WHEN GANGS RULED THE RACECOURSE; As Britain emerged buoyant from the First World War, its racecourses became the playgrounds of choice for a liberated generation. But the bulging satchels of the bookmakers attracted a less welcome element to the races. Here we chart the story of the criminal gangs, the intimidating scams and the protection rackets that struck fear into on-course bookies.

Byline: David Ashforth reports

THE gang of about 30 men, all from London, all armed, first walked behind the row of bookmakers' pitches, then in front of them, scanning the bookmakers' faces.

James Spinks, the gang's leader, finally spotted Alfred Solomon and Mark Frater, Solomon's clerk. The gang rushed towards them. Solomon was struck on the head but managed to escape' Frater didn't. While Albert Blitz held his arms, Spinks hit Frater with a hatchet. When Frater fell to the ground, other gang members kicked and beat him. Then, mercifully, the police arrived. It was about 12.45pm on Monday, June 8, 1936, at Lewes racecourse.

The gang fled, shedding weapons as they went, weapons that would soon be displayed at Lewes Assizes. Hammers, iron bars, jemmies, knuckledusters and broken billiard cues were scattered around the ring. Some of the gang escaped, but 16 were arrested and, on July 27, they appeared before Mr Justice Hilbery, charged with maliciously wounding Frater, assaulting Solomon, and riotous assembly.

Solomon did not give evidence and, while on bail, Spinks had a drink and a chat with Frater, after which Frater disappeared. The police retrieved him in time for the trial, but his evidence was useless. Terrified, Frater copied the example set by many other victims of racecourse gangs, and lost his memory.

Detective Sergeant Collyer and Detective Constable Janes hadn lost theirs and, although all 16 defendants denied having been involved, all 16 were found guilty. "Crimes of gang violence in this country will meet with no mercy," the judge told them. "There is no case here for leniency. You will receive sentences which I hope will teach you once and for all that crimes of this sort don't pay."

Spinks and Charles Spring were sent to prison for five years, Blitz for four, the rest of the gang for periods ranging from 18 months to three years. What Brighton's Evening Argus called the 'Lewes Racecourse Fracas' was one of the inspirations for Graham Greene's 1938 novel Brighton Rock. The infamous affray in effect marked the end of gang warfare on Britain's racecourses.

The gang at Lewes were not racecourse regulars and William Bebbington, the Jockey Club's supervisor of racecourse detectives, believed that their arrival was linked to recent clashes between two men, one of whom was an associate of Solomon. When the gang couldn't find their intended victim, they turned on Solomon and his hapless clerk.

Another possible explanation involved Albert Blitz. During the trial, Blitz was asked about his relatives. He replied that he was illegitimate and that his real name was not Blitz, which made it easier for him to insist that he had never heard of Barnett Blitz. He didn't know, he said, that in 1924, Solomon had been sent to prison for three years for Barnett Blitz's manslaughter.

Solomon, a regularly violent man, had been lucky. Only the theatrical persuasiveness of defence barrister Sir Edward Marshall Hall had saved him from being convicted of murder, and the gallows. He had Hall to thank, and 'Darby' Sabini, the leader of the Sabini gang. At that time, Solomon was an associate of the gang, and Sabini arranged for Hall to represent him. Sabini could afford the best.

But by 1936, his influence was waning. It was said that Alfred White, formerly Sabini's lieutenant, had sent the gang to Lewes, but Sabini had been tipped off, passed the tip to the police, and told his men to stay away. Perhaps.

The early days of the infamous Sabini gang

SOLDIERS returning from the First World War, and the families they returned to, had money and were in a mood to spend it. During the brief post-war boom, racecourse attendances reached record levels.

Bookmakers' satchels bulged, and so did the eyes of the criminals who preyed on bookmakers and punters alike, at railway stations and racecourse car parks, on the racetrains and at the racetracks, where pickpockets, card sharps and three-card tricksters plied their cheating trade, and race gangs terrorised the ring, and each other.

On many racecourses, particularly in the cheaper rings and in open areas distant from the grandstands, pitches were allocated not by right, but might. Bookmakers often had no choice but to share their profits with gangsters, and to pay for the services they offered - protection, lists of runners, chalk, sponges and buckets of water, wanted or not. Sometimes, bookmakers were asked to contribute to a charity. They were necessary contributions, as those who declined to make them could testify, although testifying against gang members was not advisable, if you wanted to remain in business, unscarred.

The Brummagem Boys, led by Billy Kimber, ruled the roost. An undisciplined gang, some from Birmingham but, according to a 1922 police report, "mostly convicted London thieves of the worst type", the gang charged bookmakers as much as 50 per cent of their profits for the privilege of conducting their business unmolested. Some layers were as amoral as the criminals who protected them, using the gang's services to dissuade winning punters from pressing their claims for payment.

Faced with the threats and demands of the Brummagem Boys, and related off-shoots, some southern bookmakers, many of them Jews from London's East End, welcomed the arrival of the Sabini gang.

Joseph or Octavia or Charles Sabini - he gave different names in the 1891 and 1901 censuses and on various birth certificates - was born in Italy in about 1856, moved to the Little Italy area of Clerkenwell, married an English woman, Eliza Handley, and bred six sons and a daughter. The sons had a sometimes deliberately confusing habit of varying and exchanging their names. The eldest, Frederick, was born in 1881, followed by Charles, Ollovia, Joseph, George and Harry, born in 1900.

Ollovia, born in 1888 or 1889, appeared as Thomas on the 1891 census form. In 1913, he married under the name of Ottavio. Later, he was sometimes called Charles or Fred, although they were his brothers' names. On his death certificate, he appeared as Ollovia, but the name on his gravestone, his nickname, was the name he was usually known by -Darby Sabini.

A modestly successful boxer, who later worked on the racecourse, Darby controlled a gang made up largely of Italians and Jews. When they challenged Kimber's Birmingham gang for control of southern racecourse pitches, the result was bloody warfare.

In March 1921, at a trotting meeting at Greenford, Darby Sabini was threatened by members of the Birmingham gang, led by George 'Brummy' Sage, Kimber's London-based ally. Sabini produced a revolver, and fired it. No-one was hurt, and the court accepted Darby's claim of self-defence. He was fined pounds 10 for possession of a firearm.

Four days later, encouraged by Walter Beresford, a respected bookmaker, Kimber visited Sabini with a peace plan. It involved the Sabinis abandoning their claims at Ascot and Epsom, the jewels in the southern crown. Sabini's counterproposal called for Kimber's gang to retreat to the Midlands. The meeting ended abruptly when Kimber was shot by Solomon. Kimber stuck to the gangland rule book, and declined to co-operate with the police investigation. A jury subsequently accepted Solomon's claim that it was an accident.

A few weeks later, at Epsom's Derby meeting, Andrew Towie, an associate of Kimber's, was attacked with a mallet and bottle. It was small beer compared with what followed.

Birmingham gang shoots itself in the foot

THE light blue charabanc was parked at the top of the hill, near the Brick Kiln Inn at Ewell, on the London road. A gun was pointed at driver Frank Lane's head, to discourage him from driving away. Nearby, Walter Giles sat at the wheel of a taxi, waiting. Another man stood peering through his binoculars, towards Epsom.

"Here they come," he said.

A Crossley tender chugged up the hill, carrying a party of ten bookmakers and their assistants home from the final day of the 1921 Derby meeting. As they approached the brow of the hill, Giles drove the taxi into their path.

"Here come the Italian bastards," one of the Birmingham gang yelled. "Kill the bloody lot of them." And 30 or more men, armed with hammers, iron bars, razors, spanners, hatchets and bricks surrounded the tender and attacked its occupants.

Only one of the victims, Charles Schwartz, a bookmaker's clerk with a string of convictions for theft, recognised any of his assailants, and Schwartz declined to testify. "If I did," he told the police, "I would not be able to go racing again."

The Birmingham gang put several men in hospital, but they were the wrong men. The Brummagem Boys had intended to ambush the Sabini gang. Instead, they had mistakenly attacked their own allies, from Leeds. Schwartz was the only victim from London.

The gang piled into the charabanc and ordered Lane to drive to Kingston Hill as fast as possible. The police were soon in pursuit, and Police Sergeant Joseph Dawson spotted the charabanc parked at the George and Dragon pub. He walked in, confronted them, pulled out a revolver and warned: "I shall shoot the first man who tries to escape."

Twenty-eight men, all from Birmingham, were arrested and, at the Surrey Assizes in Guildford, 17 were convicted of causing grievous bodily harm and given prison sentences ranging from nine months to three years. For the Birmingham gang, it was a spectacular own goal.

'Protectors' cause havoc with razor attacks

BOOKMAKERS clearly needed to do something and, in August 1921, Walter Beresford became the first president of the Racecourse Bookmakers' and Backers' Protection Association. Its initial objective was to protect southern punters and layers from molestation but, with neither the racing authorities nor the police providing adequate assistance, the association felt obliged to turn to the experts in protection, the Sabini gang. Beresford already employed Harry Sabini as his clerk.

The association's vice-president was Edward Emmanuel, an eyebrow-raising choice. Emmanuel was a noted criminal. According to Arthur Harding, another underworld figure, he was "the jewish Al Capone" with both the police and the Sabini gang allegedly on his payroll. When Solomon stabbed Barnett Blitz in the back of the head with a stiletto knife in the Eden Social Club in 1924, Emmanuel was with him.

Several stewards were appointed, at an attractive wage of pounds 6 a week, to protect the association's members. The stewards' identity was equally alarming. The police reported that they "were mostly well-known racecourse frequenters of a pugilistic tendency". They included Darby Sabini, Alfred White, Fred Gilbert, a member of the Sabini gang later accused of betraying it, and Philip Emmanuel, a relative of the vice-president.

The new association was in immediate danger of being tainted by its choice of representatives. In February 1922, White and Solomon were among those arrested for a razor attack on Michael Sullivan and Archie Douglas, both members of the Birmingham gang. A few weeks later, Solomon was again arrested after Gilbert was attacked with a razor. The victims declined to identify their attackers. In July, at Brighton, the Sabini gang slashed John Phillips with razors and, at Newmarket, they attacked JM Dick, the racing correspondent of the Evening News, who had condemned the gangs.

The following month, Joseph Sabini and White, described by the police as the association's chief steward, were among those charged with shooting at Gilbert and Sage outside the Southampton Arms pub in Camden High Street. Despite the disappearance of a key witness, White and Sabini were convicted and sentenced to five years and three years in prison. Mr Justice Roche remarked that the sooner the association was dissolved, the better. By then, it had dispensed with the stewards' questionable services, partly because the stewards had started to levy unauthorised charges of their own.

Meanwhile, the gang war took another twist, as elements in the Sabini ranks demanded a bigger share of the gang's racecourse takings. In November 1922, at the Fratellanza Club in Clerkenwell, Darby and Harry Sabini were attacked by the four Cortesi brothers, formerly their allies but now aligned with Gilbert, Sage and the Birmingham gang. Harry Sabini, recently charged with assaulting George Cortesi, was shot, while Darby's false teeth were broken. At the Old Bailey in January 1923, Enrico and Augustus Cortesi were both sent to prison for three years, and the Sabinis reasserted control.

White's conviction had been quashed on appeal, on a technicality, and he, George Drake and George Sabini were soon offering wardens at Maidstone prison pounds 2 a week to act as go-betweens for one of their prisoners, Joseph Sabini. The wardens reported the approach to the governor and, in February, White and Drake appeared in court at Maidstone charged with conspiring to incite prison officers to contravene the Prisons Act.

The Racecourse Bookmakers' and Backers' Protection Association may not have severed its links with the Sabini gang completely because it was its solicitor who applied for bail for the defendants - unsuccessfully. In June 1923, White and Drake were sentenced to 18 months and two years hard labour. Yet peace on Britain's racecourses was still a long way away.

Continued on Monday

CAPTION(S):

Gangleader Pinkie Brown in the film of Brighton Rock, the novel inspired by the 'Lewes Racecourse Fracas'' The Crescent pub in Camden, formerly the Southampton Arms, scene of a gangland shooting involving Sabini associates in August 1922

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Publication:	The Racing Post (London, England)
Date:	Jun 29, 2006
Words:	2217
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Topics:	Gangs