CRIME

Art Forgery

John Myatt

In the mid-1980s the price of works by recognised painters began to rise rapidly

In 1986 John Myatt's wife walked out their marriage, leaving him with two young children. At the time, he had less than 100 in in his bank account. He placed an advertisement in Private Eye magazine that read genuine fakes of the 19^th- and 20^th-century paintings, from 150. He was contacted by John Drewe, who described himself as a physicist .

Drewe systematically entered the archives of galleries such as The I.C.A., The Tate, and The Victoria & Albert Museum and doctored their records, thereby generating a provenance for the paintings. The experts of at the auction houses never questioned the doctored information.

Myatt was allergic to oil paint. Therefore, he painted the works with emulsion paint and then covered the result with a varnish of KY Jelly.

In 1991 Mary Lisa Palmer, the Director of the Paris-based Giacometti Association, noticed a Giacometti fake in a Sotheby's catalogue. She travelled to London and found her initial opinion to be confirmed. She went to the Tate to investigate its supposed provenance. There she discovered that the gallery's archives had been tampered with. However, Drewe continued to work unimpeded.

Drewe estranged his companion Batsheva Goudsmid, who took a number of incriminating documents to the police.

Over the course of a decade, Drewe sold over 200 of Myatt's paintings.

In 1995 the art dealer Leslie Waddington (1934-2015) concluded that some Dubuffets that had been put up for auction were fakes. He contacted Scotland Yard. As a result, John Drew and John Myatt's crimes were revealed.

In 1996 the police arrested the pair. They were tried and convicted. Drewe was sentenced to serve six year and Myatt one. Only 80 of the paintings were to be recovered.

Criminology

The three founding fathers of academic criminology in Britain were Max Gr nhut, Hermann Mannheim, and Sir Leon Radzinowicz

Drug Smuggling

Howard Marks

(Dennis) Howard Marks (1945-2016) was a Welshman who studied physics at Balliol College Oxford. There, he was introduced to marijuana for which he developed a strong liking. In London he became a cannabis wholesaler and moved up the chain to become a smuggler. He opened the boutique Annabellinda as a means of laundering his cash. He never smuggled hard drugs because of the death from heroin of an Oxford friend. By bribing roadies, he was able to use the equipment of rock bands to smuggle cannabis into the United States. He took to creating fictional bands. The I.R.A. helped him to smuggle cannabis into Britain via the Republic of Ireland.

In 1981 he was prosecuted at the Old Bailey for drug smuggling. The case failed after the Crown conceded that he had carried out work for M.I.6 and a Mexican drugs investigator gave evidence for the defence. He was convicted of a less charge but was released soon afterwards because of the amount of time he had already incarcerated. He had worked for M.I.6. That they had been prepared to use he believed derived from the fact that when he had been at Oxford three pretty girls had persuaded him to join the Oxford University Conservative Association. He thought that his recruiters had looked favourably upon him as a result even though he had never attended any of its meetings.

In 1988 he was arrested after being betrayed after the 3^rd Baron Moynihan. The peer, with whom he had had dealings in The Philippines, had recorded a number of conversations between them during which the smuggler had incriminated himself. In 1990 he was convicted in the United States and given a 25-year-long sentence. He proved to be a model prisoner and was released after serving seven years. He returned to Britain. He became a writer and public speaker. His autobiography sold over a million copies.

Francis Morland

Francis Morland was born into an affluent Quaker family. He studied sculpture at Chelsea College of Arts, where he was taught by Anthony Caro (1924-2013). A tall, handsome man, he became a minor figure in the New Generation art movement. He helped support himself and his family by dealing hashish. He developed into being a smuggler of the drug. He estimated that at one point he was responsible for a tenth of Britain's imports of the drug. This was not because of his entrepreneurial skills but rather because he was part of what was still a cottage industry. He had a series of convictions and was dropped by the art world.

Forgery

See Also: THE MACARONI PARSON

William Chaloner

William Chaloner (d.1699) started out as a manufacturer of nails, he progressed to manufacturing watches and other items. He became a coin clipper and then a counterfeiter. He developed a technique a technique for mimicking the coins milled edge.

Chaloner launched a campaign that was intended to wheedling himself into the Mint. He implied that within it was someone who was cooperating with the counterfeiters and that only someone such as himself had the expertise to identify that person. Newton reacted violent to this impudent attempt. He devoted considerable energy to investigating the counterfeiters activities. He created a network of agents that infiltrated London's underworld and pursued leads in person. In 1698 he moved against Chaloner and the counterfeiter's associates.

Chaloner was tried at the Old Bailey and convicted. Because of the nature of the crime on the journey to Tyburn he was denied the solace of alcohol and taken there on a sledge rather than a cart.

Newton was engaged by alchemy. If it worked, how would it impact the money supply.

Catherine Murphy

Catherine Murphy (d.1789)

Home Defender

In 1966 a burglar tried to burgle the Harrow home of the comedian and actor Bill Kerr (1922-2014). Kerr apprehended him and succeeded in retaining him by pointing a water pistol at him until the police arrived.

Michael X

Michael de Freitas settled in Ladbroke Grove in 1957. He became an enforcer for the slum landlord Peter Rachman.

In 1965 a newspaper dubbed de Freitas as Michael X in reference to Malcolm X. Thereafter the British freely chose to regard him as a Black radical. His writings were accepted by journals on the assumption that he was such. If Black celebrities came to Britain he came to be regarded as someone whom they should meet. X formed his own Black Liberation Army.

X was the first non-white person to serve a prison under the race relations legislation. He served nine months. Following his release he reinvented as a community activist. He was taken up by the fashionable Left.

Hakim Jamal had been an associate of Malcolm X. Gale Benson, the daughter of a Conservative MP, was drawn into Michael X's circle through coming to known Jamal.

Michael X killed Benson in Trinidad. Seven weeks after her murder her body was recovered along with that of Joseph Skerrit, who had been a member of X's Army. In 1972 X was tried for Skerrit's murder. John Lennon paid for William Kunstller to present X's defence.

In 1975 X was hanged.

Location: 95-101 Holloway Road, N7 8LT. The Black House.

Our Society

Our Society - a.k.a. The Crimes Club - is a private dining club that is centred upon the discussion of crime. Its members include lawyers, judges, police officers, crime writers, judges, pathologists, and crime historians. that meets to discuss famous criminal cases. It was founded by H.B. Irving in 1903 and has a membership that is limited to 75 people at any one time.

Pickpockets

Pickpockets were able to make so much money in the Underground system that they referred to it as King Solomon's mines .

Spain

During the 1970s Britain and Spain's extradition relationship experienced tensions because of the former's unwillingness to allow some individuals to be extradited. In 1978 the agreement collapsed. As a result, many serious British criminals took up residence on the Costa del Sol. There they found opportunities in the drug trade and were able to invest in property as a result of the ultra-liberal planning regime that was operated by the corrupt mayor Jes's Gil y Gil (d.2004).

The movies The Hit (1984) and Sexy Beast (2001) were about British villains in Spain.

In 1985 normal extradition arrangements were restored. By then a British criminal culture had become rooted in Spain. Northern Cyprus and Thailand became boltholes for criminals.

In 1990 Charlie Wilson, one of the Great Train Robbers, was shot dead by an unknown assassin at Llanos de Nag eles near Marbella.

Supergrasses

Bertie Smalls

(Derek) Bertie Smalls was a blagger an armed robber who planned and then struck quickly and violently, working in Crash Bang Gang that specialised in north and north-west London. Scotland Yard was still experiencing the after effects of the C.I.D. corruption scandal. Bruce Brown, a golfing partner of Chief Superintendent Cecil Saxby, the head of Wembley C.I.D. was arrested. This led to the formation of a specialist Robbery Squad that operated across London's separate C.I.D. fiefdoms. In November he was arrested for his part in the August 1972 robbery of the Wembley branch of Barclays Bank; at the time there was an armed robbery in London once every five days. He faced a 25-year-long prison sentence. In March 1973 he chose to strike a deal with the Director of Public Prosecutions and Scotland Yard to become the first London supergrass . He have details of 20 bank robberies over the years 1968-1972. His evidence led to 27 men being convicted for a total of 322 years. It also led to the release from gaol of Jimmy Saunders, who had been convicted of the 1970 Ilford Barclays Bank robbery. He was supposed to have reduced London's armed robberies from 65 in 1972 to 26 in 1973. Others copied his example but none were given total immunity for past actions. Lord Justice Lawton of the Court of Appeal described the deal as distasteful . His former colleagues made a variety of threats. However, Smalls chose not to relocate abroad. In 1975 he sold his story to a national newspaper. The story included photographs of him. With time, he took to drinking in his old haunts. Nothing was done to him.

The Tottenham Outrage

An attempted robbery on a rubber factory by a couple of East European criminals who had connections to anarchist circles. It went wrong for the start and an anarchic chase ensured. During this, twenty people were shot, three of whom died.

The chase inspired the Keystone Cops.

The outcry was in part focused existing resentments about immigrants.

David Backhouse 2024