East Anglian Daily Times Review

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East Anglian Daily Times Saturday, July 23, 2011 www.eadt.co.uk

Red, red wine Wash down your barbecued steak with a nice red Page 32

Clever ‘yokel’ at the heart of Scotland Yard’s Ghost Squad

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STEVEN RUSSELL his

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E might think we’re having it tough during this age of austerity – as we pay for other people’s greed and stupidity – but it simply doesn’t compare to Britain after the Second World War. By the spring of 1946 there was just one week’s stock of coal left in London, meat was harder to get than during the hostilities and every saleable commodity was rationed. Coupons – stolen, recycled or forged – were in great demand. A shortage of wheat saw bread become darker and coarser. The beer supply had been halved and cheese rations cut to two ounces a week. Queues formed outside shops before dawn and stocks of food were usually sold out by 8am.

On top of that, London was suffering a housing shortage and the Metropolitan Police was about 4,000 men adrift of what it needed. It was a combustible mix. “The situation was tailor-made for an inevitable explosion in crime . . . indictable offences for 1945 reached a record level of 128,954,” says Dick Kirby in his latest book on crime-fighting.

Scotland Yard needed a solution and Percy Worth, chief constable of the CID, had one. As a divisional detective inspector in the 1930s he had

seen how a small and tightly-knit group of officers could combat an epidemic of housebreaking.

Perhaps the same strategy could quell the racketeers, warehousebreakers, coupon forgers and other n’er-do-wells behind post-war crime.

Both the commissioner and Home Office gave their backing for a team of four detectives, and Scotland Yard’s Special Duty Squad was born 65 years ago this year.

Four elite operators were recruited and given a low-profile office on the third floor of Scotland Yard, overlooking the Thames, whose grey distemper walls reflected the sober age.

Pivotal to the plan was cultivating and running informants: something demanding and hazardous for both officers and those spilling the beans – gentlemen like “Hymie the Gambler”.

The Special Duty Squad was not expected to make arrests itself but to weed out information about crimes and pass it on to Flying Squad or divisional CID officers to act on.

The squad was meant to be a secret unit, but word soon leaked out and the press christened it The Ghost Squad.

Continued on page 28

SALUTE: Dick Kirby has now published quite a collection of books about the history of the police.

He’s pictured here with one of his previous volumes Photo: PHIL MORLEY

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East Anglian Daily Times Saturday, July 23, 2011 www.eadt.co.uk

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From page 27

Hush-hush or not, the Ghost Squad brought results. In six months it was responsible for 106 arrests and the recovery of property worth nearly £17,000. By the end of the year the tally stood at 171 arrests, 204 offences cleared up and more than £24,000 of property re-appropriated.

They were, says Dick, “sensational results” – achieved by the four detectives working their informants at full stretch.

An early triumph involved the capture of a gang dealing in 250,000 perfectly-forged industrial clothing coupons. The ringleader was “Benny the Barber”, who ran a hairdressing business as a front. Although police had been pursuing the criminals for months, the breakthrough came via one of the Ghost Squad’s informants, who infiltrated the circle of forgers.

The story of the team – from genesis to its mysterious disbandment less than four years later – is told in Scotland Yard’s Ghost Squad: The Secret Weapon Against Post-War Crime, written by the former “Sweeney” detective. The four officers, he says, “knew the underworld of the Metropolis – and beyond – as very few other detectives did . . . They were physically very tough, they ran informants and they were willing to take a risk”.

The first three recruits were Jack “Charley Artful” Capstick, Henry Clark and Matthew Brinnand.

Completing the jigsaw was John Gosling – 6ft 1ins tall and enormously strong and fearless in a fight, though naturally a kind and good-natured man, says Dick.

Gosling was born in Manningtree in August, 1905. His family had run pubs before turning to road haulage and a farm. The Colchester Royal Grammar School pupil had an exceptional singing voice and as a boy soprano was encouraged by his father, the organist at St Mary’s Church, Mistley, for 25 years.

Gosling worked as a clerk at Brooks, a firm of corn merchants and maltsters. Once, as a youth, he’s said to have put a sack of wheat on his back, persuaded his friend to climb on top, and run up Brook Street, Manningtree – carrying a weight of more than 400lbs.

He worked, too, for the family firm for a while, but his relationship with his father became strained and at the age of 24 he decided to move on. Gosling thought about the Army or the Metropolitan Police. “Since the pay was marginally better, the police won, and he joined on 15 April 1929. As Police Constable 950 he was posted to the King’s Cross and Islington districts of London – very tough areas indeed.”

The new recruit quickly proved his worth. At two o’clock one autumn morning he chased and caught a member of a gang that had tried to break into a pawnbroker’s

FAMILY LIFE: John and Marjorie Gosling on holiday at Dovercourt Bay in about 1950.

feature look back in anglia odd world what’s on picture essay reader pictures BIG IDEA: Percy Worth, chief constable of the CID and originator of the Ghost Squad.

premises. The criminal, who threw a jemmy at the policeman during the pursuit, was jailed for nine months and Gosling received the first of 33 commendations.

After retirement, he quipped he was allowed into the plain-clothes section for one reason only: “I was the only officer who could start the old twin-cylinder police cars we had then, on a frosty morning.”

Dick says: “This was a piece of self-deprecation; Gosling had already proved that he was a natural thief-taker.” He’d realised early on the crucial value of informants. He

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recruited his first when he was still in uniform: Harry the Cabby, who used to chat to the constable at the rank in Islington High Street.

“Harry taught Gosling the mental processes of the Cockney, his reaction to questioning, a glossary of Cockney rhyming slang and how to tail a suspect vehicle.”

John was appointed detective constable the day after his 28th birthday and joined City Road police station. Some locals christened him The Yokel, because of his accent; “but any criminal who believed that Gosling really was the country bumpkin that nickname implied was in for a very rude awakening indeed. Gosling was certainly a country boy; stupid, he was not”.

He was adept at handling informers – men such as bookies’ runner Dick, a big man scared of a nagging wife who was 4ft 3ins.

While some policemen kept their “snouts” in line through fear, Gosling appeared to earn their loyalty through fairness. Criminals he’d arrested in the past would help him because he’d done them a good turn where he could or had made life a bit easier for their dependents.

notes CRIMEFIGHTER-TURNED-WRITER equestrian treasures of east anglia ■ Dick Kirby was born in the East End of London and joined the Metropolitan Police in 1967 ■ Half his 26 years’ service was spent with Scotland Yard’s Serious Crime Squad and the Flying Squad ■ Dick was commended 40 times for his work ■ He’s married to Ann and has four

children and five grandchildren ■ The couple moved to a home near Bury St Edmunds after he retired ■ Dick has written many books about the police, including Rough Justice, The Real Sweeney, You’re Nicked!, Villains, and The Guv’nors: Ten of Scotland Yard’s Greatest Detectives

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The informant who unlocked that early clothing-coupon operation was, in fact, one of his moles.

John Gosling was promoted to detective sergeant and posted to the heart of the West End in the summer of 1944. Then he became a founder member of The Ghost Squad – the only detective, in fact, to serve during the whole of its life.

Jack Capstick described Gosling as “a slow-speaking Suffolk (sic) giant who could lift a couple of hundredweights with one hand. He could put away a pint as quickly as most men would drink a whisky.

With his trilby over one eye, a cigarette dangling from his lips, he looked almost sleepy; it was then that he was at his most dangerous”.

Dick Kirby describes how, towards the end of 1946, the Government was urging hard-up Britons to catch squirrels and make them into pies! Into 1947 and the country was gripped by terrible weather. Icebergs were even sighted off Norfolk. Britain was practically bankrupt. Only the blackmarketeers seemed to be thriving.

The Ghost Squad continued its success, however, even though its

Pictures courtesy Pen & Sword Books

personnel changed along the way. (A Colchester-born policeman called Claud Baker, for instance, would work himself up from the ranks of uniformed officers to become head of the squad for eight months.)

The book describes in detail how it dealt with thieves stealing everything from basic clothes to fur coats, jewellery, typewriters and cigarettes. The receivers of stolen goods were targeted. Dodgy car dealers were brought to justice and gangs like the Mayfair Playboys had their activities curtailed. There were quirky angles: such as the theft of an unfinished Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait of the Duchess of Devonshire, worth £5,000.

In 1947, the record stood at 186 arrests and the recovery of property worth over £50,000 – more than double the previous year’s haul.

Informants received £1,038 and officers charged expenses of about £545. “It was money well spent, since some of the most dangerous criminals were now behind bars.”

In 1948, the squad’s best year, there were 252 arrests and the property haul topped £81,000.

Commissioner Sir Harold Scott

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East Anglian Daily Times Saturday, July 23, 2011 www.eadt.co.uk

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THE YOKEL: Ma nningtree-bo rn John Gosling, who was a skilled crim efighter.

CAUTIOUS: Sir Harold Scott, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and nervous backer of the Ghost Squad.

called it an “excellent year’s work”. At the end of October, 1949, a 41-year-old clerk was apprehended with two cameras and other property thought to have been stolen from a shop in W1. “It was not the most phenomenal arrest carried out by the Ghost Squad personnel, but it is worth mentioning because it was the last arrest they ever made.”

Dick says books about the squad throw little light on the rationale. A 1968 tome called The Flying Squad suggested the authorities thought the squad’s work was complete, as crime was being contained. “Gosling, in his book The Ghost Squad (1959) concurs with this view.”

Crime figures had dropped from 127,796 indictable offences in 1946 to 106,077 in 1949. Met Police numbers had risen, too, and with 1,426 CID officers in place “it was considered that they were slightly over-strength”.

There were a number of theories.

Perhaps the Yard hierarchy thought running informants was rather distasteful. There could have been pressure from divisional CID chiefs, complaining that the best Ghost Squad leads were going to the Flying Squad instead of their men.

FAREWELL: John Gosling, left, at Jack Capstick’s retirement party.

Capstick is in the middle and on the right is Walter ‘Pedlar’ Palmer.

A former detective constable, George Price, wrote a letter to Dick Kirby in the spring of 1996 and gave his view: “Friends from the Flying Squad and Ghost Squad told me they could not function as was intended – remaining anonymous and passing over the administrative work to Division.

“There was invariably a clash of interests and eventually they cut out Divisions and worked with the Flying Squad, but there, if anything, greater acrimony prevailed and the informants were ducking and diving from one to the other and the two elitist squads could not agree as to methods. As the Ghost Squad was far smaller and more recent, that was the one that had to go. The idea was great but, like so many other operations, there were too many snags in the application.”

The author finds that reading of the situation “very sound”.

Whatever the truth, the answer is still officially elusive and “it is pointless looking for assistance in the Special Duty Squad file; the last entry shows ‘PA’ – signifying that the papers should be ‘put away’ – and they were”.

The rather low-key finish

IT’S a fair distance from the capital to rural East Anglia, and their respective crime levels are always chalk and cheese, but The Ghost Squad unites them.

Founder member John Gosling retired to Suffolk – and son Martin, who lives near Eye, gave Dick Kirby unrestricted access to his late father’s papers.

He also wrote the foreword for the author’s latest book.

Martin, himself a writer, says the former Flying Squad detective’s “trawl through the deep waters of police practice and the controversial use of informants reveals values and methods of operating that would perhaps be frowned upon in today’s world of political correctness and obsessive systems of recording. But the officers of the Special Duty Squad, later known as the Ghost Squad, produced phenomenal results in their campaign against soaring crime in the period following the end of the Second World War.” Dick feels Jack “Charley Artful” Capstick was probably the Ghost Squad’s greatest officer, with his “painstaking, methodical way of meticulously assembling clues in order to arrest a murderer . . . but Gosling ran Capstick a very close second. He was the Ghost Squad – he was present on day one and he lasted all the three years and ten months of its existence”.

John Gosling was, by all accounts, charismatic, often loud, a great raconteur and a sound, fearless police officer.

After the squad was disbanded, he went to Albany Street police station on D Division, where a constable described him as “legendary”.

Gosling spent four and a half years with the division, collecting his last two commissioner’s commendations during this time. He was also promoted to detective superintendent class II, and worked for a Scotland Yard department dealing with complaints about “blue films” – a role he did not relish, according to his son.

With gangsters disappearing from the scene, it was time to call it

a day. He retired in December, 1956, aged 51, after 27 years of service and on a pension of just over £570. Gosling embarked upon a house restoration at Brantham, on the Essex/Suffolk border, and turned to writing.

Sadly, he died of a heart attack in the spring of 1966, less than a decade into retirement. His funeral was held at St Mary’s Church, Mistley, where he had sung as a boy. The church was full to overflowing and the EADT described him as “one of the finest investigators in the history of police detection”.

In his foreword, Martin Gosling includes some memories about his dad’s chosen profession.

“As a child I was aware of the uneven hours of his work that inevitably affected the whole family.

He would frequently return home well after midnight, only for the household to be woken again later by the telephone ringing in the small hours, summoning him back to confront yet another criminal enterprise.

“This put some strain on domestic routines and on occasions led to my mother’s voice being raised in protest. “There were other times when, knowing he had only a few hours’ respite, my father would simply snatch a short sleep downstairs in an armchair.

“Other recollections include occasional visits from one or two ebullient Londoners who were clearly on good terms with my father but who were only much later identified to me as being amongst his coterie of ‘snouts’.

“The officers who served with the Squad were required to display qualities of tenacity, tact, perseverance and fortitude. These attributes and more were necessary to deal effectively with the criminal cunning, ruthlessness and propensity for violence deployed by many of the law-breakers they faced.

The officers worked unholy hours with no prospect of being paid overtime.”

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shouldn’t detract from the Ghost Squad’s success, Dick insists.

“In less than four years, this elite group, composed of four men – and often fewer – earning no overtime whatsoever in respect of the enormously long hours they worked and claiming derisory out-of-pocket expenses, produced results which were nothing short of fabulous.

“They had recovered property worth by today’s standards something in the region of £6 million, but, more importantly, they had done what they set out to do. They had split the criminal gangs and sown the seeds of distrust amongst the underworld; none of them knew who amongst their members could be trusted any longer.”

■ Scotland Yard’s Ghost Squad is published by Pen & Sword Books at £12.99

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