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Walter Norval was a man marked by destiny to be a career criminal in one of Britain's hardest cities. As a boy he grew up in a world of illegal betting, violent canal bank pitch-and-toss schools, sleazy dance halls, brothels and bars where the denizens of the slums in the north side of Glasgow slaked gargantuan thirsts and plotted murder and mayhem. Before he had reached his teens, close relatives had died as blood was spilled in the streets. As a youngster he ran 'messages' for the toughest gangsters in the city and stood guard over the pots of cash in illegal gambling schools. It was a remarkable apprenticeship, dangerous and sometimes deadly. It honed a latent toughness and a talent for lawbreaking that saw him emerge in the Seventies as the first of a succession of Glasgow godfathers. Dressed in pinstriped style, he controlled his foot soldiers with fearsome fists and planned robberies with the attention to detail of a military general. He organised various Glasgow fighting factions into a single gang, which pulled off a spectacular series of robberies. But, unlike his successors, he abhorred drugs and drug-dealing.And, in a remarkable twist, he joined the anti-drugs war in later life. His story - told by the best-selling crime historian Robert Jeffrey - provides a fascinating insight into the making of a criminal mastermind, from boy to man.
For more than 100 years the poverty of Glasgow's slums fuelled the violence of the gangs. But the criminals were not Glasgow's only hard men. The crimefighters - from cops to chief constables and high court judges - were also tough. This volume is the story of both sides, the good and the bad, and the battle between the two.
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland. It is a city of culture, of impressive architecture, enterprise and endeavour, and is one of warm-hearted, generous people. But it also has a dark side. Beneath the busy streets, the Victorian sandstone and urban trendiness lies a black heart that beats in rhythm with the roar of the traffic and the echo of footsteps on concrete. It is a black heart pumped by greed and lust, violence and murder. And it has beaten since the city first sprang up on that dear, green place on the banks of the Molendinar Burn. This is the epic story of Glasgow crime. Beginning in 1624 when the Tolbooth was built at Glasgow Cross to house the courts and town jail, author Douglas Skelton covers four centuries of Glasgow's hidden history, tracing the formation of the first paid police force in Britain, the Black Assizes of the circuit court and the formation of the city's own High Court of Justiciary. Here you will find the pimps and pushers, gangsters and gangleaders, rioters and robbers who flooded the veins of the city. Famous felons rub shoulders with their less notorious, but equally vicious, counterparts. Here also are the thief-takers, cops, lawyers and judges who tried to stem the gushing flow, some with more success than others. These stories may not be what the City Fathers would like to see on Glasgow's CV, but they are as much a part of its traditions and its legacy as the fish, the bell and the tree.
For decades, a war to control Glasgow's streets has been waged. On one side are some of the most violent and dangerous criminals in the world and, on the other, a police force with officers as hard as the gangsters, striving to keep the city safe. In GLASGOW CRIMEFIGHTER, legendary detective Les Brown tells the extraordinary and controversial inside story of his part in this conflict during his twenty-two years as a Glasgow detective. Throughout this time, he dealt with gangland bosses like Arthur Thompson and Tam McGraw, took on mobs of street fighters and helped in the hunt for Bible John. Compelling, hard-hitting and intensely human, GLASGOW CRIMEFIGHTER is a fascinating report from the frontline of a great city's battle against crime.
In the twenty-first century, Glasgow is still a city living down a fearsome reputation for crime. And for some citizens of the Dear Green Place, brawling is in the blood and gang warfare is a way of life. The stinking deprivation of the Gorbals and the East End, deprivation that helped spawn pre-war gangs like the Billy Boys, the Norman Conks and the Redskins, is largely gone, but in each era new gangs have risen to take their place. Battles over turf and control of the drugs trade still regularly make the headlines. Now newly updated, Gangs of Glasgow takes an in-depth look at the gripping evolution of the city's gangs from the days of the Penny Mob, through the extortion, slashings and street fighting of the Thirties to the smart-suited men of violence of the modern day.
Keeping the streets of Glasgow safe has never been an easy task. From the pre-war razor gangs through to the drug lords of recent times, the city streets have never been free from peril. But without the men who relentlessly fought crime year after year, the citizens of Glasgow would have been in far greater danger. The Real Taggarts examines the lives of Glasgow's post-war crimebusters and is based on exhaustive research which has uncovered new and previously unpublished material, including the personal papers of key police officers which have never before been in the public domain. Many of these officers became legends in the Force: Joe Beattie, who worked on the Bible John investigation; Tom Goodall, Glasgow's Maigret, who battled against an unprecedented rise in violent crime in the city; Gilbert McIlwrick, the 'Quiet Man of the Force', who had to deal with five murders and a huge bank robbery in a single week. The Real Taggarts is a fascinating insight into the men whose job it was to keep Glasgow safe and the remarkable contribution they made, much of which has never before been revealed.
There is barely a corner of the five great oceans where Clyde-built is not recognised as the ultimate shipbuilding accolade. As late as the 1950s, around a seventh of the total of the world’s sea going tonnage was built on the Clyde. It is not a particularly wide river, nor spectacularly long – it is certainly no Mississippi or Amazon – but its fame is legendary. From the many yards on its banks, north and south, en route from the gentle hills of Lanarkshire to the Firth of Clyde, came engineering innovation and fabled names in shipping – iconic vessels like the Cutty Sark and the Delta Queen, fearsome warships like the mighty Hood, and the cream of the world’s great liners, the Cunard Queens and the beautiful white Empress vessels. All that and cargo carrying workhorses that opened up the world. More recent times have seen the phoenix-like revival of Ferguson Shipbuilders, the last remaining yard on the Lower Clyde, saved from closure by industrialist Jim McColl and now investing in the hybrid technology of the future that has thrown a lifeline to this once great yard. This is the fascinating, often turbulent, story of a great river, its great ships and the folk who built them.
Throughout an astonishing criminal career, Johnny Ramensky was the foremost safe-blower of his era. His exploits and audacious escapes from maximum security prisons also helped make him a household name - admired by some, notorious to others. But when the Second World War broke out, Ramensky joined the elite Commandos and his story became legend. Peacetime had brought Johnny Ramensky a hard upbringing in the Gorbals, a life of crime and long years in jail. War brought him the chance to serve his country and a new use for his expertise in explosives. Time after time he would show exceptional bravery as he was parachuted behind enemy lines to blow open the safes of Rommel, Goering and the German High Command. His mission was to secure documents vital to the war effort and it brought him the danger and excitement he had always craved. Gentle Johnny Ramensky is the remarkable story of a boy reared in poverty who became one of the world's most extraordinary safe-blowers both as a criminal and as a war hero who wore the Green Beret with pride.
This book presents more hard hitting cases from the authors of "Glasgow Crimefighter". As legendary Glasgow detective Les Brown re-investigates cases from Stratford in east London to Wick, via Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire, he finds that, often, the official police line doesn't quite add up...The body of a young electrician is dragged from a harbour. The police say the death was an accident, but a mysterious man confesses to murder. What is the truth? A young Scotsman is found dead on the pavement near to a multi-story London car park. Did he jump or was he pushed? Then there's the rape and strangling of 14-year-old Pamela Hastie and the killing of 11-year-old Tracy Waters...two of the most horrific and puzzling cases in West of Scotland crime. And the mystery of 12-year-old Moira Anderson's death in Coatbridge, the strange case of rape at a holiday camp, and the disturbing facts of a series of unsolved murders of street prostitutes.These and many more Real Hard Cases are re-opened by Les Brown, in this intriguing new book co-written with Robert Jeffrey, author of a best-selling string of true crime titles, including "Glasgow's Hard Men", "Gangland Glasgow" and "Glasgow's Godfather".
For more than a hundred years, Glasgow has been right up there in the major league of big-city crime. From Madelaine Smith and Oscar Slater, by way of the Bridgeton Billy Boys and the Norman Conks, through to modern villains like Paul Ferris and Tam McGraw, Glasgow's streets have spawned a succession of fascinating tales of true crime. Even in the twenty-first century, as the new Glasgow polishes a growing reputation for sophistication and culture, blood still gets spilled on the streets and scams of one kind or another are always in the pipeline. "The A-Z of Glasgow Crime" is a compelling journey through an extensive history of crime and crime-fighting in a city where the illicit is never far away. From the tough streets of the east-end to the leafy avenues of the west-end; from murder behind velvet curtains in the douce homes of the wealthy to the violent and bloody street battles on postwar housing estates - all this and more is covered in gripping detail in Jeffrey's definitive true-crime guide to a city with a notoriously violent history.