Download or read book The Racetrack Gangs written by Dick Kirby and published by Pen and Sword True Crime. This book was released on 2020-12-30 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “So if you’re a fan of Peaky Blinders and want to read the true stories behind those characters and tales . . . this is the book for you.” —Britain’s Gangland Magazine Between the two World Wars, there was a dramatic upsurge of violence as rival criminal gangs vied for rich pickings from bookmakers at racetracks throughout England. With ready access to cash, “bookies” were a magnet for mobsters’ blackmailing demands. Refusal to pay resulted in severe punishment. Their justified fears spawned a ready “protection” market. Conflict between rival gangs were frequent and increasingly violent. Charles “Darby” Sabini with his brothers ran “The Italian Mob” who clashed with Billy Kimber and his Brummagen Hammers. Uneasy partnerships were formed but seldom lasted. The Sabinis were friendly with the Cortesi family until a rift resulted in one of the Cortesis shooting Harryboy Sabini. Other gangs such as The Titanics and The Nile Mob were ready to fill voids. As well as broken alliances, internal friction and members changing sides resulted in bloodshed on the streets, in pubs and clubs and on the courses. Public order was so threatened that the Flying Squad was tasked with the eradication of the problem and, in 1936, the celebrated Battle of Lewes Racecourse brought matters to a bloody conclusion. This well researched and gripping account describes the vicious dramas played out in the 1920s and 1930s.

Download or read book The Real Peaky Blinders written by Carl Chinn and published by . This book was released on 2014-10-10 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stylish and dark, the BBC series the 'Peaky Blinders' is set in the backstreets of Birmingham after the First World War and tells of the rise to power of Thomas Shelby and his criminal gang. Yet the real stories behind these fictional characters are just as dramatic, bloody and compelling as the TV series. Thomas Shelby's arch enemy Billy Kimber was in real life a Brummie from Summer Lane. He was a feared fighter with an astute mind and magnetic personality which earned him the leadership of the Birmingham Gang that dominated the highly profitable protection rackets of the racecourses of England. The members of this gang had once been 'sloggers' or 'peaky blinders' and their rise to supremacy was attributable to their viciousness and to Kimber's shrewd alliances with other gangs. But they soon incurred the envy of the Sabini Gang of London who fought violently to oust Kimber and his men and take over their rackets. The Birmingham Gang battled back fiercely in the infamous and blood-stained racecourse wars of the 1920s. This Birmingham Gang led by Billy Kimber were the Real Peaky Blinders and this is their story.

Download or read book Peaky Blinders The Legacy The real story of Britain s most notorious 1920s gangs written by Carl Chinn and published by John Blake. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Sunday Times bestselling author, Carl Chinn The Peaky Blinders as we know them, thanks to the hit TV series, are infused with drama and dread. Fashionably dressed, the charismatic but deeply flawed Shelby family have become cult anti-heroes. Well-known social historian, broadcaster and author, Carl Chinn, revealed the true story of the notorious gang in his bestselling Peaky Blinders: The Real Story and now in this follow-up book, he explores the legacy they created in Birmingham and beyond. What happened to them and their gangland rivals? In Peaky Blinders: The Legacy we revisit the world of Billy Kimber's Peaky Blinders, exploring their legacy throughout the 1920s and 30s, and how their burgeoning empires spread across the UK. Delve into the street wars across the country, the impact of the declaration of War on Gangs by the Home Secretary after The Racecourse War in 1921, and how black-market bookmaking gave way to new and daring opportunities for the likes of Sabini, Alfie Solomon and some new faces in the murky gangland underworld. Drawing on Carl's inimitable research, interviews and original sources, find out just what happened to this incredible cast of characters, revealing the true legacy of the Peaky Blinders.

Download or read book Running the Numbers written by Matthew Vaz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-04-13 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every day in the United States, people test their luck in numerous lotteries, from state-run games to massive programs like Powerball and Mega Millions. Yet few are aware that the origins of today’s lotteries can be found in an African American gambling economy that flourished in urban communities in the mid-twentieth century. In Running the Numbers, Matthew Vaz reveals how the politics of gambling became enmeshed in disputes over racial justice and police legitimacy. As Vaz highlights, early urban gamblers favored low-stakes games built around combinations of winning numbers. When these games became one of the largest economic engines in nonwhite areas like Harlem and Chicago’s south side, police took notice of the illegal business—and took advantage of new opportunities to benefit from graft and other corrupt practices. Eventually, governments found an unusual solution to the problems of illicit gambling and abusive police tactics: coopting the market through legal state-run lotteries, which could offer larger jackpots than any underground game. By tracing this process and the tensions and conflicts that propelled it, Vaz brilliantly calls attention to the fact that, much like education and housing in twentieth-century America, the gambling economy has also been a form of disputed terrain upon which racial power has been expressed, resisted, and reworked.

Download or read book The Baby Gangs of Athens written by David Brennan and published by BookLocker.com, Inc.. This book was released on 2024-02-15 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Did you know that babies come into the world with abilities that adults are unaware of? The Baby Gangs of Athens peels back the curtain and shows the lives of the babies who live in Athens and Athens County. We see the gangs with their alliances and rivalries that exist, especially the East Side and the West Side gangs in Athens. We watch with bated breath as they prepare for the big baby drag races held at the Athens County Fair. Adults do not know that each baby gang works toward winning the baby drag race and being proclaimed, ‘Athens County’s #1 Baby Gang’. Through rigorous training, each gang works toward putting the best team of babies into the big race. But like adults, the babies use intrigue and tricks as they maneuver to gain the upper hand. We see Baby Ben, a member of the East Side gang, being accused of crimes against puppies and kittens. Horrors! But Baby Ben, with the aid of his gang and especially his friend Jewell, may yet prevail and goodness might win the day. The gangs get together in their clubhouses and on social media using such platforms as Babybook and Babieslist. We follow their training regimen and the history of baby gangs in Athens.In fact, we learn of other baby gangs throughout Ohio and beyond. In the end, the babies race before thousands of spectators at the Fair. As each race narrows the field, the excitement builds. Betting on the babies reaches a new record and the results of each heat reaches viral proportions. Who will win the big prize of being the best baby drag racer and whose gang is proclaimed the best gang in Athens County?

Download or read book Doped written by Jamie Reid and published by Racing Post. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Doped' is the gripping true-story racing thriller set in Britain in the 1950s and early 1960s. Combining a potent mix of horse racing, drugs, sex, class, crime, gambling and the monarchy, it tells the true story of one of the biggest doping scandals in British racing history. In March 1962 an audacious attempt to nobble one of the royal horses alerted police to a well organised band of racecourse criminals, backed by murderous London gangsters. The subsequent Flying Squad pursuit of the gang brought the quaintly deferential world of racing into sharp conflict with the harsher realities of the 'You've never had it so good' era. This also coincided with the birth of the annual Dick Francis novel. The cast of characters is headed by William Roper, a debonair ex RAF Sergeant turned oddsmaker. His team included an ex jockey, numerous underpaid stable lads, an upper class gambling addict and a violent professional gangster who went on to face charges with the Kray twins in 1969. But the most fascinating member of Roper's firm was a beautiful and selfpossessed young Swiss woman called Micheline Lugeon who became the bookmaker's lover.

Download or read book The Sweeney written by Dick Kirby and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of sixty years of Scotland Yards top crime-busting department has been written over a twenty year period by a former detective who spent over eight years with the Flying Squad The Sweeney.The meticulous research by the author has uncovered files never before released by the Yard and he has amassed the tales of bravery and top-notch investigations, carried out by the Squad officers of yesteryear.The book commences with the dramatic account of the daring gold bullion and jewellery raid in 1948 by a gang of well-organised criminals from the newly-opened Heathrow Airport. The Flying Squad were lying in wait for them and what happened next, was described by a judge at the Old Bailey as, The Battle of Heathrow.The Flying Squad was formed to stem the tide of lawlessness, following the First World War; from humble beginnings using horse-drawn wagons, they swiftly progressed to high-speed cars. Taking on the might of the Racetrack Gangs, armed robbers and smash & grab raiders, the Squad was brought to the forefront of the publics attention.The war years, the secret post-war Ghost Squad, the horse-doping scandals, the Great Train Robbery, the Bank of America robbery, Supergrasses and corruption are recounted with its scrupulous attention to detail. The book is filled with thrilling, amusing and always compelling anecdotes from the men who were there. It was the Flying Squad who inspired the popular TV series. This book reveals what life was really like in The Sweeney.

Download or read book The Gangs of New York written by Herbert Asbury and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Studying the British Crime Film written by Paul Elliott and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since its inception, British cinema has been obsessed with crime and the criminal. One of the first narrative films to be produced in Britain, the Hepworth's 1905 short Rescued by Rover, was a fast-paced, quick-edited tale of abduction and kidnap, and the first British sound film, Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1930), centered on murder and criminal guilt. For a genre seemingly so important to the British cinematic character, there is little direct theoretical or historical work focused on it. The Britain of British cinema is often written about in terms of national history, ethnic diversity, or cultural tradition, yet very rarely in terms of its criminal tendencies and dark underbelly. This volume assumes that, to know how British cinema truly works, it is necessary to pull back the veneer of the costume piece, the historical drama, and the rom-com and glimpse at what is underneath. For every Brief Encounter (1945) there is a Brighton Rock (2010), for every Notting Hill (1999) there is a Long Good Friday (1980).

Download or read book Killers Kidnappers Gangsters and Grasses written by Dick Kirby and published by Pen and Sword True Crime. This book was released on 2022-10-07 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his latest thrilling book, much published crime author Dick Kirby draws on his fast moving policing service, much of which was with Scotland Yard’s Serious Crime Squad and the Flying Squad. As if that was not enough he brings in accounts of fellow coppers during the final decades of the 20th century to add a fresh dimension. It quickly becomes clear to the reader that Kirby and his colleagues practiced their art in a markedly different style than that prevailing today. Corners were cut, regulations ignored and pettifogging rules trampled on in the wider public interest of bringing criminals to justice and preserving law and order. Above all the best senior detectives led fearlessly. Kirby describes front line policing where the public came first and the criminals a poor second. There are great stories of arrests, ambushes, fights and meeting informants in unlikely places. Eyebrows may be raised at the book’s contents but many will feel that there is no place in the fight against serious crime for ‘woke-ness’ and political correctness and regret the passing of no-nonsense law enforcement.

Download or read book Underworld London written by Catharine Arnold and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beginning with an atmospheric account of Tyburn, this grisly excursion through London as a city of ne'er do wells takes in beheadings and brutality at the Tower, Elizabethan street crime, cutpurses and con-men, 18th century highway robbery, and the rise of prisons, the police, and the Victorian era of incarceration. It also examines the influence of London's criminal classes on the literature of the 19th and 20th century, through to the Krays and Soho gangs of the 1950s and 1960s. London's crimes have changed over the centuries, both in method and execution. This lively popular history traces these developments, from the highway robberies of the 18th century, made possible by the constant traffic of wealthy merchants in and out of the city, to the beatings, slashings, and poisonings of the Victorian era.

Download or read book Peaky Blinders The Aftermath The real story behind the next generation of British gangsters written by Carl Chinn and published by John Blake. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Sunday Times bestselling author, Carl Chinn As Britain emerges into the mid-twentieth century, change is afoot. Cities are beginning to shift from smog-filled industrial hubs to more efficient metropolitan centres of commerce and, despite the country once again being blighted by war, society is beginning to shift towards a more modern, forward-thinking era. But change is not only limited to regular men and women; under the shifting tides of development, the criminal underbelly, too, is evolving, anxious for new avenues of exploitation and expansion . . . And so, in the third instalment of his best-selling series, historian Carl Chinn examines this new era in the landscape of Britain's gangs. After the violent reign of the Peaky Blinders, the intimidation of the Birmingham gang and frequent gang wars up and down the country, from the wreckage new groups are emerging with new ways of making money and causing trouble, and, like those who came before them, they leave havoc and destruction in their wake. Peaky Blinders: The Aftermath will bring this new generation of criminals into focus. And up and down the length of the country, from the dog tracks to the pubs of the East End, it delves into the murky world of the country's most villainous criminals.

Download or read book The Re Evolution of American Street Gangs written by Dale L. June and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-09-25 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problem of gangs and gang subculture is a growing threat to the stability of neighborhoods and entire communities. During the past two decades, gang members have increasingly migrated from large urban centers to suburban areas and other countries. This book addresses the intricacies and diversities of street gangs, drawing on the expertise of high-ranking law enforcement officials monitoring terrorist activity and gang-related crimes as well as professional private investigators who have spent several decades investigating gangs and learning their subculture, lifestyle, motivations, and relationships. Ideal for supplemental reading in gang violence courses on criminal justice, sociology, law, and psychology, this comprehensive anthology presents thorough coverage of a notoriously difficult subject. It explores the following key topics: Social, psychological, and criminal impact of street gangs on juveniles Psychology of gang membership and the pathways that lead into and out of gang culture Relationship between religion and dangerous criminal gangs How U.S.-based gangs are using technology to advance their operations Use of graffiti by street gangs Evolution of gangs and recommendations for preventing future growth Gang enhancement crimes and associated misconduct of police and prosecutors Like any type of crime, street gang criminal activity cannot be totally eliminated. This book aims to provide a better understanding of gangs so that we can influence today’s potential gang members to make the right decisions for their sake and the sake of society.

Download or read book The World s Most Evil Gangs written by Nigel Blundell and published by Kings Road Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-02 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crime DOES pay. There's no denying it. And in pursuit of riches and power, those outside the law have always tended to band together - spawning today's murky, brutal world of organised crime.The origins of the archetypical gangster can be traced to 1920s America, when Prohibition turned street-corner hoodlums into rich and powerful businessmen. But today highly organised ferociously protective gangs are prevalent throughout the world. Despite their despicable methods, we are still fascinated by their labyrinthe networks. How did these gangs form? How do they wield their power? How do they maintain their secretive societies? And how do they evade the massive forces of law and order arrayed against them? Nigel Blundell, who is author of more than a dozen factual crime books, reveals the answers in The World's Most Evil Gangs.This book delves into the darkest depths of the underworld, from mobsters in America to Hells Angels in Germany to child armies in Africa...not forgetting the monsters on our own doorstep.

Download or read book Sheffield s Most Notorious Gangs written by Ben W. Johnson and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2018-05-30 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British veterans of the Great War turn to organized crime in this history of rival street gangs and their reign of terror in the 1920’s. When the returning heroes of the First World War were forgotten by their country, they had no choice but to fight again, this time for their own survival. Reduced to motley neighborhood regiments, they traded their rifles for razors and butcher’s knives. The enemy was society at large—and the police force paid to protect it. Money would be made, blood would be shed, and lives would be lost. Sheffield was a city at war with itself, as opposing gangs battled daily for control of the streets. Out of these deadly gangs, two rival factions took control of the city. For a dark and dangerous time, The Mooney Gang and the Park Brigade even acted as governing bodies in many of the poorer neighborhoods. In Sheffield’s Most Notorious Gangs, true crime historian Ben W. Johnson explores their rise to power, and the rising tide of violence that authorities seemed powerless to stop.

Download or read book The Brave Blue Line written by Dick Kirby and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In their daily battle against a remorseless tide of crime, officers of Londons Metropolitan Police routinely risk their lives protecting the Capital. In The Brave Blue Line Dick Kirby, the former Scotland Yard detective turned popularcrime author, has brought together a superb collection of inspiring stories of police gallantry over the last hundred years.Officers to be honoured with the George Cross, the highest civilian award, have their stories told including Jim Beaton who saved Princess Anne from kidnap in The Mall.Three women officers have been awarded the George Medal, two for decoy work, the third for a heroic rooftop rescue.The book concludes with the astonishing story of a retired detective who tackled armed robbers at the cost of his eye. He may have left the Met behind him but not his courage.Every page of this gripping book with its thrilling and well researched accounts of outstanding acts of gallantry by policemen and women makes for inspiring reading. This is crime writing of the highest order.

Download or read book Gangs written by Tony Thompson and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2009-06-08 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of GANGLAND BRITAIN and REEFER MEN. Organised crime is one of Britain's biggest industries. The number of gangland murders, shootings and kidnappings, along with the levels of drug trafficking, people smuggling and money laundering, have all experienced phenomenal growth. Multi-million pound drug deals and vicious turf wars have spread out from the inner cities and now affect even the most rural communities. The day-to-day impact of organised crime on our lives has never been greater. In GANGS, award-winning author Tony Thompson takes us on a gripping journey into the criminal underworld. From Triad human traffickers in Dover and ecstasy factory owners in Liverpool, to Albanian vice barons in London and gun-toting teenage crack dealers in Birmingham, GANGS reveals the inside story of contemporary organised crime.