History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

What are the chances of finding two safe blowers in West Hampstead? Even more unlikely is the fact that they were both living there in 1955. But surprisingly, there is no obvious link between the men. The First Raid at Stanstead On the night of 3-4 February 1955 thieves blew open the safe in the wages office of Skyways Ltd at Stansted Airport, and stole cash and National Health stamps. Leading from the safe to the door were two strands of wire, and in the passage the police found a live unused detonator. The next day, presumably acting on a tip-off, Detective Superintendent Tom Bradford and members of the Flying Squad went to a house in West End Lane. The number was not given in the newspaper reports and it was rather oddly called a bungalow, but there is no obvious house like this in the road. Eddie Rice, aged 34, still dressed in pyjamas, opened the door and said, ‘I have been expecting this. You are lucky because I was going to leave here tomorrow. Things were getting too hot’...

I went to school with a bank robber, but I did not know it at the time. In January 1962 four men from Kilburn were arrested while attempting to break in through a window at the rear of the Barclays Bank in Kenton Road Harrow. In court the men were described as: Brian Shrimpton (19) a labourer from Palmerston Road; Brian Phillips (23) a driver also from Palmerston Road; David Francis Murphy (17) a labourer from Brondesbury Villas Kilburn, and John Stainer (18) a van boy from The Avenue Brondesbury. They had been in the Prince of Wales pub in Kingsbury when they were overheard planning the raid. But their luck was out - they did not know that the men at the next table were three policemen from the Flying Squad. The Kilburn men drove off in a van to check out the Kenton Road bank, then they went to The Cabin café at 80 Palmerston Road in Kilburn and back to Kenton to do the bank raid.  They were unaware that they had been followed all the way by the Flying Squad and were totally surpr...

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 activi...

This story begins in West Hampstead in the 1920s and leads to a study of two famous criminals. West Hampstead burglaries In August 1926, West Hampstead Police Station which was then at 90 West End Lane near the Railway Hotel, received a tip-off about an intended local house burglary. Photo of West Hampstead Police Station Detectives Parlett, Heath and Smith went to Fairfax Road and took up observation. After half an hour they saw a powerful Swift motorcar, license plate LM 7311, arrive with three men and a woman with short bobbed hair. She got out and went into No.4 Fairfax Road which was currently unoccupied. Shortly afterwards she returned to the car and it drove away. The police waited and about 20 minutes later the car returned and parked nearby. Two of the men went into the house while one man pretended to be cleaning the car, and the woman kept watch in the street nearby. After a while, the men returned carrying a suitcase and they started up the car.  Just as it was moving a...

This story looks at the beginning of the Metropolitan Police Flying Squad and how they dealt with gangs who stole motor cars in the 1920s and 30s. With the growing ownership of cars after the First World War, criminals began stealing them to carry out burglaries and jewel raids and then make a quick getaway. The ‘Police Flying Squadron’ was set up in October 1919 and its name was soon shortened to the ‘Flying Squad’. To begin with, the dozen officers, led by Detective Superintendent Fred Wensley, were equipped with two covered, horse-drawn wagons leased from the Great Western Railway. They concentrated on known criminals. When a group of pickpockets was spotted the detectives would slip out of the van and mingle with the crowd before making an arrest. The Met was organized into 22 separate geographic divisions and the Flying Squad provided a means of chasing criminals across London. In the 1920s it was expanded to 40 officers. ‘Prince of Motor Thieves’ In 1919 The Times said that the n...