of their highly decorated, resourceful comrade. Rowswell was the only Metropolitan Police officer to be awarded both the King’s Police and Fire Services Medal and the British Empire Medal, both for gallantry.

Bob Higgins, on the other hand, rose to the rank of detective superintendent and enjoyed forty-five years of retirement, keeping extremely active until his death, three weeks prior to what would have been his ninety-ninth birthday. He was a good friend to me and an amusing correspondent – and never forgot that he was a hard-line copper. “Clearing out the riff-raff,” was one of his favourite descriptions of his way of dispersing disagreeable members of society. I was one of those fortunate to be considered ‘a good scout’; his contempt was reserved for those officers who obtained their promotion by ‘driving a desk’. And I know he was furious at the jury’s decision after just one hour’s deliberations to acquit Westbrook of Abbott’s murder, especially after two of the women jurors were heard to say as they left the Old Bailey that at least it would not be on their consciences that they had sent a man to be hanged.

“I wonder how they’d have felt if Abbott had been one of their loved ones?” he bitterly commented to me.

There we shall leave Bob Higgins, but only momentarily; two months after Westbrook’s conviction he would re-emerge in another story of murder and firearms.

On 23 April 1947 Charles Henry ‘Harry-Boy’ Jenkins was released from Borstal, having served just twenty-one months of his sentence. Known as ‘The King of Borstal’ during his incarceration, he had become friends with another South London tearaway, twenty-year-old Christopher James Geraghty, who had carried out two armed raids at jewellers in 1945. Geraghty had escaped twice during his stay at Sherwood Borstal; he was released in November 1946. Now he and Jenkins were reunited and they teamed up with seventeen-year-old Terence Peter Rolt. Within two days, the three young men, together with two other criminals, Michael Joseph Gillam (who had met Geraghty and Jenkins whilst similarly serving a Borstal term) and thirty-seven-year-old William Henry Walsh, carried out an armed robbery at A.B. Davis Ltd, a jeweller in Queensway, which netted them £4,500; and two days after that, Rolt, Geraghty and Jenkins had broken into F. Dyke & Co, a gunsmith’s in Union Street and made off with a number of revolvers and a quantity of ammunition.

On 29 April, just six days after his release, Jenkins, together with his two trusted lieutenants, Geraghty and Rolt, stole a Vauxhall 14 saloon, intending that it should be the getaway car for a robbery at Jay’s, a jeweller’s shop in Charlotte Street, W.1. Rushing into the shop, the three masked tearaways brandished the stolen guns, threatened the staff and coshed the director with a gun barrel; but when the seventy-year-old manager threw a stool at them, a shot was fired and the three robbers fled, only to discover that their getaway car had been obstructed by a lorry. As they ran off on foot, a motor mechanic named Alec d’Antiquis, married with six children, was riding past the scene on his motorcycle. Seeing what was going on, he slewed his machine in front of the fleeing gunmen and Geraghty paused, only to shoot him in the head. As he lay dying, face down on the pavement, d’Antiquis murmured to a passer-by, “They have shot me … stop them … I did my best.”

DDI Bob Higgins immediately contacted his senior officer. Robert Honey Fabian was the acting detective superintendent of No. 1 Area and he was already a legendary character in the Metropolitan Police. Just two years away from retirement, forty-six-year-old Fabian had been commended by the commissioner on forty occasions and had been awarded the King’s Police Medal for Gallantry in 1940, after dismantling an IRA bomb by the simple expedient of pulling the detonators out of the unstable, sweating sticks of Polar Ammon gelignite and then, to ensure that no more detonators were secreted, cutting up the gelignite with his pocket knife.

Fabian, a brilliant murder investigator and a former head of the Flying Squad, got to work with his deputy Higgins, and in a twenty-day period all of the criminals in all of the cases were arrested and later convicted. Rolt, too young to hang, was ordered to be detained at His Majesty’s Pleasure, but Geraghty and Jenkins were sentenced to death.

Whilst Geraghty and Jenkins were achieving heroic status amongst their equally gormless chums, Mrs d’Antiquis was experiencing problems of her own, quite apart from the murder of her husband. Due to her husband’s neglect of his motorcycle business, she had accumulated debts of £650; these were alleviated by donations, gathered by the Daily Mail, of £1,521 – that and the award, on behalf of her brave husband, of the Binney Medal. It was curious that the Binney Medal was originally struck partly because of Thomas Jenkins’ conviction for Binney’s manslaughter, since his brother, Harry, who was not convicted for that offence, was convicted of the murder of d’Antiquis. As the hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, slipped the noose over Jenkins’ head at Pentonville Prison on the morning of 19 September 1947, thus providing him with a one-way ticket to eternity, it is possible that Thomas Jenkins, then in the second year of his sentence at Dartmoor, paused to wonder if the existence that he and his brother had been leading – a life of guns and death – was entirely worthwhile. But if this was indeed the case, it was just a momentary thought and one which he quickly dismissed.

If the Jenkins brothers were bad through and through and Westbrook was a gun-toting borderline psychotic, then Robert Harrington Sanders was a criminal who was totally out of control. Deserting from his regiment, the Black Watch, in wartime Germany, twenty-year-old Sanders undertook an orgy of violence, including two cases of robbery with aggravation, four cases of rape and an indecent assault. At his court martial in June 1945 he was sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude, and although the sentence was later reduced to one of seven years, he escaped and managed to return to England. During an attempted armed robbery of a garage owner, the police were called and overpowered Sanders; he broke away, leapt over the parapet of a viaduct and, landing thirty feet below, made his getaway. Jumping played an important part in his escapes; a few months later he was traced to a house at Clacton-on-Sea and leapt from a first floor window, sixteen feet off the ground. Unfortunately, a police officer was waiting for him, and at Essex Quarter Sessions on 14 March 1946 he was convicted of possessing a loaded pistol with intent to endanger life and sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude. At the same time, for attempting to steal a car, a wireless set and other offences, he was sentenced to concurrent terms of one, three and seven years’ imprisonment.

Incarcerated in Wakefield Prison, Sanders waited for six years before making his next move; then, just before Christmas 1952, he climbed over the prison wall and escaped. Within a month, Sanders had led a six-man gang into a robbery at an East London pub, the Prospect of Whitby; all disguised themselves with red scarves and not unnaturally were christened ‘The Red Scarf Gang’. Sanders was their leader; it was known that he had obtained a gun and detectives all over London were pressed into service to discover his whereabouts. It paid off. The police received a tip-off that a robbery was planned when wages were delivered to Messrs Cedra Mantles Ltd, a clothing company situated in Chatham Place, a thoroughfare just south of the junction with Morning Lane, Hackney. On Friday 6 February 1953 police were keeping observation when they saw two men, later joined by a third, acting suspiciously in the area; from their actions it was clear that they were the men who intended to rob the employees of the clothing company. The three men were Robert Sanders, John Joseph Cracknell, a thirty-two-year-old market porter and – recently released from prison – thirty-three-year-old Thomas James Jenkins. The detectives telephoned for reinforcements, but in the meantime the taxi containing the wages clerk, Leslie Moutrie, was arriving at the premises. He had returned from another branch, having collected between £700 and £800 in wages. Suddenly, Sanders and Jenkins walked up the stairs to the office, where the factory manager, Benjamin Izen, picked up an iron bar to confront them. As Sanders reached inside his jacket pocket the manager lunged at him, and he and some of the company’s workmen chased them into the street, with Jenkins exclaiming, “We’ve been tumbled!” However, by this time police assistance arrived, Cracknell had disappeared in the confusion.

The crew of the ‘J’ Division ‘Q’ Car who tore into Chatham Place saw Sanders and Jenkins being pursued by the company’s employees. The driver followed the men as they ran into Meeting Fields Path, through Rivaz Place and across a bombsite. At the junction of Mead Road and Cresset Road the two men split up. Jenkins turned into Cresset Road and Sanders continued along Mead Road towards the junction with Elsdale Street; with that, the ‘Q’ Car pulled up. Police Constable George Kenneth Frank Baldwin was first out of the car and he took up the pursuit of Jenkins, eventually catching and overpowering him in the gardens of Lennox Buildings; his actions were later recognised with the award of a Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct.

Meanwhile, Sanders was chased by the other two officers; the driver was Police Constable George Edward Dorsett. At thirty-one years of age, Dorsett had spent six years with the RAF as a despatch rider and had been mentioned in dispatches in 1941; he had joined the Metropolitan Police as soon as he was demobilised. At the Hendon driving school he had been authorised to ride all types of motorcycles, and just six months previously he had been appointed a Class I driver, authorised to drive any type of fast police vehicle, up to and including Flying Squad cars.

But leading Sanders’ pursuit was Detective Constable Edward Norman Snitch, who during the 1930s had served as a military policeman. Joining the Metropolitan Police one year prior to the Second World War, Snitch had been recalled to the Army in 1942 and served for the next four years with the rank of sergeant. Demobilised in 1946, he rejoined the police, was posted back to ‘J’ Division and, after a short period as an aid to CID, was appointed detective constable in 1947. Married, with a son aged four, the thirty-four-year-old officer had been commended by the commissioner just six months previously for his ability in a case of robbery; now, once more, his abilities would be put to the test.

Closing in on Sanders at Collent House, Snitch called out, “Stop – I’m a police officer.” Sanders turned and shouted, “Keep away from me you bastard, or I’ll put a bullet through you!” and reaching under his raincoat he produced a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. Snitch had no illusions about the danger posed by this jail-breaker, who had used firearms on other occasions; at a distance of ten feet from the man pointing a gun right at him, Snitch simply went straight for him. Sanders fired, the bullet grazed the side of Snitch’s face and he stumbled. Dorsett saw his colleague fall and, believing that he had been shot, dashed at Sanders. Snitch got to his feet as Dorsett drew level with him and together the two officers closed with Sanders who fired two more shots at them, one providentially lodging in the belt of Snitch’s raincoat. Dorsett seized hold of Sanders by the head whilst Snitch wrestled the revolver from his grasp. The gun was found to contain three used cartridges plus three live ones.

After being searched at Hackney police station, Sanders was found to be in possession of another twelve rounds of .38 ammunition, as well as a leather holster. A flat in Sydenham, Kent, where Sanders had been staying, was searched and a second gun, a loaded automatic pistol with 100 rounds of ammunition, was discovered. Yet another revolver was discovered in a telephone kiosk, not far from the factory in Chatham Place. When he was charged, Sanders replied, “Fuck you, you’ve caught me. I’ll take the lot,” and in fairness, there was little else he could do. Cracknell was later picked up, and Sanders manfully absolved Jenkins of any knowledge of the weapons.

The trial commenced at the Old Bailey on 26 March 1953. Sanders was charged with shooting at Snitch with intent to murder him, plus wounding with intent to murder; in addition, he was charged with Jenkins and Cracknell for conspiring to rob Leslie Moutrie. All pleaded not guilty.

In the witness box Sanders admitted being a convict ‘on the run’ and stated that he had agreed to meet Jenkins at four o’clock on 6 February to discuss with him the possibility of finding new accommodation, plus the chance of going abroad. Through his barrister, Mr H.M. Croome, Sanders said there was never any agreement to rob anybody. He and Jenkins were walking by the factory when he saw a police car. “I soon discovered I was being chased,” he told the jury. “Detective Snitch didn’t call out and I didn’t say anything to him. I looked over my shoulder and saw Snitch closing in on me. I couldn’t run any farther as I had been ill, and I turned round, drew my gun from my holster and waited until he was a yard or so away and then fired three shots into the ground. Snitch made a dive at me and we had a struggle. He grasped my hand and I placed my feet behind his legs and threw him to the ground. In doing so, the gun fell from my hand. I was standing over Snitch when Police Constable Dorsett came up, and in the struggle I was overpowered.”

“Did you fire those shots with the intention of killing Snitch?” asked his barrister.

“No,” replied Sanders. “If I wanted to kill him, I would have had no trouble in doing so.”

Jenkins went into the witness box to tell the jury that since he had been released from Dartmoor in June 1950 he had been ‘working straight’. He also stated that he had no idea that Sanders had a gun or a cosh and that it was just coincidence that they were near the factory at the time Leslie Moutrie was delivering the wages. They had never discussed robbing anyone, he added.

In his defence, Cracknell denied ever being anywhere near Chatham Place on the day of the wages delivery.

On 30 March the jury found all of the defendants guilty of the offences with which they had been charged. Mr Justice Streatfeild sentenced Cracknell, who had a number of minor convictions, to three years’ imprisonment and Jenkins, who had been working as a labourer (and had given his employer ‘every satisfaction’), to five years’ imprisonment.

Sentencing Sanders to life imprisonment, the judge told him:

You have committed this offence with a firearm just once too often. Once before you were sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude for being in possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life. Quite clearly, you are a thoroughly dangerous man. In my view you are a danger to society every moment you are at liberty and you force a judge, for the first time in his life, and I hope it will be the last, to take a very extreme view of an offence of this gravity. The public must be protected as far as it possibly can be against the activities of a man, such as yourself.

With a rather feeble attempt at braggadocio, the twenty-eight-year-old, short, stocky gunman with a tell-tale scar above his eye gave a sardonic bow and replied, “My Lord is most gracious.”

As the larcenous trio were led away, the judge called the officers before him, saying:

Before parting from this case, I would just like to express the appreciation and admiration of the court for the great gallantry and devotion to duty shown by Detective Constable Snitch and PC Dorsett and I very much welcome the rider which the jury have added to their verdict expressing a similar appreciation. I trust that the conduct of these two police officers which in my view deserves the highest commendation will be drawn to the attention of the commissioner of police.

On 20 June, the three officers were each awarded £15 from the Bow Street Reward Fund, and three days later all were highly commended by the commissioner; it took another four months before Snitch and Dorsett were each awarded very well deserved George Medals.

Two years later, Snitch was promoted to detective sergeant (second class) and posted to ‘G’ Division, where he served the rest of his service at City Road police station. He retired after twenty-five years service and later moved, with his wife Eileen to East Sussex. In 1985 he began to lose his balance, and the shot from Sanders’ gun causing the wound which originally had been thought to be ‘superficial’ was diagnosed by the specialists as being the start of a progressive illness. For the last four years of his life he was unable to move or speak. His wife wrote to the Metropolitan Police Welfare Department on three occasions without receiving a reply; therefore Mrs Snitch wrote directly to the commissioner. Sir Kenneth Newman GBE, QPM had received criticism both from inside and outside the Force during his tenure, but in Mrs Snitch’s eyes he could do no wrong. He replied, almost by return of post, and Mrs Snitch received considerable assistance in converting their garage into a bedroom, where she nursed her husband until his death, aged seventy-four, in 1992.

But his colleague George Dorsett carried on; his gallantry had not yet been expended.

On a Saturday afternoon in December 1958 Dorsett was asleep at home in Chingford, having finished a tour of night duty, when he was awoken by the sounds of an explosion, of breaking glass and someone screaming. Looking out of his bedroom window, he saw a youth standing in the roadway and pointing a shotgun at a neighbour. It was clear that the explosion he had heard was the noise of the shotgun being discharged at the neighbour’s windows. Quickly putting on a dressing gown, he ran downstairs and out into the street, where the youth – he was just sixteen – was screaming threats. It later transpired that the father of the youth’s girl-friend had had opposed their friendship, and this had caused the boy, carrying his brother’s shotgun, to arrive at his paramour’s house, blow out the windows and threaten to kill her father.

It appeared that the fears of the girl’s father were justified; Dorsett called out to the boy, who swung round, the gun pointing at Dorsett and his finger on the trigger. “I’m a police officer,” said Dorsett, quietly. “Now, don’t be silly.”

“Keep away,” replied the boy. “I’m not afraid to use this.” Dorsett continued to advance towards the obviously troubled youth, speaking quietly and soothingly to him. And then, when he was a yard away from the twin muzzles of the shotgun, Dorsett pounced. He knocked the gun aside and, with the assistance of a neighbour, overpowered the youth.

The gun contained one live twelve-bore cartridge, the other having been expended during the window-blowing episode; but Dorsett then noticed that the gun was not cocked and mentioned this to the youth. “I know it wasn’t cocked,” said the boy, “because I pulled the trigger and nothing happened.”

“So you did intend to shoot me?”asked Dorsett and received the chilling reply, “Of course I did.”

After his appearance at Chingford and Waltham Abbey Magistrates’ Court, where the boy hopefully received the type of treatment he so obviously needed, the Bench congratulated Dorsett for his courage, as did the commissioner on 10 February 1959 for ‘outstanding courage and determination’. Six weeks later he was awarded a second cheque for £15 from the Bow Street Reward Fund, and three months after that a bar to his George Medal.

Dorsett had exhibited absolutely cold-blooded courage. At the time of advancing upon the obviously agitated youth, whose finger was on the trigger, he was unaware that the shotgun was not cocked but he knew that although one barrel had been discharged it was reasonable to assume that the second barrel contained a live cartridge, as indeed it did. And as an experienced police officer with a knowledge of firearms, he was also aware that if the shotgun had been fired at him from a distance of three feet it would have quite literally blown him in half.

Dorsett was quite properly regarded as a legend. “He was smart – immaculately smart,” recalled former Police Constable Brian Ford, a newcomer to Walthamstow police station, adding, “Everybody looked up to him.”

An accident a few years later when his right elbow and left wrist were fractured meant the end of Dorsett’s active police career; his injuries were so severe that he taught himself to write with his other hand. He spent the rest of his twenty-six years service as a court officer and he died on 1 February 2006, aged eighty-four.

At his death, Dorsett had the unique distinction of being the only Metropolitan Police officer to be awarded the George Medal, a bar to it, and a wartime mention in dispatches. Together with his Police Long Service and Good Conduct Medal, plus his war medals, the decorations are held in the Met Collection at the Empress State Building and are a fitting tribute to a very brave man.