Byworth and Co. were a diamond mounting firm in 19-21 Heddon Street, a small road off Regent Street. In June 1922 thieves opened two safes with an oxy-acetylene cutter and stole jewelry worth £20,000. Nobody was convicted.
Over 30 years later they were the target of another robbery. The premises closed as usual on Friday night 16 July 1954 after the week’s work. When the staff returned the following Monday, they found the door to the safe had been blown off with gelignite and the office was covered in dust and debris from the explosion. They immediately called Scotland Yard, and Detective Superintendent Bob Higgins of the Flying Squad was put in charge of the investigation. Altogether £37,000 worth of diamonds, gold, and platinum had been taken from the safe, today equivalent to over £1M. Someone had climbed up to the fourth floor and entered the building through a lavatory window. Lengths of knotted rope were found on the roof.
Sup. Higgins asked for accounts of any suspicious activity in the area. PC Ronald Gibbs reported that he had been in Heddon Street at 11.30 pm when a man with a large Jaguar car had asked him for change for a sixpenny piece to make a call from a public telephone box. The man was well-spoken and wearing a green overcoat with a small patch in the back. The constable remembered the last digit of the car was a 7. A commissioner at the nearby Albany Club who was interested in cars, recalled the full number number plate of the Jaguar as D.P.H.7. This was traced to Harold Lough White, a 45-year old motor trader, who lived in Thorney Court, Palace Gate, a luxury block of flats opposite Kensington Gardens. He was known in the underworld as ‘Peter the Plotter’ from a character in the children’s comic The Magnet published in 1924.
A search of his garage in nearby Petersham Mews found the Jaguar, and in another lockup attached to an old people’s home in Beacon Hill Hindhead in Surrey, the police discovered what they called the most sophisticated oxy-acetylene safe cutting equipment they had ever recovered.
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| 'Peter the Plotter', Harold Lough White |
When Higgins and his team searched White’s flat on 25 July they found a confidential Lloyds survey book which gave insurance details of many companies, including the make of the safes and locks, if there was a night watchman and other information useful to criminals. In White’s address book was the phone number of Gordon Simpson who lived with his wife in Flat 2, 8 Holmdale Road West Hampstead. The police discovered that Simpson had stolen the survey book from A.R. Mountain and Sons, a firm of Lloyds underwriters. Simpson who was 35, worked as an insurance broker for another City company. Under a mattress in Holmdale Road the police found 168 slips of paper with information copied from the Lloyds book, and 12 of these addresses had been robbed in the last two years.
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| Australian newspaper cartoon of the robbery, 1954 |
Another name in the address book was Robert Melrose of Cadogan Gardens Sloane Square where he was arrested. Forty-year old Melrose was a safe blowing expert, in criminal slang a ‘peterman’, who complained that the police accused him of every ‘peter’ job. When questioned, he asked if the police had already seen George in Kew.
George ‘Taters’ Chatham, was arrested in Lichfield Road near Kew Gardens. Chatham aged 42, was a famous cat burglar who had the nickname of Taters from the Cockney rhyming slang, ‘taters in the mould’ meaning cold, because of his cool head under pressure. He had been sprung from Brixton prison a few months earlier, after a ‘grand’ (£1,000) had been paid to smuggle a key into his cell. Under his bed at Kew were found pieces of knotted rope similar to those found on the roof of the Bywaters office which Chatham had climbed and then let the others into the building. When asked what the rope was for, Chatham jokingly said he used it to climb out of bed.
The Scotland Yard forensic laboratory found dust particles in the clothes of White, Chatham and Melrose which matched the debris in Heddon Street.
White’s small gang was selected for their special skills as a cat burglar and peterman. They targeted jobs using the information which Simpson had provided in the form of the stolen insurance survey book. They were caught because White used his own car, and arrogantly drew attention to himself by asking for change from a policeman outside the phone box in Heddon Street.
At the Old Bailey on 7 December the four men were found guilty. White, ‘the brains of the gang’ was sentenced to seven years. In the press he was called a public school educated debonaire playboy who mixed in high society but cracked safes at night.
In 1949 he had been convicted and sentenced to 12 months for trying to illegally smuggle two Mosquito fighter planes by hiring an ex-RAF pilot to fly them into Palestine. White obviously liked West Hampstead because he was living at 27 Priory Road when he was found not guilty of stealing a car in 1964. He died there in March 1971, leaving £1,288.
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| De Havilland Mosquito DH98 |
Gordon Simpson had no previous criminal record and had served bravely in the Royal Artillery during the War. After being captured he was held in PoW camps in Poland and Germany, coincidentally with a colleague of Sup. Higgins. He was given six years imprisonment.
Chatham and Melrose both got 10 years because of their string of previous convictions.
Chatham had a long criminal career. In 1948 he stole the Duke of Wellington’s ceremonial swords from the Victoria and Albert Museum. These were encrusted with precious emeralds and diamonds, but to Taters they were just stake money. He was reputed to have called a bet at a gaming table by prising a stone from the hilt.
In 1952 he diversified briefly into armed robbery when he was part of the team that stole £287,000 from a GPO mail van in Eastcastle Street. This time the alleged mastermind was Billy Hill who describe the raid in his ghosted autobiography ‘The Boss of Britain’s Underworld’ (1955). Despite an unprecedented police investigation the robbery went unsolved, and Chatham’s £15,000 share was quickly lost at the rigged tables of Hill’s gambling club.
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| Police photo of George 'Taters' Chatham |
Chatham usually worked independently and researched his targets using Burke’s Peerage, Country Life and the Tatler. His victims included the Maharajah of Jaipur, Lady Rothermere, and Raymond ‘Mr Teasy Weasy’, the society hairdresser. While attempting to rob the Countess of Dartmouth (later Raine Spencer), he fell four floors from the roof and spent six weeks in hospital, only to continue his exploits swathed in plaster and bandages. He stole from shops such as Bourne and Hollingsworth and Harvey Nichols, as well as furriers and jewellers. After stealing two paintings by Matisse and Renoir from an art gallery, he sold them for just £7,500 and £5,000.
Taters Chatham had an extraordinary 60-year career as a cat burglar. When he died penniless in a nursing home in Battersea in June 1997, he had spent £100M and served a total of 35-years in prison.
An interesting piece of trivia is that David Bowie is posing in Heddon Street on the cover of the Ziggy Stardust album, and on the back he is in the phone box. These were black and white photos (later hand-coloured by artist Terry Pastor), taken on the night of 23 January 1972 by photographer Brian Ward, whose studio was in Heddon Street.
In 2012 a plaque was put on 23 Heddon Street to commemorate where ‘Ziggy Fell to Earth’.
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| Front and back covers of the Ziggy Stardust album, 1972 |
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