NORTH SOHO 999

NORTH SOHO 999

This isn’t the first time London has been hit by a wave of gun crime, writes Patrick Sawer. A father of six is shot dead in cold blood as he tries to foil an armed raid on a jeweller's in London's Soho. Despite attempts by other witnesses to stop the three armed robbers, they melt into the crowd. The murder, carried out in broad daylight, sparks one of the biggest murder hunts in the history of the Metropolitan Police and prompts a wave of fear across the capital over increasing gang violence and gun crime. It sounds familiar, but the murder took place on April 29, 1947, all of 60 years before the recent wave of violence claimed the lives of seven London youngsters and sparked similar panic over teenagers and guns. The killing of Alec de Antiquis outside Jay's jewellers and pawnbrokers in Tottenham Street is retold by Paul Willetts in North Soho 999, (Dewi Lewis, �9.99). The book follows the subsequent police inquiry and explores the crime wave that threatened to overwhelm London in the immediate post-war years. The established criminal class had recently been swollen by a new generation of crooks - demobbed servicemen, who knew how to kill speedily and without remorse, and an estimated 17,500 deserters still at large. Without the ration books needed to buy food and clothes, they turned to crime in order to survive and used Soho's cheap cafes where unrationed food such as horsemeat, pigeon and even sparrow were on the menu. At the height of this period of lawlessness, an estimated 10,000 Londoners aged 14-to- 20 were members of criminal gangs. Many were armed with some of the thousands of weapons which flooded the market following the end of the war. During one single day's gun amnesty, the Met collected 18,200 guns. During the months preceding the murder of Alec de Antiguis there had been four fatal shootings in greater London. A Jamaican serviceman had been killed outside a Bloomsbury cafe, a courting couple had been murdered as they sat in their car on the edge of Epping Forest and a prostitute had been shot dead outside the Blue Lagoon nightclub in Soho. "On top of all that," says Willetts, "there had been a series of armed robberies in the West End." Leading the hunt for de Antiquis's killers was the Yard's most distinguished detective, Chief Inspector Bob Fabian, who made use of the latest forensic techniques, such as the analysis of dust and fibres from clothes, fingerprint records and a meticulous cross-referencing of information gathered during the investigation. He eventually got his men - two of whom were hanged while the third, a juvenile, was jailed for life. De Antiquis's death became a cause celebre, with leader columns lamenting the pernicious influence of US mobsters and Hollywood gangster films, much as violent Gangsta rap and hip hop lyrics are today blamed for fuelling teenage crime. A Daily Mail editorial stated: "A dead man lies on a London pavement... It is a sight we associate with Chicago, but not with the capital of Britain." The Daily Herald bemoaned the lenient treatment of anyone caught in possession of an unlicensed gun. Though the offence was subject to a �50 fine or three months in prison, a token fine of between �1 and 30 shillings was more common. "There's a temptation to present today's gun crime as if it's completely unprecedented," says Willetts. "In fact, the post-war period saw an incredible amount of gang activity and gun crime. "Evacuation had disrupted the education of many children, families had been broken up by the war, with fathers either killed or absent for long periods. This led to a huge number of children playing truant and living an almost feral existence. We hear echoes of this in today's debate about teenage crime." The story of de Antiquis's murder inspired the 1950 film The Blue Lamp, with Dirk Bogarde as a desperate gunman confronting Jack Warner's avuncular PC Dixon, and gave birth to British television's first hit police show, Fabian of the Yard.