Description
Drawing on a range of sources, some well known and others newly discovered, analysed using mixed methods including historical GIS and social network analysis, this paper revisits the territory covered by Philip Jenkins and Gary Potter in their now classic 1998 article “Before the Krays: Organized Crime in London, 1920-1960” to offer a new interpretation of the relationship between illegal markets and criminal organisation. Focusing on prostitution and gambling, Jenkins and Potter concluded that crime news and lifewriting revealed the existence of overlapping criminal networks that had they been found “in any American city in the 1950s or 1960s, virtually no observer would have hesitated to characterise...as organized crime—and on an impressive scale.” Focusing on the careers of Jack ‘Spot’ Comer (1912-1995) and Billy Hill (1911-1984), first partners then rivals when it came to the regulation and control of London’s booming mid-century illegal markets, this paper eschews misleading mafia comparisons and shows how the pair became successive governors of these markets. In doing so it reveals the economic dynamics underlying criminal organisation in the capital. Extortion rackets meant firms in hospitality and leisure, often wholly or partly involved in illegal marketing, were in the market for protection and related services that Spot and Hill offered with tacit police approval.| Period | 3 Sept 2021 |
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| Event title | British Crime Historians Symposium 2021 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Leeds, United KingdomShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |