Chapter Five

THE REAL GANG LEADERS OF THE 1920S

THE REAL BILLY KIMBER

Tommy Shelby’s plot to fix a race so that he would clean up on the bets laid in his illegal betting shop enrages the powerful gangster Billy Kimber in episode two, series one of Peaky Blinders. Waxing wealthy through his control of the legal and illegal bookmaking sites at racecourses across the country, he confronts the Shelbys in their headquarters, the Garrison pub. Flanked by two armed minders, Kimber strides assertively through the bar. The drinkers are silenced by his intimidating presence and then he calls out for a man named Tommy Shelby. He shoots his revolver into the air, at which Shelby leads his brothers out of the snug. Telling the customers to go home, he sits at a table facing Kimber. A Londoner by his speech, Kimber is short of stature and smartly dressed. He shouts that he is the boss, that the Shelbys fixed a race without his permission and that he runs the races. As he is leaving, Kimber threatens Tommy Shelby, who then offers a deal that is worth listening to. He tells Kimber that he admires him because he had started with nothing and built a legitimate business – something that Shelby desires.428

The real Billy Kimber was indeed a gangster who made his money on the racecourses by way of protection rackets and pickpocketing and he did go on to become a legitimate businessman. But he was not from London and nor was he short. He was a burly Brummie from the Summer Lane neighbourhood. Powerfully built, strong and charismatic, he feared no man but many feared him. A tough fighter himself, he was the leader of a group of vicious and frightening thugs called the Birmingham Gang. As such, he was one of the first major gangland figures in England.

Kimber was born in 1882 at Number 55 Court in Summer Lane, although the family later moved nearby to a back-to-back in Hospital Street.⁴²⁹ His mother was the daughter of Irish parents and a laundress, whilst his father was a brass founder from Birmingham.⁴³⁰ There is no suggestion that either of them was dishonest, but from an early age their second oldest son broke the law. In 1894, and aged twelve, he was given four strokes of the birch for stealing a glass cutter. This was made of a bundle of robust birch twigs bound at one end with wire. Its strokes were given over the bare buttocks of the offender, who was made to lie face down on a ‘horse’ with legs and arms strapped. As a punishment it was usually given to boys under sixteen convicted of petty theft and it was administered to discourage further offending. It was ineffective on Kimber, and over the next three years he was given summary convictions for assault, gaming and vagrancy.431

The Summer Lane district was of course noted for its peaky blinders at this time, and although Kimber is not specifically named as such, it is most probable that he was one because of his violence. As with so many peakies, he was also a petty thief, and, in October 1900, he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, which he served in Birmingham Prison at Winson Green, for trying to break into a restaurant through its roof.⁴³² Though only eighteen, by now he was regarded as a habitual criminal. He was described as having a fresh complexion, brown hair and blue eyes. He had the words ‘W Kimber’ and ‘S Birch’ tattooed on his left forearm and a cross and ‘Love’ on the back of one hand. His height was given as just over 5 foot 8 inches but given, the two-inch discrepancy regarding the height of Billy Beach in official records, Kimber may have been an inch or two more, as he was recalled as a taller man.⁴³³

His occupation was given as a brass caster, but it was not a job he carried on, as in August 1901, he was imprisoned again for assaulting a police constable – another reason to think he was a peaky blinder.⁴³⁴ Kimber was now a father. His oldest child, Maud, was born in July 1901, and a year later he married her mother, Maud Beatrice Harbidge, who was living nearby in Howard Street. She was a bedstead ornament worker aged twenty and signed her name, however, Kimber could only make his mark.⁴³⁵ It is not known how she and Kimber met, but her great-granddaughter, Juliet Banyard, was told that, ‘Maud had a lovely singing voice and earned money singing in the pubs in Brum.’ Juliet’s grandmother was Kimber’s second child, Annie, who was born in December 1903. Juliet explained that her mother, Sheila, who was Annie’s only child, said that, ‘Annie was Billy’s favourite. He was not much bothered with Maudie and she didn’t care for him either. Maudie used to say, “You owed our dad money, you paid with your life.”’ 436

By 1908, Kimber had received another summary conviction for assault on a police officer and two others for drunkenness, whilst he had been found not guilty of the burglary of a house.⁴³⁷ It was now obvious that he was also travelling the country as a criminal. In January 1906, he was one of a four burly built youths each fined a guinea (21 shillings) with the alternative of month’s imprisonment for travelling from London to Birmingham on a train without paying their fare, and with altering the date on their ticket. All of them bore a bad reputation and it is suggestive that one of them stated that he was a bookmaker’s clerk – meaning that he worked on the racecourses.⁴³⁸

The belief that Kimber was now a racecourse ‘pest’, as pickpockets and other ruffians were often termed, is substantiated by his arrest at Hall Green Races in May 1907. He was charged under the Prevention of Crimes Act with loitering with intent to commit an offence, punishable on summary conviction. He gave himself as a dealer, a description that covered a wide range of activities, as did his older brother, who was prosecuted as a suspected person found loitering at the race meeting with intent to commit a felony. In evidence, Detective Sergeant Wright of the Birmingham City Force stated that he had seen the brothers acting in a suspicious manner and going into several crowds. William Kimber had attempted to snatch a winning ticket from the hand of a punter who was holding it up to a bookmaker for the payment of a bet. Kimber rushed out of the crowd when he saw Wright.

When arrested, Kimber became violent and tried to get away. Harry Kimber was ‘covering’ his brother and ran in a different direction but was arrested by another detective. In court, the arresting officer said that he had known William Kimber for ten years and that he was ‘an associate of dangerous racecourse thieves, and no doubt made a living by following races’. He was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour.439

At some time in the next three years, Kimber abandoned his wife and their two children and, in 1911, he was recorded on the census as a single man boarding at a house in Salford.⁴⁴⁰ His great-grandson, Justin Jones, believed that Kimber ‘went to live with a woman called Florence Brooks, who I think was a relation of Ellen Brooks who lived with another gang member, George “Brummie” Sage’. As for his wife, ‘Maud went back to live with her parents in King Alfred’s Place with her two children, my beloved aunty Maud who gave me sweets every week, and grandmother, Annie, whom I never met, unfortunately.’⁴⁴¹

It must have been tough for Maud with two young daughters to care for and with ageing parents. By 1920, she was living in a back-to-back in Charlotte Street on the edge of the Jewellery Quarter. It was a big yard with thirteen houses and she remained there until she died, aged just forty-three in 1926.442 Her granddaughter, Sheila, once tried to find the grave, but the records showed that Maud had a pauper’s funeral and so there was no grave – something which angered Sheila as she knew that Billy Kimber had money at this point.⁴⁴³

Kimber did have money by the time that Maud died, but before he abandoned her, he had much in common with the Sheldons as a petty thief, violent man and racecourse pest. And in 1911, he described himself as a commission agent – as did John Sheldon.⁴⁴⁴ But unlike the Sheldons, who remained in the back streets of Birmingham, Kimber became a gangland leader with a national profile. He achieved this position because of his leadership of the Birmingham Gang. This was not a firmly organised criminal outfit like that of a mafia family, with a don, captains and soldiers; it was rather a loose grouping of fighting men that could occasionally be brought together into a formidable force.

The Birmingham Gang had emerged from the Brummagem Boys – the collective name for the small bunches of ruffians and pickpockets from the city. They had terrorised racegoers in the Midlands and the north of England from the mid-nineteenth century, when they took advantage of the development of the railway system. There were similar rogues from elsewhere, but the Brummagem Boys were the most notorious. This was emphasised in 1898 by the Daily Telegraph which announced that the largest number of racecourse roughs and thieves ‘come from Birmingham, and some of them are of the lowest type possible. The “Brums”, like the rest of their fraternity, work in gangs of six, seven and eight – never separating.’ This organised ruffianism made it hard to deal with. The criminals surrounded and tripped up their victims to rob them, or snatched purses, watches and chains; whilst on the way to and from the racecourse by train, they worked the three-card trick upon gullible fellow passengers.445

Kimber belonged to one such gang. In January 1913, the Derby Evening Telegraph reported that for a recent football match, the local police had placed officers at the railway station to watch out for known lawbreakers arriving by train. Amongst a group of eight men, they recognised William Kimber, his younger brother, Joseph, and a George White who were ‘expert travelling pickpockets and hotel thieves’. The police followed them, but they were spotted by the men who ran off. Chased by the police through several streets, both the Kimbers threw something out of their pockets into the snow and escaped down different entries to various houses.⁴⁴⁶

Joseph Kimber was a longstanding thief, and in 1912 he had been imprisoned for pickpocketing at Doncaster races. He was then sentenced to three months in August 1913 after he was arrested as a suspected person at the Maze Races in Belfast.⁴⁴⁷ In the 1920s, he would describe himself as a commission agent.⁴⁴⁸ As for White, that was an alias and his real name was Thomas MacDonald. He was also known as Thomas McDonagh and he would become one of the most notorious fighters and bullies in the Birmingham Gang.⁴⁴⁹ It was through the support of the likes of men like him that Billy Kimber, himself a hard man, gained some form of control over the pickpocketing gangs and racecourse roughs from Birmingham.

But his power also arose from his friendship with feared fighting men from London. They included George ‘Brummy’ Sage, who became leader of the Camden Town Gang in North London, but whose nickname arose from his closeness to Kimber. Another thief, Sage was regarded as ‘a stand-in, toe-to-toe fist fighter’ by Wal McDonald of the Elephant Boys gang and another London friend of Kimber who also revelled in his reputation as a top man. Brian McDonald is his nephew, and he explained that Wal’s brother, Wag (Charles) was a major south London gang leader, who later had a significant presence in the West End, where he was an early nightclub protector. By 1909, he had been joined by his four younger brothers and was controlling a number of illegal street betting pitches. Additionally, Wag hired himself as a ‘bodyguard’ to racecourse bookmakers to protect them from gangs extorting money from them and obtained ‘favours’ from other bookies.450

Through these latter activities, he had met Kimber, who was travelling the country in his pickpocketing gang. The two men became firm friends. Brian McDonald’s uncle Jim described Kimber as ‘a big, jovial, well-liked fellow, respected as a settler of disagreements and disputes. He could fight and was a natural leader.’ ⁴⁵¹ Because of his friendship with the McDonalds, it seems that – whilst still maintaining his strong links with Birmingham – Kimber moved to London. Brian McDonald notes, ‘Kimber lived for a short while with my family at 116 York Road, Lambeth, before moving to Warren Street (now Grant Street), Islington.’452 And in the summer of 1910, Kimber joined the McDonalds in fighting a rival gang.⁴⁵³

Three years later, Sage and Kimber were arrested after a fight in a pub in Whitechapel in the East End. When a constable arrived at the scene, Kimber and Sage were throwing chairs at another man. When told to stop, they ran into the street where another policeman arrested Kimber. The man they had attacked came up and said, ‘I charge Kimber and Sage with doing this’ – and pointed to his face which was bleeding freely having been stabbed. On the way to the police station, Kimber dropped a brass harness buckle. When charged with cutting and wounding, he stated that he was a wardrobe dealer whilst Sage gave himself as a bookmaker.⁴⁵⁴ They were later discharged as the publican’s daughter stated that she could prove that the stabbing had been done by another man known as the ‘Kidderminster Kid’.⁴⁵⁵

It seems more likely that Kimber and Sage were the guilty parties and that the licensee’s family were frightened of them – justifiably so, as the man assaulted was in the London Hospital in a serious condition from stab wounds to the face and neck. This case first appeared in the Illustrated Police News on 20 February 1913 and, elsewhere in that edition, ‘Brummy’ and Kimber were noted as ‘well-known on racecourses and in the boxing-ring’.⁴⁵⁶

By 1914, Kimber had established himself both as a racing man and a vicious fighter in London, where he had also forged an alliance with the Garnhams of Chapel Street Market in Islington. An intriguing article from April that year highlighted that connection. It was reported that a conflict had taken place in Dunstable between the police and a party of Londoners in a car returning from the Towcester race meeting. The defendants included Anna Kimber aged forty-three, of the New Cut, Lambeth, in South London, who was charged with being drunk and disorderly on the highway, and her husband, William, a china salesman aged thirty-two, who had assaulted two policemen in the course of their duties. Anna’s identity is mysterious, and she could not have been his wife as Kimber was still married to Maud. The other two defendants were Thomas Garnham, a china salesman from London, and his wife, Eliza, both of whom were charged with obstructing one of the officers in his duty. The Garnham family would play a prominent role in the rest of Kimber’s life. All of the defendants pleaded guilty and Kimber’s counsel said that this was his first appearance in a court of this kind – a blatant lie. The defendants were fined a total of eight pounds and six shillings.457

A few months afterwards, the activities of racecourse rogues like Kimber were curtailed as, following the outbreak of the First World War, racing was severely restricted in Britain.⁴⁵⁸ Kimber joined up but, as recalled by the Birmingham racecourse bookmaker Denny Green, he deserted and went to Dublin, where horse racing continued until late in 1917. Green stated Kimber was attacked on a bridge over the River Liffey by four men, whom he put away. The Birmingham gangster was remembered as ‘a game un, a fearless fighter who fought fairly with his hands and did not use knives’ – although of course, he had done so.⁴⁵⁹

In May 1917, Kimber and James Cope, another prominent member of the Birmingham Gang, were arrested in Dublin. They were charged as suspected persons found frequenting at Kingsbridge (now Heuston) Railway Station for the purpose of picking pockets on the day of the Limerick races, and also with having frequented the nearby Harcourt Street Railway Station on the day of the Leopardstown race meeting. Kimber described himself as a dealer living at New Cut, in the South London heartland of the McDonalds. As for Cope, he was also a notorious pickpocket.460

It is interesting that the chief clerk of a major racecourse bookmaker called Thomas Henry Dey appeared in court, explaining that Kimber was employed to collect large sums of money owed to the bookie. In so doing, he always acted honourably and ‘racing being quiet in England, some of the people owing debts to Mr Dey had come over Ireland, and Kimber crossed over from Liverpool to meet those people’. Dey’s clerk added that he had ‘full knowledge of the past career of Kimber who had been honest man for the seven last years’, and that Mr Dey was prepared to keep him employed and give a substantial sum for bail for his good behaviour. This was set at £50.

Kimber did not stay free for long, however. He was charged with having been a deserter from his role as a driver in the Army Service Corps since 11 June 1915,⁴⁶¹ and in October 1917, he was tried and sentenced to six months’ detention.⁴⁶²

Kimber’s relationship with Dey is intriguing. Dey was one of Britain’s most notable and wealthy bookmakers, winning the staggering amount of £84,000 in one year alone, and as such he took huge bets in cash on the racecourse and on credit through his office in New Bond Street, London. Amongst his credit punters there were those who did not pay up when they lost and there were others who resorted to cunning deceptions to try and swindle him.463 It seems likely that as a very hard man, Kimber not only collected debts for Dey but had also acted as his minder on the racecourses.

With the end of the First World War, racing resumed and, as with other sports, attendances soared in the short post-war boom. They peaked in 1919 and 1920, but thereafter remained much higher than before 1914, until dropping significantly from 1925 as the British economy struggled.⁴⁶⁴ The rise in spectators was matched by much higher spending on betting. According to Tom Divall, a former chief inspector at Scotland Yard employed to keep order at various racecourses, people flocked to them and their pockets were full of money.⁴⁶⁵ This is emphasised by the story of Bud Flanagan, who later became a bookie. In 1919, his bets on four races at Ayr ‘disposed of the whole of his gratuity earned in three-and-a half years of soldiering’.⁴⁶⁶

Such outlays meant rich pickings. Megging mobs, as they were called, fleeced all and sundry with the three-card trick; card sharps swindled unwitting travellers on their way to meetings on trains; whilst gangs of pickpockets and thieves preyed upon spectators, beating up any who retaliated. Bookies were also victimised. A favourite dodge of the gangs, or ‘boys’ as they were called, was to go round with a bogus subscription for ‘poor old Bill’, and ‘dear old Charlie’, who had hit hard times – or for a fatherless family on the brink of starvation. Another scam was to shout out a bet to a bookie. If the horse won then the gang would expect to be paid out, but if it lost they held on to their money.

Those bookies who stood up to the gangs paid a heavy price. In June 1919, The Times recounted how three men had demanded money from bookmakers at Windsor. Several paid up without demur but when one refused to hand over £1 he was knocked off his box, from which he called out to the punters, and his satchel filled with money was grabbed by another rogue.467

Under the leadership of Kimber, the Birmingham Gang ruled unopposed in the Midlands, the West Country and the north up to Newcastle. He himself was no longer a pickpocket because now he oversaw the racecourse protection rackets in a more organised form. At the bigger meetings, he controlled the most prominent five or six pitches, the places which took the most money in bets and which were thus the most lucrative. London racecourse bookmaker Sam Dell remembered that Kimber either put his own men on these pitches or allowed bookmakers to run them for a return of ‘ten bob in the pound’ – fifty per cent of the profit. As for the other bookies, to get their pitches they had to arrive at a meeting ‘early in the morning to stake a claim and be prepared to be blackmailed or prepared to fight . . .’⁴⁶⁸

Most bookies did not fight – they paid for the right to set up their joints in specific places. Controlling the allocation of pitches was lucrative, but that that was not the end of the scams for making money. Another leading member of the Birmingham Gang was Andrew Towie, and he either came up with or developed the idea of selling dots and dashes cards for each race. This was a simple operation whereby a card representing each horse was pricked with symbols to alert bookies to its form and chances in the race. In fact, this supposed ‘service’ told the bookmaker nothing more than he knew already and it was merely a means to extort money.469 Then there was the calling out of the numbers of the horses in each race once that information became known shortly before the ‘off’, whilst bookmakers were ‘encouraged’ to pay for ‘tools of the trade’. Included among these were the tissues, the lists of runners for each race; pieces of chalk with which to mark up the prices of the horses on their blackboards; water and sponges with which to rub them out; the calling out of the names of the jockeys; and stools on which to stand.⁴⁷⁰

Dell recalled that, in the 1920s, ‘it was the Birmingham mob that used to run the stools at Cheltenham and places like that. And they used to have to cart the stools from track to track and they used to have a big van to do it in. And then when they got there, they were collapsible stools, used to have to bang the legs in, and they used to have to set all the stools up.’⁴⁷¹ Exorbitant prices could be charged for the use of a stool, as if a bookie did not have one then he was at a disadvantage to others as he would not stand above the crowd.

Bookies usually paid two shillings and sixpence for each of the ‘services’ provided by the gangs. This was handed over each race and over six races or more it added up to a lot of money. At a big meeting like Doncaster, there could be more than one hundred bookmakers, meaning that something like £300 to £400 or more could be paid to the gangs – although obviously, the sum was a lot less at smaller meetings. To these sums could be added the more crude protection money extorted from bookmakers for being allowed to set up their joint – the spot on which they operated.472

An example of Kimber’s power, physically and personally, was given by former Chief Inspector Divall. In 1919, he was in charge of one the rings of spectators at Doncaster – a very popular and important racecourse. There was a large crowd and a dangerous situation arose over a disputed bet. The course officials and police lost control as ‘high words and ugly threats passed between some miners and bookmakers’ runners’. Divall feared an awful scrimmage and then ‘up came Billy Kimber, a host in himself among his fellows, and he soon settled the disturbance’. What would have happened without his most timely help could not have been imagined as there were thousands of men about, most of whom were of the roughest class. Divall had no doubt that Kimber was ‘one of the best’.⁴⁷³

In the more prosperous south of England, with its large number of racecourses, there was a more anarchic scenario in the years immediately following the First World War. A variety of gangs were active, often on the same racecourse on the same day. In particular, the thugs of Dodger Mullins from Bethnal Green and of Alf White from Hoxton and King’s Cross plagued racegoers, before, during and after a meeting.⁴⁷⁴ They soon drew national attention and on 18 October 1919, the Daily Mail carried a report on ‘Racecourse Gangs’, asserting that ‘robberies with violence were said to be increasing’.475 In the summer of the next year, The Times called for immediate action against the rogues of the racecourse.⁴⁷⁶

In the event, it was Kimber who took that action, as he saw an opportunity to extend the Birmingham Gang’s operations onto the more lucrative southern racecourses by running off the other gangs. Brian McDonald believed that Kimber’s involvement was facilitated by the racecourse authorities who realised that they could not deal with the gang problem just with their own stewards and the police. Importantly, Kimber had major back up from London: the McDonalds and the Elephant Boys; George ‘Brummie’ Sage and the Camden Town Gang; and Freddie Gilbert, formerly a member of the Titanic Gang from Hoxton and now leader of the Finsbury Boys.

Kimber and his allies succeeded. The Bethnal Green and King’s Cross gangs fell out and were expelled.⁴⁷⁷ W. Bebbington, later appointed as Senior Jockey Club Supervisor of Recourse Detective Personnel, affirmed that in the early post-1918 period, the Birmingham gangs ‘held the whip-hand all over the country and ruled with a rod of iron’.⁴⁷⁸ This ‘mob law’ seems to have been accepted by London bookmakers because it brought some semblance of order. Ali Harris, a racecourse bookmaker from London, praised Kimber as a ‘pretty well respected bloke’, as did Dell.⁴⁷⁹

However, there was another racket with which Kimber was involved, as explained by Tommy Garnham, the grandson of Thomas Garnham, the china salesman who had been arrested with Kimber in 1914 in Dunstable. By the early 1920s, Garnham’s son, John, was running a crock stall in Chapel Street Market in Islington but he was also the leader of a small team that worked for Kimber on the racecourses of southern England. Garnham and his men looked out for pickpocketing gangs that had not been authorised by Kimber and who had not paid ‘tribute’ to work the course. His son, Tommy, recounted, ‘Dad used to say you look for the boss, the main man and give him a good hiding in front of the others. “This is your boss look what I’ve done to him,” and all the others’d go. That’s if Dad could handle it, if not they called in Billy and they wouldn’t take him on.’

John Garnham recounted many stories of Kimber’s fighting prowess. On one occasion, he and his friend known only as ‘the Wizard’ were on a train going up to a race meeting. They started gambling in the compartment with a couple of big hard men and as Tommy Garnham was told:

They had a game of cards and Dad and the Wizard took all their money. They went up overnight and the blokes said, ‘We want our money back.’ The Wizard said you won’t get your money back so they said, ‘We’ll see you at the track.’ That’s where they were all going and when they get in there, Dad and the Wizard went straight over to Bill. ‘See them two over there. Took their money off them last night and they want their money back.’ ‘Alright,’ said Bill Kimber. Bosh, bosh. And they were both carried out, both. Bill Kimber on his own did them.480

But the control of Kimber and his allies on the racecourse rackets in southern England was soon challenged after some of the Elephant Boys and Birmingham Gang began to terrify East End Jewish bookies and blackmail them for money in addition to that which they were already paying Kimber for protection. As Divall put it, if they ‘did not shell out, they were cruelly assaulted and badly damaged’.481 One of those so treated was the real Alfie Solomon.

THE REAL ALFIE SOLOMON

Named as Alfie Solomons in the series Peaky Blinders, he is portrayed wearing the clothes of Hasidic Jewish men: the wide-brimmed black hat worn on weekdays, a long black overcoat, black trousers and a white shirt. The members of the gang led by Solomons are depicted as Orthodox Jews, wearing yarmulkes and tzitzit –the fringes or tassels worn on traditional or ceremonial garments by Jewish men. By contrast, the real Alfie Solomon was a secular Jew whose family had been settled in England for decades and were not recent immigrants fleeing the pogroms in the Russian Empire.

Born in 1892, Solomon was the third oldest of the ten children of Elisha and Elizabeth Solomon. His father had been born in the Strand in the City of Westminster, whilst his mother had been born in a poor part of the East End. Elisha Solomon was a fruit merchant employing people, and in 1901 he and his family were living with a servant in Long Acre in Covent Garden. A decade later, they had moved nearby to New Street. By now, two of their six sons were clerks to bookmakers, working on the racecourses, and one each was a fruit salesman, clerk and hat maker. Although he was aged nineteen, no occupation was given for Alfie Solomon and it was recorded that he was ‘at home’.482

In January 1915, however, he recorded that he was a horse driver when he volunteered to join the Royal Field Artillery and became a driver. He was 5 foot 6 inches tall with a waistline of 35 inches. Weighing 125 pounds, his physical development was good. Fresh complexioned, his eyes were blue and his hair brown. Solomon went on to serve for over three years in France, from June 1915, winning the 1914/15 Star and receiving the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.⁴⁸³

Unlike Kimber, Solomon was not a pickpocket and had served his country loyally. It is obvious, though, that he was interested in gambling. In August 1907, he was one of four youths fined for frequenting premises used for betting on horse racing, and, in April 1916, whilst in the Army, he was given seven days’ detention for gambling with dice.⁴⁸⁴ His only other misdemeanour was one charge for insubordination to a non-commissioned officer.⁴⁸⁵ Then, after he left the Army in January 1919, Solomon was bound over for betting. Importantly, though, there is no evidence of violence from him until the racecourse wars.

With the coming of peace, Solomon became a bookmaker, as had his youngest brother, Simeon ‘Simmy’ Solomon, who took bets as Sydney Lewis. In 1987, he indicated that anti-Semitism was the reason he did this, telling me, ‘If I’d put up as Simmy Solomon as a bookie I wouldn’t take a penny.’ In his view, the racecourse war began because, ‘The Birmingham mob began to come down here. We were not up the north, they came down here. If they’d have stayed up north there would have been no problems. They didn’t and it became us against them, them against the south.’

At the Sandown Park Military Meeting, on 12 March 1921, the Birmingham Gang turned up in numbers and one of them brutally assaulted Alfie Solomon, as his brother recalled.486 Edward Greeno, a former detective chief superintendent in the Metropolitan Police, stated in his memoirs that Solomon (whom he termed ‘Bernie’) was knocked down and kicked in the teeth. ⁴⁸⁷ Boxing referee Moss Deyong actually saw the attack, though referring to Solomon as Lewis, the betting name of his youngest brother. One of the gangsters shouted out a bet but Solomon refused to take it, knowing that he would not get paid if the horse lost. It won and the mobster came up for his money, insisting that Solomon had taken the bet. He stood up to the threats and refused pay. Deyong graphically described what happened next:

Suddenly the mobster swung his race-glasses, heavy and solid, into the bookmaker’s face. Down went Lewis, and the assailant promptly stepped on his unprotected face as he lay on the ground, immediately afterwards slipping away into the crowd. Lewis was picked up, his face a bloody mass and with several teeth missing. From that moment the gang wars between the North and South opened up in earnest.⁴⁸⁸

Tragically, another Jewish bookmaker died of the injuries caused when he was also hit on the head with a pair of field glasses. His assailant was Thomas Armstrong, a leading hard man in the Birmingham Gang who was almost certainly the man who had beaten up Solomon. Armstrong was later found not guilty of manslaughter.489

Brian McDonald stressed that Alfie Solomon had a gang before he was attacked and that Kimber had a hatred for him ‘as one of the scum that threatened racecourse bookies at the edge of a razor’. Given Kimber’s long record for violence it rings hollow for him to take the high moral ground.⁴⁹⁰ However, Solomon’s brother claimed, ‘My older brother’s involvement with Darby Sabini came after he was beaten up by the Brummie mob.’⁴⁹¹ Whether or not Solomon did have his own men before he was attacked, he was later described in a police report as ‘nothing better than a member of a gang of thieves who blackmail bookmakers for a living’.⁴⁹² But if he did lead a gang, in early 1921 it was not strong enough to take on Kimber and his allies, so Solomon sought the support of a powerful man called Edward Emanuel.

Born in 1880, he was one of eight children and his family was also well established in England, unlike the recently arrived Yiddish-speaking immigrant families from Eastern Europe.⁴⁹³ His father, Alfred, was born in Aldgate and his mother, Adelaide, in Spitalfields, but from the late 1870s they were living south of the River Thames in Bermondsey, running a greengrocers.⁴⁹⁴ By 1901, they had moved back across the water to the boundary of the East End. Edward Emanuel was now a fruit porter.⁴⁹⁵ The next year, he and another man were discharged from maliciously wounding a Cornelius Haggerty and assaulting a Metropolitan police officer.496 Then, in 1904, he threatened to shoot an Islington street trader and was charged with the possession of a loaded revolver. The magistrate declared that Emanuel was ‘a dangerous fellow’ and imposed a high surety of £250 or twelve months’ imprisonment.⁴⁹⁷

He was indeed a very dangerous man, as John McCarthy found out. In 1908 he was found guilty of unlawfully wounding Emanuel, intentionally but without malice. Both men had been drinking in the Lord Nelson on the evening of 15 July 1908. Emanuel had gone there to have a row with McCarthy over a dispute with some of his friends. McCarthy explained that Emanuel had bought him several drinks before calling him ‘a dirty little closet’ and challenging him to fight. McCarthy refused because Emanuel was too big for him but at last he did. Emanuel got hold of his throat, threw him across a barrow and nearly strangled him. Somehow McCarthy got away and pulled out a revolver that he had brought with him to frighten Emanuel. But the bigger man kept on rushing forward with a sharpened tin-opener. McCarthy then pulled the trigger and ran away as he was in fear of his life. Although suffering from a bullet wound in the chest, which had gone through his body, Emanuel ran after the frightened McCarthy. The surgeon who operated on Emanuel explained that the wound was about six inches long and that he was a very strong man.⁴⁹⁸

Despite being a terror, Emanuel was intelligent and ambitious, and by 1911 he was no longer a porter, having become a retail fruit salesman. Married to Elizabeth, née Prudon, they had two children and were living in a five-roomed house in Thrudon Road, Bethnal Green.499 But Emanuel’s main living was as a proprietor of spielers, or illegal gambling clubs.⁵⁰⁰ In January 1912, he and two other men were charged with keeping one in Whitechapel. When it was raided, fifty-seven other men were arrested, most of whom were described as foreigners. Playing cards were strewn about the room and there were boxes full of pennies. Emanuel was fined £40, and £12 and 12 shillings costs.⁵⁰¹

He incurred the much heavier fine of £300 and 10 guineas costs in September 1917 following a raid on another spieler he ran in Whitechapel in which over 100 men were arrested. Occurring during the First World War, this raid gained wide publicity as a ‘Recruiting Scandal’. The club was ‘patronised mostly by Jews’, many of whom were of military age and were noted as ‘aliens’.⁵⁰² The inference was that, given they were of an age to be eligible for conscription, they had actively avoided recruitment to the war effort. This clear anti-Jewish prejudice in the newspaper coverage would be even more pronounced in the racecourse war that would soon erupt.

As well as a gaming house keeper, Emanuel was named as a bookmaker, for in addition to 84 packs of cards found in the ‘gambling den’ there was a large number of betting slips and racing cards.⁵⁰³ However, Emanuel had ambitions to become a legitimate businessman, as recalled by Lou Prince, an East End racecourse bookie with a Jewish father. He saw the Birmingham team ‘take liberties’ when they came down to the southern racecourses and told me that, as a result, the Jewish bookies turned to Emanuel for help because he was ‘a financial power’. Prince explained that Emmanuel then set up the Portsea Press printing company, and it was through providing bookmakers with a better service for the lists of runners for each race and other printed material that he aimed to move away from criminality.504 But with Kimber controlling the racecourse rackets he was not able to do so – that is, until the brutal attack on Alfie Solomon gave him the opportunity to act.

According to Arthur Harding, a notorious East End terror and pickpocket, Emanuel ‘governed the whole the East End Jewish underworld. He was the Jewish Al Capone, everything was grist to his mill’.⁵⁰⁵ Through this powerful position, he could forge an alliance of London gangs to force the Birmingham Gang off the racecourses of southern England. With them removed, the bookies would have no option but to buy their printed material from him and he could cease his illegal activities.

Emanuel ‘had a group of Jewish terrors’ who he could send in to help Alfie Solomon and, as Prince emphasised, ‘The Jewish team found their power in strength and gameness. They wouldn’t be dictated to.’ Still, they did not have the numbers to take on the Birmingham Gang and their London allies. So, because ‘Emanuel was pally with the Italian push’ – the Sabini Gang – he called them in for more backup.⁵⁰⁶ Importantly, there was another influential and powerful figure in the background who aided this alliance. When his club had been raided in 1917, it was revealed that behind Emanuel was a man of means – but it had not been possible for the police to charge him.507

That man was Walter Beresford. In 1891, he was a shorthand reporter living with his widowed mother, a prosperous publican in Hackney Marsh.⁵⁰⁸ A decade later, he was married, had a house in Leyton and was a commission agent – someone who took bets and placed them on a commission basis. He also employed others.⁵⁰⁹ But he was also a gaming house keeper, and in May 1902, he and others were charged with using the New Savoy Club in the Strand for the purpose of unlawful gaming and betting. He was fined the large sums £200 and £50 respectively.⁵¹⁰ This was over four years’ wages for an unskilled worker.

By 1921, when Solomon was savagely attacked at Sandown, Beresford had an office in Bond Street and was a prominent and respected racecourse bookmaker, noted as the first person to start betting at a meeting and from whom the other bookies took their prices.⁵¹¹ As such, he would have been keen to end the protection rackets of the Birmingham Gang, and, through Emanuel, he had influence over the Sabinis. This was confirmed by the writer and conman, Netley Lucas. In 1926, he wrote that this gang was ‘backed and upheld by one of the best known and most powerful bookmakers on the turf. A member of all the racing clubs, a man who pays out thousands after each big race, and retains twice as much, he has a smart flat in the West End, several expensive cars and a still more expensive wife.’⁵¹² This man was Walter Beresford and the gang he backed up and upheld was led by the formidable Darby Sabini.

THE REAL DARBY SABINI

The fictionalised Darby Sabini of the series Peaky Blinders is depicted as a ‘violent and volatile Italian crime boss’ controlling the gambling ‘on the racing tracks of the South, as well as various bases around London’. And he has the police on his books, which has given him the freedom to do as he pleases.513 Immaculately dressed, his appearance highlights his Italian identity, adhering as it does to the aesthetic notion of ‘bella figura’ – showing care for outward appearance and elegance.

Bella figura features in films on the Mafia such as The Godfather series. Applying this look to Sabini in Peaky Blinders implies to the viewer that he is a mafia-style boss. In crime mythology he was, and that mythology has been accepted as historical fact. In 1963, crime writer Norman Lucas wrote that Sabini ‘reputedly was a member of the notorious Mafia’, whilst in 2005, the Telegraph described Charles ‘Darby’ Sabini as the ‘leader of a Sicilian “razor” gang’.⁵¹⁴ In her book on the London underworld, Catharine Arnold went further by asserting that Sabini had imported over 300 henchmen from Sicily to act as enforcers and that he had taken on the role of a Mafia godfather in his neighbourhood. As such, he dispensed justice, resolved internal conflicts and protected the honour of young women.⁵¹⁵

This characterisation of Sabini gained traction from the biography by Edward T. Hart published in 1993 and entitled Britain’s Godfather. Hart was a crime correspondent in Fleet Street in the 1950s and 1960s, and his information was gleaned from people in the world of Sabini, ‘club-owners and bouncers, boxers and jockeys, bookmakers and their bruisers, robbers and racketeers’. Unfortunately, there is no evidence of any recordings or transcripts of Hart’s interviews, whilst the book itself is written in a novelistic style. It includes long verbatim conversations and thoughtful musings from Sabini, who had been dead for many years, as well as vivid ‘first-hand’ descriptions of bloody battles between gangs.

Throughout Hart’s book, Sabini’s Italian identity is accentuated. His voice was ‘an odd blend of Southern Italian and Bow’, and he had fashioned his gang upon the Mafia of Sicily. After he had supposedly knocked out a leading fighter with the Elephant Boys, who had insulted an Italian woman, the men of London’s Little Italy in Saffron Hill, Clerkenwell, made their way to Sabini’s house to offer allegiance to their new leader as if he were a don. And when he and Billy Kimber met at Sabini’s home to try and end the war between their gangs, they sat at a table laid in the Italian tradition with a freshly baked loaf, great chunks of cheese, and a carafe of anisette.

According to Hart, Darby Sabini’s wife was called Maria and the descriptions of her drew on media tropes of Italian emigrant wives.516 In fact, she was a local woman, Annie Emma Potter, who had been born in Clerkenwell.⁵¹⁷ She married Sabini in 1913, not in the Catholic church of St Peter, which was deeply associated with the Italians of Saffron Hill, but in the Anglican church of St Philip, Clerkenwell. Their oldest daughter would be christened Church of England.⁵¹⁸

Sabini himself would later stress his Englishness, declaring that ‘England is the only country for me’, whilst his only son, Ottavio Harry, was killed fighting for Britain in August 1943.519 Crucially, I could find no links between Sabini and Sicily, and so reports that he imported Sicilian knifeman unlikely. Although he came from London’s Italian Quarter of Saffron Hill, from 1876 to 1915, most of those who settled there originated from Lombardy and Emilia in the north of Italy, or from Tuscany or Campania – the region between Naples and Rome. Of those, the main area of emigration was the Apennine region south of Parma, from where it is believed that the Sabinis originated.⁵²⁰

In the early years of the Italian community, most of the newcomers were young men and they tended to marry women from the locality.⁵²¹ From 1875, whilst increasing numbers of wives were Italian women or first generation London-born daughters of Italian couples, mixed marriages continued. They included Sabini’s father, Ottavio, who married Eliza Elizabeth Handley in 1898 at the Anglican St Paul’s church in Clerkenwell. It is apparent, however, that they had been in a long-term relationship, as fourteen years before, Ottavio Sabini was involved in a serious affray with other Italians in a pub and Eliza Handley said that he was her young man.⁵²² Four years later, in July 1888, their son Ottavio was born, although his birth was registered under his mother’s name of Handley.⁵²³

Better known as Darby, this nickname is thought to have arisen from a term for a south paw boxer. He had two older brothers, Frederick and Charles. Their births were also registered as Handley and they were named after two of their mother’s brothers.524 Contemporary news reports often referred to Darby Sabini as Charles, which has led to confusions over his real identity by historians, including myself. Sabini later acknowledged that he also called himself Frederick Handley, after his mother’s maiden name, but pronounced clearly that ‘my name is not Charles Sabini’ and that ‘my real name is Ottavio Sabini’.⁵²⁵

By 1891, his parents were living in Mount Pleasant, Clerkenwell with four children.⁵²⁶ Darby Sabini was not with them, but the previous year he was recorded as attending the Drury Lane Industrial Day School.⁵²⁷ Set up in 1895 for children whose school attendance was irregular, it was like a half-way house before a youngster with criminal tendencies was sent to a residential industrial school.⁵²⁸ Still, no evidence has been uncovered indicating that Sabini was a habitual criminal like Kimber and other racecourse rogues, and as Heather Shore remarked, he seems ‘to have steered remarkably clear of the law’.⁵²⁹

At his wedding in 1913, Sabini recorded that he was a carman, and three years later, at his daughter’s christening, he said that he was a railway porter.⁵³⁰ He was a porter but not on the railways – instead, he worked at a nightclub in Drury Lane, as he admitted in 1926. It is likely that as such he was a protector of some sort.

After the outbreak of the First World War, the club closed down. Sabini said that he was rejected for Army service and then became a bookmaker and a runner. It is probable that he was the latter as he stated that he used to collect betting slips. Then, in 1918, he was again engaged as a porter, at the White Horse Club in Stepney Green, earning £3 a week. Two years later, in May 1920, he was bound over not to frequent gaming-houses – so it would seem that it was through his work in clubs and spielers that Sabini became acquainted with Emanuel.531

By then, Sabini had become the leader of a major gang. Shore has suggested that, like the other London gangs of the 1920s, it may have had roots not only in the territorial street fighting gangs that had long been a feature in areas like Clerkenwell, but also in forms of defence against incursions from other local youths.⁵³² There is evidence to support such a suggestion, for in 1898 there was ‘another case of revolver firing by the Clerkenwell War Gang’ in which Alfred Smith shot at an Augustus Sabini.⁵³³

This suggests that the Sabini Gang may also have been rooted in the violence of older kin. Darby Sabini’s father had a brother, Giuseppe, and cousins in Clerkenwell.⁵³⁴ Two of the family were accused of wounding with knives in 1883 and 1888, whilst Sabini’s father was fined for assault in 1895, having been stabbed the previous year. All these fights took place between Italians.⁵³⁵ Younger Sabinis were also violent, and in June 1909, Darby’s older brother, Charles, was charged with assaulting two men with a hammer.⁵³⁶

Six months later, a Vincent Sabini and George Cortesi were accused of maliciously wounding. Sabini was found not guilty, but Cortesi was sentenced to two months’ hard labour. The latter had other convictions for assault and theft, and he and one of his brothers would become key figures in the Sabini Gang.⁵³⁷ Born in France, they now lived in Clerkenwell.538 So too did Angelo Gianicoli.⁵³⁹ Later calling himself George Langham, at fourteen he was discharged for malicious wounding, then a decade afterwards, in 1913, he was given six months’ hard labour for unlawful wounding.⁵⁴⁰ He would become a main enforcer for Darby Sabini.⁵⁴¹

Bound together by a shared background and neighbourhood loyalty, the ties of the Sabini Gang were strengthened not only by personal relationships but also by blood, for as Shore has discerned, ‘The most enduring “structure” connecting with the Sabini Gang was family and kinship.’⁵⁴² So it was, and the gang also included Darby’s two youngest brothers, Joseph and Harry, or ‘Harry Boy’, as he was known. Yet it was Darby who became the leader. Unostentatious in his dress, unlike the bella figura of the fictional Sabini, he wore a flat cap, a suit with a waistcoat and usually a collarless shirt. For all that, he had a commanding presence. The bookmaker Prince remembered, ‘He was the gentleman of the mob but he feared no one.’ It was the fearless Sabini who would lead the fight against Kimber’s Birmingham Gang and its allies.⁵⁴³

THE RACECOURSE WAR OF 1921

The Sabini Gang had come together by 1919, when a photo was taken of a group of well-dressed men about to go on a charabanc trip – presumably to the racing. This was before the racecourse war, and, amongst other gangsters, the photograph shows Darby, Joe and Harry ‘Boy’ Sabini and two of the Cortesi brothers, along with Billy Kimber, the leader of the Birmingham Gang, and Wag and Wal McDonald of the Elephant Boys. It is noticeable that Alfie Solomon is not amongst them, even though he had been discharged from the Army by then. This could be because he was not yet involved in gangsterism, but it is also telling that no Jewish men at all are on the photograph. There can be little doubt that anti-Semitism infected the Birmingham Gang and its London allies.

The cordial relations between Kimber’s alliance and the Sabinis broke down, however, in the spring of 1921 over the chance to make big money. Through their strong connection with Emanuel and Beresford and attracted by the large sums to be made from the ‘services’ to bookmakers, ‘the Sabinis took up the cudgels’, as Divall expressed it, in defence of the East End bookies.544 They were supported by Alfie Solomon and Emanuel’s Jewish terrors as well as by Alf White’s King’s Cross Gang.⁵⁴⁵

But Kimber was not prepared to back down in the face of the new alliance, and on 21 March Darby Sabini was surrounded by a mob at Greenford Trotting track. Cries of ‘Shoot the —’ and ‘I’ll murder him’ were heard before Sabini pulled a revolver and fired shots. He was rescued by the police. The gun was loaded with blank cartridges, although Sabini was found to have a cut-throat razor on him.⁵⁴⁶ This was a favourite weapon of the racecourse gangs and it inflicted terrible wounds. Greeno once broke up a fight in which a bookmaker was attacked by some of the Bethnal Green mob, but the victim’s face was ‘criss-crossed like a lace curtain’.⁵⁴⁷

When Sabini was remanded over the shooting incident, he was granted bail and was able to pay the large amount of £200 himself, whilst two other men each paid sureties of £100.548 The charge of shooting against him was dismissed but he was fined £10 for being in possession of a gun without a licence.⁵⁴⁹ Brian McDonald suspected that ‘money changed hands’ for the favourable police report that led to Sabini’s acquittal for the main offence. His belief would seem to be corroborated by Arthur Harding, who recalled that Emanuel had ‘the police buttoned up’ and could get criminals out of trouble.⁵⁵⁰

Whether or not that was the case, it was apparent that both sides were matched evenly and so Kimber agreed to a meeting at Sabini’s house in Collier Street, Kings Cross, on the evening of 27 March to discuss splitting the country’s racecourse rackets between the gangs. Kimber was accompanied by George Sage and Wag McDonald, whilst Sabini had invited other racing men but not Solomon. It may be that an agreement was reached but, after some drinking and singing, Kimber and his friends went to leave. According to the only witness, as they moved into the passageway, they spotted Solomon, and ‘one of the men turned round and said, “What do you want, you Jew!”’⁵⁵¹

Shots were fired and Kimber was later found unconscious on the pavement. He had suffered a wound in the side and was rushed to hospital.⁵⁵² Solomon then went to the police and said that he had shot Kimber by accident after the head of the ‘Birmingham gang of terrors’ had shouted, ‘What are you doing here, you Jew? Get out or I’ll shoot you!’ Solomon then knocked a revolver out of Kimber’s hand and in the ensuing struggle, the weapon went off. Frightened, Solomon ran away. In court, when he was committed to trial, Kimber stated that he did not know who had shot him, declaring that if Solomon ‘said that he shot me then he is a coward. Only cowards carry revolvers. I would rather blow out my brains than use one on anyone.’553 Although Solomon was charged with unlawful wounding, Kimber refused to say anything thereafter, and at the trial at the Old Bailey, the judge directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.⁵⁵⁴

There followed six months of violence on the racecourses of southern England and in London. On 4 April, at Alexandra Park, there was fighting between the Sabini Gang and their Jewish allies and the Birmingham Gang, one of whom was later acquitted of attempted murder. Then, on 2 June 1921, there took place what The Times declared was ‘The Epsom Road Battle’.⁵⁵⁵ Originally believed to be a Sinn Fein riot, in fact it was a vicious attack after racing by a large number of the Birmingham Gang on Leeds bookmakers. Mostly Jewish, the latter were thought to be changing allegiance from Kimber and were thus targeted. Twenty-two men were found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm. They included hardened criminals who had been convicted for manslaughter, robbery with violence, unlawful and malicious wounding and attempted murder.

In a separate case, two other members of the Birmingham Gang were jailed for demanding money from bookmakers with threats at the Epsom Meeting. They had made a lot of money, obtaining £1 each from 50 bookies. One of them was Charles Franklin, of the infamous Garrison Lane Vendetta, who was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment.556

Kimber was obviously weakened by the loss of so many fighting men, but in August 1921, he led an attack on London bookmakers and their workers at Bath Races. Amongst them was Alfie Solomon. As he and his clerk, Charles Bild, were walking to the course, a crowd of roughs closed round Bild and ‘blows were rained on him from hammers, sticks, iron bars, and finally a sandbag’. Covered with blood and almost senseless, he managed to escape and reached Bath’s Pump Rooms, where a maid tore up a sheet to bandage his wounds and from whence he was taken to hospital. As for Solomon, he had been knocked out by a hammer. Four wounds were inflicted to his head and, as he lay bleeding, he was violently kicked and hit. His assailants then headed off and he was also taken to hospital.⁵⁵⁷

Solomon’s brother, Harry, was another victim. During the meeting he was chased by a gang of men. Frightened, he produced a revolver and directed it point blank at his pursuers. One of them knocked it out of his out of his hand and another struck Solomon. As he lay prostrate on the ground, he was hit on the head with a hammer. Saved by the police, Solomon was charged with carrying a revolver and ammunition without a licence and with intent to endanger life. He appeared in court with a bandage around his head and was sentenced to one month in jail.⁵⁵⁸

Kimber was one of two men charged with the unlawful wounding of Charles Bild, who did not turn up in court and the case collapsed. However, it was announced ‘that there would be no more trouble of this kind’ as the feud between certain sections of the race-going fraternity had been amicably settled.559 It had because Kimber had been outwitted. In August 1921, Beresford and Emanuel had formed the Bookmakers and Backers Racecourse Protection Association (BPA), becoming president and vice-president respectively.⁵⁶⁰ Within a month, they had appointed eight stewards, at the high wage of £6 a week, to protect southern bookmakers from the Birmingham Gang and their allies. Among these stewards were Darby Sabini and some of his men and Philip Emanuel, a relative of Edward Emanuel.⁵⁶¹ Despite this connection to gangsters, the new association was welcomed by the Jockey Club, which ran many of the leading racecourses in England.⁵⁶² Emanuel and the Sabinis benefitted from this legitimacy, which made it difficult for them to be challenged by Kimber and his men.

With both sides at a stand-off and with the press demanding action from the police against the ‘hooliganism’ and ‘ruffianism’ on the turf, a meeting was held at Beresford’s house. In effect, it was agreed to divide England into spheres of control for the racecourse protection rackets. Those in the north, Midlands and West Country would be run by the Birmingham Gang, which had new leaders; those in the south and East Anglia by the Sabinis and their allies. Most of the Birmingham Gang still lived in the city and they were satisfied. The truce with them held but Kimber and his London friends were angered and a new racecourse war broke out between them and the Sabini Gang and its allies.⁵⁶³

AFTERMATH

Stabbings, razor slashings, shootings and even an attack with a machete made the news.564 In a fluid and rapidly changing scene, there were also disputes between allies and in September 1922, the BPA dispensed with the services of their stewards. This action followed complaints that included an allegation that they had demanded a royalty of a shilling on every set of lists that they sold to the bookies.⁵⁶⁵

Then on 20 November 1922, there was a violent confrontation in Little Italy itself when Harry ‘Boy’ and Darby Sabini were shot at by two of the Cortesi brothers in the Fratalanza Club.⁵⁶⁶ They had also been stewards of the BPA and had apparently fallen out with the Sabinis over the selling of the racing lists to bookmakers. In giving evidence, Darby Sabini publicised the large sums of money that could be made. Each list was sold for five shillings and as much as £100–£200 a day could be made, giving an annual income of £3,000–£4,000. He added that the lists were now sold by the Association, but they were not.⁵⁶⁷ Printed by Emanuel, who was on the way to legitimacy, they were sold by the Sabini Gang.

Dave Langham was the son of one of its enforcers, George Langham (Angelo Gianicoli) and he emphasised the amount of money that could be made from these sales. By the early 1930s, his family had moved from Saffron Hill to a house with an indoor bath and his father would come home from the races with money bags filled with silver. So many coins were there that they had to be poured into the bath, from which they could be divided up with his associates.⁵⁶⁸

No longer supported by the Cortesi brothers, in 1922 Darby Sabini had also lost his brother, Joe, who was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for shooting with intent to murder.569 A few months later another major ally, Alf White, leader of the King’s Cross Gang, was jailed.⁵⁷⁰ Then in 1924, Alfie Solomon was sent down for three years.⁵⁷¹ He had been playing cards in the Eden Club, fictionalised in series two of the Peaky Blinders as the opulent jazz club owned by Darby Sabini. In reality, Brian McDonald described it as ‘nothing more than a spieler occupying two floors above a garage, with a bar, card tables and a roulette wheel’.⁵⁷²

Solomon was in the company of his éminence grise, Emanuel, against whom another customer called Barney Blitz had a grudge. A former boxer and hard man, he argued with Emanuel who threw a drink over him. Blitz then hit Emanuel ‘so hard with a glass that he lost all reason’. The two men were separated but Solomon seized a knife from a table and plunged it into Blitz’s head, inflicting a fatal wound. Another man who tried to wrench the knife away was wounded. In his defence, Solomon stated that all he could remember ‘was seeing Emanuel bleeding like pig from his head. I thought Blitz was going for him again.’⁵⁷³

Although the coroner’s jury had delivered a verdict of wilful murder, the defence team stressed the violent character of Blitz, secured testaments of good character from the Jewish community and produced Solomon’s medals and Army discharge papers in court.⁵⁷⁴ As a result, he was fortunate to be was found guilty of manslaughter.⁵⁷⁵ When first charged, he was described as ‘a young man of Jewish appearance who was smartly dressed in a long blue overcoat, grey hat, and brown shoes’.576 In the Metropolitan Police Records he was documented as 5 foot 6½ inches, fair-complexioned and blue eyed with brown hair. Scars on his right wrist, left thumb, at the back of his neck, and on his upper lip were evidence of attacks by Kimber and others. Solomon also had tattoos. His left arm featured a shell, a lion and a Japanese woman with a fan, and on his right arm he had another Japanese woman.⁵⁷⁷

Despite the imprisonments of Solomon and others, the Sabini Gang continued to intimidate bookmakers. Darby Sabini, though, continued to escape conviction and in 1923, on the one occasion when he was charged with attacking a bookmaker with a knuckle duster, the case was dismissed.⁵⁷⁸

Yet soon Sabini himself was in trouble. Though he was adept at steering clear of arrest he made an error of judgement when he sued the Topical Times for alleged libel for naming him as the leader of a gang of blackmailers who terrorised bookmakers and carried revolvers. A weekly newspaper with a high sports content, the publication was owned by DC Thomson. In March 1924, under the headline ‘How We Outwitted a Rival Gang’, it revealed Sabini’s criminal activities in a first-person piece by a gang member.⁵⁷⁹

Realising that the publication had too much evidence to show that he was a gangster, Sabini sought to end the action. In December 1925, he failed to turn up to the hearing. For their part, the defendants said that Sabini was associated with a gang of racecourse pests and their words were true in substance and fact, whilst they had voluminous particulars to support them. Judgement with costs was entered for them.580 Sabini now owed D. C. Thomson over £700, but he did not attend a first meeting of his creditors on 10 June 1926. His address was unknown although he was still to be seen at racecourses, and it was suggested that he still made large sums selling racing cards.⁵⁸¹ A resolution for bankruptcy was passed.

Threatened with a warrant for his arrest, Sabini appeared at the London Bankruptcy Court on 29 June. Described as a thick-set man, he was now living in apartments in Russell Street, Brighton, with his wife and three children and he stressed that a lot of harm had been done to him by the article in the Topical Times. He denied that he was king of the Sabini Gang and that he was engaged in threatening bookmakers who refused to pay for particular pitches or to buy the racing lists he sold. Sabini revealed that these were sold for five shillings each, out of which he and another man made fivepence while the printer at Portsea Press made one shilling. Of course, this was Emanuel’s printing company. Sabini said that bookmakers bought these cards because they were members of the BPA. No threats were made to them if they did not want to buy them.

Refuting the suggestion that he had made from £20,000 to £30,000 a year as head of the Sabini Gang, he laughed and said, ‘No.’ Out of his earnings at £8 a week he had to pay £1, 5 shillings a day in travelling expenses, and a further five shillings a day for food and drink – and he went racing most days. Finally, he admitted that he did not carry on his action against the newspaper publishers as he could not find the £75 the solicitor wanted for costs, adding that he had no assets.582

By now, strong action had been taken against the racecourse gangs by the Flying Squad, the specialist crime and operations section within the Metropolitan Police Service. The Jockey Club had also set up a department to supervise the rings (enclosures) at racecourses. Tainted by their employment of members of the Sabini Gang, the BPA had disassociated themselves from the Sabinis and formed Pitch Committees to protect and safeguard racecourse bookmakers’ rights. In 1929, this approach was supported by the Jockey Club and thenceforth pitches were allocated not by the gangs but by racecourse personnel liaising with the local BPA.

It is likely that by now the Sabini Gang was led by Darby’s youngest brother, Harry ‘Boy’, who was providing ‘minders’ and other services for West End drinking and gambling clubs. As for Darby Sabini, he remained in Brighton and was named as a bookmaker in 1929 when he was fined £5 for assaulting another bookie at Hove greyhound racing stadium.⁵⁸³ His erstwhile ally, Alfie Solomon, had resumed bookmaking following his release from prison and, according to police records, had once again pulled together a race gang. In February 1930, he went with his men to Clacton greyhound racing stadium and demanded money from bookmakers. Solomon and his men were ejected from the stadium. However, he later claimed that he was the one who was threatened that evening by men from the Bethnal Green Gang of Dodger Mullins.⁵⁸⁴

A notorious terror who hated the Sabinis and their associates, in early 1936 Mullins was very badly slashed across his face and back with cut throat razors by Solomon’s men.585 To gain revenge, Mullins teamed up with the Hoxton Mob and Wal McDonald of the Elephant Boys at Lewes Races in June. They arrived with hatchets, knuckle dusters and other dangerous weapons. Solomon was struck several blows and wounded on his head but managed to run away, although his clerk was not so fortunate and was viciously beaten.⁵⁸⁶

This ‘Battle of Lewes’ aroused sensationalist and inaccurate headlines about a new race track war and the involvement of American mobsters.⁵⁸⁷ It was nothing of the kind, as the ageing racecourse gangsters had been in decline since the mid-1920s, but the attack did inspire Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock (1938).⁵⁸⁸ His criminal characters were well drawn and not hyped up examples of media fantasy, although it has become assumed widely that the wealthy gangster Colleone is based upon Sabini.⁵⁸⁹ Greene wrote to me in 1988, explaining that:

My novel Brighton Rock it is true deals a little with something similar to the Sabini Gang but I have forgotten now what I may have known when I wrote it. In those days I used to go frequently to Brighton and once spent an evening with a member of a gang who introduced me to a certain amount of slang in use and took me to one of the meeting places of his fellow gangsters.⁵⁹⁰

Two years after the book’s publication, in April 1940, Sabini was arrested at Hove dog track and subsequently interned under Defence Regulation 18B. He was detained because the Metropolitan Police and the Security Service (MI5) believed him to be a ‘dangerous gangster and racketeer of the worst type’ with fascist sympathies who was ‘liable to lead internal insurrections against this country’ at the behest of an occupying power. This was a most strange belief and one that the local chief constable and others doubted.591

Sabini was eventually released, and in June 1943, he and another man were sentenced to two years’ hard labour for receiving stolen goods valued at £383.⁵⁹² Later described as a dealer, he died in 1950.⁵⁹³ A legend arose that he had lived in a penthouse flat in Brighton but that when he died he had little money.⁵⁹⁴ He actually lived at 16 Old Shoreham Road.⁵⁹⁵ His wife died there in 1978 and left £16,730.⁵⁹⁶

By the mid-1920s, Kimber was also involved in West End nightclubs and he continued to operate rackets on racecourses in the south west of England.⁵⁹⁷ On 19 July 1926, he married Elizabeth Garnham, a sister of his friend and ally, John Garnham of the Chapel Street Market Gang.⁵⁹⁸ Kimber stated that he was a widower. He was – just, as Maud had died very recently.⁵⁹⁹ But he and the McDonalds were still rowing with the Sabinis and in about 1927, he and Bert McDonald shot through the windows of the Griffin, a public house in Clerkenwell favoured by the Sabini Gang.

The two men then fled to America, where Brian McDonald believes that Kimber may have killed a man who did not pay him the money owed for a favour. From Arizona, Kimber and Bert McDonald went to Los Angeles, where Wag McDonald was living. He had fled there to avoid arrest after the Battle of Epsom in 1921 and was now a bodyguard to Jack Dragna, the city’s Mafia boss. Kimber moved on to Chicago, where he was said to have been hidden by Murray Humphreys.600 Born of Welsh parents, he was a leading figure in Al Capone’s notorious gang.⁶⁰¹

In his book Elephant Boys, Brian McDonald recounts the exciting tale of his uncle Wag in America, who was a great friend of the actor Victor McGlagen and who appeared in crowd scenes in films.⁶⁰² There is no evidence to suggest that Kimber did so or that he became actively involved in Capone’s gang, and there is equally no evidence to support the suggestion that there was a strong connection between Kimber’s Birmingham Gang and American mobsters other than in the maverick life of Jimmy Spenser.⁶⁰³

Spenser, or ‘Birmingham’s Gunman’, as he was called in the Birmingham Daily Gazette in March 1933, moved to London and joined Kimber in the early 1920s.⁶⁰⁴ According to Brian McDonald, his real name was Francis Harold Guest and he became friends with the Elephant Boys.⁶⁰⁵ As recounted in his book Limey, in about 1925 Spenser jumped ship in America, where he became a gunman for Jack Brussi, a gangster and hijacker in Long Island City. Moving on to California, he joined the outfit of the racketeer Niley Payne, then teamed up with Wag and Bert McDonald and finally ended up in San Quentin Prison. After his release, he was deported to Britain in 1932.⁶⁰⁶

Kimber had returned to England three years before and become a bookmaker. He advertised himself in the later 1930s as ‘Bill Kimber a reliable man’ and became president of the Devon and Cornwall Bookmakers’ Protection Association.607 There was an irony in that, as it was the founding of the BPA in 1921 by his arch rival Emanuel that had sounded the death knell for Kimber’s protection rackets on England’s racecourses.

Kimber died in 1945. His obituary in the local newspaper asserted, ‘His great interest in life, both personal and professional, was racing and he was well known and respected on every racecourse in England.’ He left his widow, Elizabeth, their house at 10 Park Hill Road in Torquay and £3,665.⁶⁰⁸ They had two daughters, one of whom was married to an RAF squadron leader and holder of the Distinguished Flying Cross. Having been sent to finishing school in Switzerland, they led very different lives to the children Kimber had abandoned in Birmingham.⁶⁰⁹

Kimber’s nemesis, Emanuel, made even more money. By 1930, his Portsea Printing Works was in Hackney and he and his wife, Elizabeth, were living in a large house at 965 Finchley Road, Golders Green – a district which was attracting middle-class Jewish families.⁶¹⁰ He died in 1943.⁶¹¹ His wife died seven years later and left £22,656 in her will, which was administered by her two daughters.⁶¹²

As for Alfie Solomon, he died in 1947. His last known address in 1924 was Gerrard Street in Soho, close to where he had grown up in Covent Garden.⁶¹³ A will has not yet been found. Although their lives are fictionalised in the series Peaky Blinders, Billy Kimber, Alfie Solomon and Darby Sabini were real people. Luca Changretta, the mafioso of series four, was not.