Freddie Foreman - The Godfather of British Crime. Freddie Foreman
have to wait until the end of the week before we got our money. This became a bit of a hassle, so we found a buyer in Chelsea who stored the gear in a garage adjoining a vicarage. We first met Fatty Sid the Yid in the local pub and he gave us an address to deliver our goods. We said we would bring a van full of clothing the next day at about 2pm. ‘I’ll be on the corner waiting for you,’ he told us.
We drove there as arranged, only to see the old vicar standing on the corner. I went around the block again hoping he’d go away, but he was still standing there with Sid the Yid at his side, gesticulating and mouthing, ‘Come on!’ I refused to drop off the clothes, pointing at the vicar. ‘Don’t worry about him, it’s the vicar’s garage! He’ll be in for a pair of grey flannels in a minute.’ After that, Fatty bought all our gear from us in bulk.
The jump-ups improved as time went on. You progressed to lorryloads of tea, cigarettes and cloth, and buyers from all over London started to spring up. You could sell anything then, and people would place orders for the next time you got a load. Nobody grassed you up in those days – they would rather buy something cheap.
Mum was getting a little worried about my activities, though. Even when I was working for Pannet and Eden I would tell her to help herself to my wage packets if ever she was in need of money. She would open the wardrobe and find £50 in notes and all my wage packets unopened. Once she found a .45 revolver stuffed at the back of the drawer: ‘Oh, you do worry me, Fred,’ she told me once, though she never brought the subject up again.
My father knew I was thieving, but never talked about it. He was grafting as a taxi driver by then. He’d done his ‘knowledge’ – on a bicycle, learning all the shortcuts along the back streets of London. The hansom cab he drove had no sides or protection from the weather and, like many drivers, he finished up with rheumatism in the elbows and joints. Years later, in his late seventies, he had to have plastic replacement elbow joints fitted. He’d suffered badly.
George and I would take our goods to various markets where we had contacts. But, with a busy schedule, I was seeing less and less of Patsy Toomey, who worked in Covent Garden. Patsy had always been very possessive of our friendship and was now becoming unreasonably jealous. He wanted to be in on the action and felt he wasn’t, even though we’d given him gear to off-load on our behalf. Patsy’s personality was undergoing a change – his moods became excessively brooding and violent. I was soon to find out what that entailed.
I had gone with George to the Nell Gwynne Café in Covent Garden. It was packed to capacity. You got very good food there, and George and I and a couple of porters sat at a table for four in an L-shaped section of the café. I was about to get stuck into my baby’s head and two veg (meat pudding – a speciality of the house) when Patsy walked in. I looked up and greeted him, ‘Hiya, Patsy.’ He didn’t reply. Instead, he smashed me full in the face with a left hook. I crashed backwards over the table behind me and rolled on to the floor. I was up on my feet like a shot and steamed straight into him with blood pouring from my nose. We’d been the best of pals, stood together, fought together, protected each other. We’d been like brothers. Now he was laying into me – and Patsy could have a fight.
All the customers cleared the area and became spectators. People outside hearing the commotion came in and stood on tables and chairs to get a better view. As we battled, everything around us got wrecked: mirrors, pictures on walls and chairs. We really went at it. I finished up getting him in a stranglehold on the floor. His face was in my stomach and he was kicking his legs like a man struggling to stay alive.
‘Fred, don’t choke him, he’s gonna be dead. You’re killing him,’ someone warned me.
But I wouldn’t let go and still had a cross-collar hold. My old judo was coming in handy and he was gasping away, going blue in the face. They pulled me off him – not a moment too soon. He was already semi-conscious and closer to death than I’d realised. By now the police had been called and just before they arrived we were hustled out to the pub next door. We used to drink in there and the governor let us use the toilets to clean up.
While we were washing, George and some of the porters came down and told us we were silly boys to fight like that when we’d been such good friends. I gestured at Patsy: ‘Talk to him about it.’
Any thoughts of a reconciliation were abandoned when, shortly afterwards, George picked up a leather cobbler’s knife with a curved blade and wooden handle. They were a common – and lethal – tool for cutting people in those days. Sharp as a razor. When I saw that, my blood boiled. The blade had been meant for me. I went to do Patsy there and then in the toilet, with his own knife. I turned to him: ‘You’d fucking use this on me?’
With that, he broke down and started to cry, saying he was sorry but thought I had dropped him out and that I didn’t look on him as a best friend any more. He was convinced I’d blown him out and replaced him with my brother George.
My anger gave way to pity. I felt really sorry for him. It became obvious to me he was mentally ill. Afterwards, though, I could never feel the same about him again. What can you do with people like this? He was paranoid. Psychotic. All that we’d been through together and the close friendship we’d had destroyed on that day. And, although he’d never used the knife on me, I knew the intention had been there. From then on, we went our separate ways.
Patsy was always getting into fights and rows. As he got older, he became bigger and heavier. He once had a row with a taxi driver taking him to a pub in Covent Garden after he’d been drinking in the West End. The cabbie stopped outside Bow Street police station, sounding his horn. When police came running out, Patsy knocked two of them out, but was then overpowered and dragged into the cells. He finished up with a 12-month sentence and was sent to Wandsworth.
Patsy was always being carted off to the nuthouse for one reason or another. One time it was for trying to strangle his wife, Margie (a lovely girl). Some years later, he came to my pub, the Prince of Wales, when he knew I’d had a bit of aggravation. ‘I’m with you, Fred,’ he said, brandishing a shooter, which he’d pulled from his pocket. ‘I want to sign on the Firm again.’
I told him to put his gun away. There was no way I’d have a loose cannon like him about me. It was all very sad. Patsy was a lovely guy but, as I say, he was a sick man who needed help and never got it. In 1983, Patsy died of lung cancer in St Thomas’s Hospital. I often think of him and feel sad.
When I was 18 going on 19, I was introduced to my future wife, Maureen Puttnam, on a blind date arranged by my friends Sammy Osterman and his girlfriend, Joanie Winters. Sammy worked in the print and he and future Great Train robber Tommy Wisbey were old mates. Tommy worked for his dad, who had a bottle factory in Cook’s Road, Camberwell. His girlfriend, Renee Hill, whom he later married, was related to Joanie who was also a good friend of Maureen’s.
The girls aroused Maureen’s interest in me. They said I was always spending money like water and treated my women well. I wasn’t such a bad-looking chap either. We got on fine together and she was an absolutely straight girl. No funny business at all. It was ages before we made love, and in my way I respected her for that.
At my age, I didn’t feel ready for marriage but all my pals had girlfriends and were getting married so you just seemed to follow suit. Maureen must have had marriage in mind. I let her down two or three times on dates and once she came around to my house demanding to know why I hadn’t shown up. She was a strong girl. Our courtship, like our marriage, was volatile. She was very possessive and jealous and I couldn’t look at another girl without upsetting her. We were always rowing, sometimes even in the street.
There was a reason though: she had a very unhappy childhood and needed a lot of security, love and affection. She lived with her aunt Lizzy, who had a heart of gold. Whenever Lizzy was out of the house, Maureen and I would have a kiss and cuddle in the front room. We did all our courting there and also in the back row of the Kennington Odeon cinema.
Inevitably, Maureen fell pregnant with my Gregory and we got married at a church in Walworth Road on a Monday, which was the most convenient day for market and street traders. The wedding party was an all-day affair held at Tommy