A MASTER IDIOT
Peter
Scott was born into a middle-class family in Belfast. His father died while he was a child. As a teenager, he gambled away his inheritance
at racecourses and dog racing tracks. He
then took to burglary. He committed over
150 break-ins in districts off the city's Malone Road before he was caught by
the police. They had been slow to
identify him as a lawbreaker because the houses that he robbed had been in
affluent suburbs and he had worn his school blazer and carried a rugby bag
while he had gone about committing his crimes.
The clothes and the accoutrement had given him the appearance of someone
who was resident in those communities.
Scott
enjoyed the thrill of burglary. At the
age of 22 he moved to London. He
appreciated that the grand townhouses of Belgravia and Mayfair, with their
balconies, parapets, and porticos, were tailored-made to be robbed by him. He selected his targets by scanning the
society columns of The Daily Mail and The Daily Express
newspapers. He held most of his victims
in contempt and took particular pleasure in stealing from the gambling club
owner John Aspinall. The Ulsterman also
read The Daily Telegraph. This
was because he appreciated the publication's broad coverage of crime.
When
Scott was preparing for a break-in he would plan meticulously. While executing a job, one of his tropes was
always to wear a new suit. This was so
that he should not look out of place.
Upon a number of occasions he was disturbed by the occupiers. His stock response was to shout reassuringly
It's only me! Scott was disinclined to
use violence. However, on one occasion,
while he was struggling to break free from a policeman's grasp, he did break
the fellow's nose.
Prison
sentences furnished him with an opportunity to network with other
criminals. In 1957, while doing a
stretch, Scott befriended the renowned burglar George Taters Chatham. Once they had both been released, the two men
formed a partnership in crime.
Scott
regarded himself as almost being obligated to recycle other people s
wealth. However, he did not do this by
immediately passing it onto the needy but rather by living the non-criminal
aspects of his life in an expensive manner.
He had a mind that was stocked with literary allusions. These were drawn not only from the likes of
Proust and Oscar Wilde but also from minor authors such as W.E. Henley.
His
most famous robbery was of a 200,000 necklace.
He stole it from the Italian movie actress Sophia Loren. At the time, she was filming The
Millionairess (1960) in London. The
picture He Who Rides The Tiger (1965) was largely based upon Scott s
exploits. At the time of the film s
release he was serving a five-year term in H.M.P. Dartmoor.
During
his final years the old lag suffered from bad knees. He ascribed this affliction to his having
made so many downward jumps during the course of his burglaries. While he was often described as being a
master criminal , he was quite prepared to refer to himself as being a master
idiot .
David
Backhouse 2024