Freddie Foreman - The Godfather of British Crime. Freddie Foreman
Head pub.
When I got to the pub, Mo Jones was already there. He bought me a drink and I sat down with him. Mo and I waited an hour for Lennie and Bert to arrive, while having several drinks together. Then, Bert put his head through the door of the pub and waved me outside. He said Lennie wanted to show Mo something on his own and that we would meet back here later. Bert took Mo to meet him as arranged. I didn’t think any more about it and waited for them to return. As far as the customers and publican were concerned, though, I was the only identifiable person with Mo that night.
Our fashion in those days was to wear gabardine raincoats with epaulettes. It was the Robert Mitchum look – given currency by the film Build My Gallows High. Your hair was slicked back with gel, meeting in a duck’s arse at the back of your nut – the DA haircut. The look was big and baggy and, worst of all, easily identifiable. And Lennie was wearing an identical gabardine raincoat to mine.
Bert returned to the pub and again beckoned me outside. Lennie Morgan was there, with his coat collar turned up. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
‘I’ve done Mo! I’ve killed him,’ Lennie replied. He opened his coat and I could see he was smothered in blood.
‘Fuck me!’ I said. ‘That’s naughty.’
Lennie kept talking: ‘He’s gone to my home while I was out and fucking raped my Rosie with a knife to her throat. She was in a right state. She’s still in bed and can’t talk.’
I commiserated with him: ‘The bastard deserved it,’ I said. ‘Rosie’s a lovely girl.’
Rosie had the voice of an opera singer and could sing songs from all the shows, specialising in Ivor Novello tunes. Lennie was one of the chaps and well respected. He was then about 30 and I was still in my teens. He asked me if I thought Horry’s mother would give us a change of clothes. At that time, Horry was away doing nine months in Wandsworth for GBH on a copper. (It seemed all of our friends or acquaintances were in and out of Wandsworth at the time.) I went around to see Mrs Dance and she was a good old girl about it. She had a big fire going in the grate and we burned all of Lennie’s clothes. Then she gave us a fresh set belonging to Horry. We then cleaned out all the ashes and left.
But, later, I began thinking about the implications. If Mo was dead, I would have been the last person to be seen with him. I’d been sitting with him in the pub for several hours having a drink and had then gone out with him, although I had come back afterwards. It would still not look good if people recognised me, though. I started to visualise reports about me: ‘Young man with slicked-back hair, Latin looks, wearing gabardine coat. Wanted for murder…’
Later, Lennie told us what he’d done. He’d taken Mo to Spencer Park, which is close to Wandsworth nick. It was pitch black and was bordered by a row of large fashionable houses. Apparently, Lennie pointed to a house. ‘That’s the one we’re going to screw,’ he said. Then he stepped behind Mo, pulled out an iron bar and smashed him over the head several times. Mo held up his hands for protection but Lennie kept bashing away. He left him in a crumpled heap with his head split open and bleeding profusely. Nobody could survive an onslaught like that. Or so Lennie thought.
For two days, there was no mention of Mo. We had been looking in the newspapers for a murder report and were understandably concerned, since we risked getting hung for a lady’s honour. Then we read a report that screams had been heard in the park and police had discovered a considerable amount of blood, indicating that someone had been seriously injured. But no body.
A bit later, Bert got a message from Mo’s sister to call around to her house in Garratt Lane, Wandsworth High Street, about a mile from Spencer Park. Bertie was shitting himself when he went to see her. He pretended to be shocked to find Mo lying in bed with towels around his head. Mo was not to be fooled. His piggy eyes were alert. He told Bert that he had been led into a trap.
Mo’s look said that he would kill him if he had the strength. Then he took the towel away from his head and Bert said the wound was like looking into an open mouth. They had to take Mo to hospital then, or he would have died. He had two or three brain operations and several hundred stitches in his nut and hands. All his fingers had been crushed and broken during the attack.
Amazingly, he had crawled away from the spot to his sister’s house, leaving a trail of blood. But he wouldn’t let her call the police. He said nothing. That was the way it was then and always will be in our world.
Years later, Lennie was doing nine months in Wandsworth when who should come into the metal shop but Mo Jones. They looked at each other and immediately ran around the shop searching for tools. They were ready to kill each other. But they missed their chance. A screw saw what was happening and rang the alarm bell. They weren’t given the chance for a return contest and both were dragged down the block.
About four months after Lennie’s attack on Mo, we were out with Bert, Lennie’s girl Rose and Sylvester, a stallholder, and a lovely old guy who was a street bookmaker called Jack the Pie. We started out on a pub crawl and ended up at The Surprise in Vauxhall Bridge Road. We were in high spirits. The pub was packed and Rosie was sweetly chirping away some Noël Coward tunes at a grand piano in the corner. We boys were near the door laughing and playing around with Jack Pie, riling him about all the money we had lost to him over the years.
He took it all in good fun. But then we took it a step further: we grabbed Jack, tied him to a chair with our scarves and sat him on the tramlines in the middle of the road. It was about 10pm and trams used to come up there at speed. Poor Jack suddenly got scared, but we were close by, ready to drag him away as a tram approached. ‘This is what you get for taking our money,’ we shouted to him. The tram driver was frantically trying to slow down, winding the brake handles at a furious speed and donging the warning bell with his foot. He was convinced he would run over Jack. We dashed out and scooped Jack away with only seconds to spare. It was all boys’ stuff. Highly spirited antics inspired by plenty of gin-and-tonic and Scotch on the rocks.
Excitement over, we went back into the pub to hear Rose finishing her number and giving it the big one (she always finished her songs on a high note) when a load of coppers arrived from Peel House, a section house for training police, which was only two streets away. A fight started and spilled out into the street. One copper had a stranglehold on Lennie from behind. I pulled him off and cracked him one on the chin. The copper staggered back on his heels, right across the pavement. His back hit the railings gate and he disappeared down the basement steps. Oops! Very nasty.
Now all hell broke loose and everyone headed in different directions. I had three coppers chasing me up Vauxhall Bridge Road, intent to kill. I was running out of puff at the foot of Vauxhall Bridge and just made it on to a departing tram. My legs were gone. I couldn’t step up off the platform. I looked around gasping for breath. The coppers were straddled in a long blue line a short distance away. One determined bastard, bent on getting his man, was closing up on me as the tram stood waiting to go.
The tram conductor came down the stairs, sized up the situation at a glance and without a moment’s hesitation gave the word for the tram to continue: ‘Dong dong, fares please.’ Magic words! He looked at me and winked.
‘Thanks, mate,’ I said, as I flopped down on the seat. The tram left the coppers labouring for breath and kicking the air in anger and frustration.
Unfortunately, Lennie, Bert, Jack and Sylvester were all arrested and received time for assault on the police. Lennie told me afterwards that, when they were arrested, they were taken down to the nick and all of them were pressed (a polite word for it) to reveal my name. But they all stood up – strong men, solid men – and wouldn’t tell the police anything. At the magistrates’ court, the coppers came to give evidence swathed head to toe in bandages. Lennie got nine months, the others three and four months.
As each of them was released, we had another piss-up and a good laugh. Lennie, like me, also had a brother called George, who had some good contacts in the car business. George was keen to get some muscle on his firm and wanted to include me in everything. He told me that he had a man in County Hall who could get brand-new car log books and stamps. Would