Posts Tagged ‘Ray Jones’

Blog closed until further notice…

Thursday, December 31st, 2009

I’ve already written about my experiences of producing the first season of the Mister Trippy blog at MySpace. It is obviously a little early to write about the second season in any depth since this is its closing post. There is also less need to write about Mister Trippy season two because I’ll be leaving the posts up rather than taking them down as I did with not only with the first season of Mister Trippy, but all my MySpace profiles (to protest about the platform’s support for US imperialism), in Spring 2008.

Having produced posts for the first Mister Trippy season daily, I found it far easier to blog every other day in this second season (except for the first month, which was daily). That said, at exactly a year long, this season was also quite a bit shorter than the first. While the comments remained an integral part of the blog, there were considerably fewer than during the first season. I’d view this as a consequence of hosting season two on my own site rather than a social networking platform, and also because I didn’t concentrate on replying to comments as much as I did during the first season. That said, I appear to have more readers here than when Mister Trippy was hosted at MySpace, but far fewer of them commented and those that did made less comments than on the first season of the blog. From a conventional media point of view, upping both the number and percentage of lurkers is probably a good thing, from a full-on committed to Web 2.0 perspective it probably isn’t so good, although it does make life easier! That said, there have still been loads of great comments containing both solid information and some really way-out humour on the season two blog!

A few facts and figures. Mister Trippy season two ran from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2009, during which time I posted 193 public entries (including this one). As I write this there are 5,007 approved comments split across these posts. Likewise, between myself and the Askimet anti-spam software 10,207 comments were blocked or removed. All the blocked or removed comments were of a commercial nature. Obviously the number of approved and blocked comments will increase as time goes by, although probably not at the same rate as when I was posting on a regular basis.

I’ve found this blog and the main website to which it is attached a good way of alerting people to information I’m seeking. It has enabled me to locate individuals, unearth facts, and in particular extend my knowledge of my mother Julia Callan-Thompson and her bohemian social circle – as well as my first cousin once removed Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones (a legend for audacious Robin Hood-style thefts from the rich and famous, as well as a successful 1958 prison escape with a subsequent two years on the run). That said, while – for example – I now know that Francois Raymond who exhibited photographs of my mother in 1967 is dead and I have contact details for his brother, I’ve drawn a complete blank in my attempts to nail down the fate of Malcolm ‘Grainger’ Drake.

One of the things I’ve always tried to do on this blog, as well as the main site to which it is attached, is put information online that wasn’t previously available via the web. The pieces I’ve posted about my mother’s circle and Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones are good examples of this. When I began researching my mother’s life there wasn’t a single entry about her online. It is because of my efforts that a search engine request now brings in more than 15,000 results for Julia Callan-Thompson, rather than none (which was the result I got from my early web searches for her). There was material about Ray The Cat on the web before I started blogging about him, but by locating a primary source in the form of Ray’s testament about his life and going back to contemporary press coverage of his exploits, I’ve expanded the range of material available online and shown that recent retellings of his escape from Pentonville Prison completely distort the facts (and that the confusion appears to begin with inaccuracies introduced by Mad Frankie Fraser and his ghost-writer James Morton). However, to see this you’d need to read through all my blog entries on Ray The Cat. My research is ongoing and I revise what I have to say on the basis of what I discover. Putting material online is important, there is unfortunately a growing trend (particularly among the young), to look for information on the web and if it can’t be found there then to assume it doesn’t exist.

My research methods appear to confuse some of those I’ve spoken to, since I’ve had the odd email complaining I’ve not written up a story as the person recontacting me originally told it. I always try to find as many sources as possible for what I write. Sometimes these provide me with conflicting information, and some people even provide more than one version of the same story over a period of time. Using archival records where they are available, and all the oral history I am able to collect, I try to reconstruct events as accurately as possible. This can result in a specific person’s recollection of events being discarded; not because I necessarily think the individual in question is lying  – memory can play tricks and the person concerned may simply be mistaken about what happened. Someone claiming to have direct knowledge of something does not automatically make them a reliable source for the subject. I work from all the evidence available to me and sometimes this will indicate (or even prove) that a particular individual’s memory of a specific incident is faulty or fraudulent.

Moving on, I trust that the interest of media professionals in blogging is waning, since it has had a deleterious effect on the activity. There are individuals who take up blogging in the belief that it might make them famous. Although this is unlikely, it doesn’t stop people trying and thus producing narrowly focused blogs with very limited subject matter, or else simply going in for egoblogging. One of the elements of this blog that proved particularly popular with a large swathe of readers were my reports of London art world openings. It would not be difficult to construct a blog around nothing but reports of this type, but for me it would become boring and is therefore to be avoided, despite – or rather because of – the fact that it would lead to me being viewed as a greater conventional ‘success’ than is currently the case.

Likewise, most newspapers seem to have given up on investigative journalism, or even research, and at a time when we need much more of it; clearly it is those with particular interests and specialised knowledge who are far better qualified to do this than so called media professionals, and blogging is a cheap and efficient way for the ‘real’ ‘experts’ – in other words, amateurs like you and me -  to gather and disseminate information. I’m not seeing as much research based blogging or other web reportage as I’d like, but hopefully there will be more of it in coming months and years – and far fewer blogs being updated via Twitter feeds. I’d also like to see the majority of bloggers trying a little harder with their writing. While splurging something out is a great way of getting it down, you do then need to rewrite and revise. I’ve always tried to compose my blogs the night before I posted them, so that I could give them a final rewrite in the morning. Too many blogs look like their author hasn’t read through what they’ve posted even once! If you’re not prepared to read your own writing, you shouldn’t expect anyone else to do so either!

In conclusion, while I wouldn’t rule out a third season of the Mister Trippy blog, I’m not committed to doing  one either. I’ll just see how things go. For now I’d rather concentrate on other pursuits. I will continue to update the main website to which this blog is attached – check the new additions page if you want to see what is being added. Wow, this may also be one of the least humorous blog I’ve written over the past year, so I obviously do need a break from Mister Trippy!

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in Web 2.0 | 30 Comments »

69 years of press coverage for Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones…

Sunday, December 27th, 2009

Over the past year I’ve devoted a number of blogs to my first cousin once removed Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones. Having talked to various people about Ray and located assorted print references to him made after he’d retired from being the greatest cat burglar in the world, I thought it was time to dig back into the past. Old newspaper reports of Ray’s court appearances verify much of what he had to say about his life, clarify various matters, and show that more recent accounts of his famous jail break have been distorted by those retelling the tale. Doing a quick search through national newspapers, I found no reports of Ray’s boxing career, and the earliest press coverage I could locate was dated 8 March 1940. The Daily Mirror put things this way:

“Thief Celebrated With 21 Suits

“A man living on the proceeds of house breaking once had so much money that he bought 21 suits and had £50 in his pockets. And for two years his fists kept him free.

“The police stated this at the Old Bailey yesterday when Raymond Jones, 23, described as a labourer of King Edward Walk, Lambeth, London, was sentenced to two years imprisonments for causing grievous bodily harm to a constable who tried to arrest him at the Marble Arch in December 1937, and for attempted theft from a car.

“He was arrested in Lambeth last month.

“A detective said Jones admitted assaulting numerous police officers to escape arrest in the last two years and he had been living on the proceeds of house breaking.”

There was an equally biased report in The Times also of 8 March 1940:

“Caught After Two Years. Labourer’s Savage Attack On Policeman.

“After being at liberty for over two years a man who twice escaped from police in 1937, on both occasions leaving a police officer unconscious on the ground and was not recaptured until early this year at Lambeth Walk, appeared in the dock at the Central Criminal Court yesterday.

“He is Raymond Jones, 23, a labourer of King Edward Walk, and he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for causing grievous bodily harm to one of the two constables, and attempted theft from a motor-car.

“Detective Hope said the prisoner admitted assaulting several police officers in order to escape arrest in the past two years. He had been living on the proceeds of house-breaking. On one occasion he had so much money he bought 21 suits and had £50 in his pocket.

“Judge Beazley, in sentencing Jones, said he had been guilty of a savage attack.”

On the basis of these reports, the press should be in the dock, charged with spreading unctuous bullshit. As I hope I’ve made clear in my earlier blogs, Ray was not guilty, he was fitted-up. The papers, taking their cue from the Old Bill and a slimeball judge report him as being guilty of numerous assaults on cops, but he was found guilty on just one count! And in this instance, he acted in self-defence after being violently assaulted by a bully dressed in blue.

Ray’s 1952 appearance at the Old Bailey was also widely covered by the press under headlines such as Alleged Complicity In Fur Coats Theft (Times April 25 1952), £4000 Fur’s Theft, Six And A Half Year Sentence (Times 24 June 1952), and Police Kept Watch From ‘Q Van’ He Says (Daily Mirror 21 June 1952). This need not detain us, although the swiping of guests’ coats during a swanky New Year party thrown by Colonel Martin Charteris for his upper-class chums is an amusing tale; and it is also worth noting that in his evidence Ray mentioned a feud between his family and notorious 1950s gangster Billy Hill and that to defend his brother who’d been stabbed, Ray punched out the Mister Big of the London crime world. But let’s move on to Ray’s famous jail break. The Times of 18 October 1958 described it thus:

“Two Escape At Pentonville. Others Fail In Attempt.

“Five men took part in an escape attempt from Pentonville Prison last light. Three were recaptured, but two others got away. They were the first men to break out of the prison since it was reopened in 1946. A full scale search of the area was carried out.

“The men who got out of the prison were Raymond Jones, aged 42, serving 8 years preventative detention, who Scotland Yard said might be violent, and John Rider, aged 28, serving 5 years imprisonment.

“The escape was made during the period given over to evening classes. Jones and Rider found ladders being used during the repair of the prison roof, and took them to scale the 20ft wall of the prison.

“Once on top of the wall, they jumped into an alley that skirts the side of the prison and one turned left, the other right… Tracker dogs, police cars, wardens, uniformed and plain clothes police with torches toured streets around Caledonian Road.”

The Daily Mirror (18 October 1958) used Gaol Break 2 Men Hunted as its headline, and this front page story contained the following information not provided by The Times: “Two of the other three men perched on the top of the wall then dropped back into the goal yard. The third fell and was injured.”  Rider enjoyed just 24 hours freedom, as The Times reported on 20 October 1958:

“John Rider aged 34, one of two men who escaped from Pentonville Prison, London, on Friday night, was recaptured on Saturday while he was asleep on a sofa in an unoccupied home at Antler Hill, Chingford, Essex.

“The search continues for the other prisoner Raymond Jones aged 42, who was serving a sentence of eight years preventative detention. Scotland Yard issued a warning he might be violent.”

The idea that Ray was potentially violent was just a cop smear designed to justify the filth’s 1940 fit-up; Ray never carried weapons, although he would defend himself with his fists if attacked. Ray also knew how to run and hide, having spent the whole of 1938 and 1939 on his toes… When he was finally recaptured The Daily Express (24 November 1960) put the story on the front page and reported it this way:

“Two-Year Escaper Caught

“Pentonville’s record escaper, Raymond Jones, was recaptured in Staines, Middlesex, last night.

He went ‘over the wall’ two years ago – the longest time a fugitive has been on the run from the jail.

“A tip-off at lunch-time sent the police to Staines. They waited six hours to seize him at a house.

“Jones, a 42 year old Welshman, was serving eight years preventative detention.”

So there you have it, plenty of contemporary documentation to confirm just why Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones is a legend! And this is also why as recently as November this year Wales On Sunday devoted yet another page to this famous criminal, the closest thing the 20th century ever produced to a new Robin Hood!

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in True crime | 74 Comments »

Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones, the Hackney connection… completely missed by Iain Sinclair!

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Way back in February I posted a couple of blogs about Iain Sinclair’s book Hackney, That Rose Red Empire. What I didn’t realise back then, or even earlier when I’d given Sinclair a few pointers as regards research on this book, was that Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones was a long time Hackney character who during the 1990s featured regularly in The Hackney Gazette. Since Ray doesn’t appear in Sinclair’s book, I guess this proves that neither of us read the Hackney press with any diligence….

Ray lived for many years at Flat 9, St Andrews House, Cranwich Road, Stamford Hill, London N16 5JB. His long term press spokesman Michael Morgan has also been based in Hackney for many years, and when I met up with the latter man last week he told me that towards the end of his life Ray had used an otherwise empty flat belonging to a mutual friend in Colvestone Crescent, Dalston. This is why press reports about Ray often said he lived in Dalston, although he also kept his council flat in Stamford Hill until his death in 2001.

Among the press clippings Morgan gave me when I met him was the following headlined “Burglar Ray’s dying wish is in the posters’ from The Hackney Gazette of 20 August 1998:

“A cat burglar who robbed the rich and famous for more than 40 years, has been caught putting up his own ‘Wanted’ posters.

“Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones, who lives in Colvestone Crescent, Dalston, has started sticking up the posters in Hackney, with a photo of him behind bars and details of his life story.

“The 82 year-old who is suffering from lung cancer, says it is his last chance to tell his story. ” ‘For years high-ranking police officers have stopped publishers printing my story because it would expose past corruption and victimisation,’ says Ray.

” ‘They know I’m about to die and they hope the truth will go with me. Well damn them, this story is coming out,’ he adds defiantly.

“Although now a frail old man, the crafty crook stole an estimated career haul of £60 million of jewels and valuables – despite spending 33 years in jail.

” ‘Most of them were for crimes I didn’t do and honest policemen have admitted that,’ says Ray. ‘I’m not looking for forgiveness. I was a criminal. I just want the people around me know what happened.’ ”

Two years before this, in an edition of 25 April 1996, The Hackney Gazette had carried the headline ‘Cat’s Campaign for recognition’ and beneath it the following story:

“The once-athletic burglar Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones has staged a one-man protest claiming that the police have tried to cover up his involvement in a gems burglary from a movie star.

“Standing next to a huge placard cataloguing his alleged part in the theft of jewels from Sophia Loren, 80-year-old Ray distributed 500 leaflets at Ridley Road market, Dalston, last Friday to passers-by.

“Ray who lives in Stamford Hill claims that he and an accomplice paid for information from two senior police officers that helped them steal the Italian actress’s gems when she was staying in London in the 1960s.

” ‘They are afraid of being exposed,’ said Ray, who confessed to the crime four years ago, but has not been arrested for it. He claimed that all attempts to reveal his role in the heist have been suppressed, including deals to publish his life story.”

When I met Michael Morgan in his Hackney flat, he told me that he’d lost many of the papers and press clippings relating to Ray, but he gave me photocopies of everything he still had. Michael spoke passionately about Ray and his decade-long friendship with him. Ray had clearly been a charismatic figure who made a lasting impression on those he met.

After I visited him, Michael Morgan sent me the following statement about Ray Jones:

“For people who read news on Raymond Jones in the Hackney & national newspapers, Raymond for many years wanted his life story published, the news in 1992 about the burglary of Sophia Loren from May 1960, caused a great deal of public interest, of course those unique court trials were the real reason why Raymond’s life story was stopped by the powers that be. If the trials from the 1930s 40s & 50s had come into the public domain, people reading  about these trials would have been very shocked to think that things like this could happen in crown courts. In 1994 the Mail on Sunday newspaper promised Raymond if he was arrested for the burglary of Sophia Loren they would do a large news story on him a reporter & photographer came out to Borehamwood Police Station and spent six hours there before Raymond was arrested. The story was shelved, why? The Sun newspaper on another occasion spent a day and a half with Raymond in Wales. The story was shelved, why? How sad they could do this to a very ill man, as Raymond was. Two major book publishers promised to publish Raymond Jones’s life story but shelved the plans, why? One of the editors talked to Raymond one day and said, I am sorry, we can’t publish your story we have been stopped and I can’t say more than that.

“Is this democracy? God help us all.

“A very big thank you to Welsh newspapers, The Western Mail and sister paper Wales on Sunday and The Hackney Gazette in London, for their kindness over a very long time and the very many stories that was published in these papers to get Raymond Jones’s life story into the public domain.

“If Raymond’s life story had been published, I am sure the public would have taken Raymond to their heart and would have looked on Raymond, not as a jewel thief but a martyr.

“Raymond Jones passed away on 4th February 2001.”

Thus while I was able to help Iain Sinclair out with his Hackney research into the Mole Man and other matters, I clearly let the side down by not knowing enough about the colorful life of my distant relative Raymond Jones. When Sinclair was working on his Hackney book, I knew my mother‘s cousin was a jewel thief but I didn’t know he had personal connections to Hackney going back to the 1950s and possibly much earlier… So in as far as Iain Sinclair might be criticised for his lack of local knowledge on this score, I too should bear some of the blame…

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in books, deep topology aka psychogeography, True crime | 25 Comments »

Another round of burglary with Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

I finally caught up with one time Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones press spokesman Michael Morgan at his Hackney flat yesterday. We spent much of the day going over Ray’s life-story, and Michael also kindly presented me with a bundle of press clippings and other material he’d photocopied for me.

Among the many impressive cuttings Michael Morgan gave me is one entitled ‘The Night I Stole Liz’s Jewels In The Gresham’ (from the Irish tabloid The Sunday World, 23 November 1997):

“One of the world’s oldest jewel thieves has spilled the beans on how he amassed a £5 million fortune by robbing top showbiz stars as revenge for his brother’s tragic death in a World War II bombing raid. And legendary burglar Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones says one of his most memorable jobs was when he broke into a Dublin hotel room and stole jewels belonging to superstar Elizabeth Taylor…

“…Ray told the Sunday World: ‘Way back in 1940 I was due to fight for the World Middleweight Championship… I was real good and I had boxed and beaten the legendary Fred(die) Mills and now I was in with a chance of a World Crown. But I was involved in a melee in London and was charged with hitting a copper. I found out later that the copper was himself a middleweight boxer. They framed me to get me out of the way. I got six years for the assault.’

“His brother, who lived in the family home in Gwent, South Wales, came to visit Ray in Pentonville prison in North London. But he was tragically killed in the first bombing of London by the Nazis at the end of 1940…. Said Ray: ‘I got on my knees in my prison cell. I vowed I would hit back at society and the judiciary for taking the things I cared most about in life away from me. When I got out, I said to myself, I would become the greatest cat burglar in the world. That was my mission in life… I would only hit rich people. They were the cream of the crop and had everything they wanted. I had been robbed of my life. I had to hit back.’ ”

My chat with Michael Morgan, other papers he gave me and one of my previous blogs about Ray The Cat, can fill in a few details here. Jones had moved to London around 1936 to further his boxing career and had settled in Maida Vale. One Sunday morning in 1937 he went for a stroll with a friend and they were stopped by the Old Bill under the notorious SUS law (this allowed the cops to stop, search  -and even arrest – anyone on the suspicion they were going to commit a crime; the law was finally abolished after the Scarman enquiry highlighted the role its use played in the 1981 Brixton riots). Metropolitan police boxing champion PC Spratt told Ray he was being arrested for SUS, and when Jones protested he hadn’t done anything, this bully-boy cop grabbed Jones by the collar and punched him in the face. Ray fell back against the wall, sprang up and with a well-placed punch KOed the violent thug who was attacking him.

The knock-out blow delivered against the best fighter in the Met was a clear-cut case of self-defence, but Ray and his friend understood the necessity of being on their toes, and the cops didn’t catch up with Jones for three years. When they did, the crown used Ray’s sporting nickname of ‘Slasher Davies’ to falsely paint him as a violent thug involved in razor attacks on innocent members of the public; when in reality the moniker was derived from his punching prowess in the boxing ring. As a result, Jones did a six year stretch for an assault perpetrated not by him, but against him!

Jones insisted that he was innocent of both this and the alleged crimes (thefts of coal, shoes and a bottle of milk) that led to the spell he spent in Reform School as a boy. However, Ray was guilty of the robberies for which he was sent down at the Old Bailey in 1952, since he’d decided to hit back against the rich who were ruining society and making life a misery for poor families like his own, by stealing from aristocrats and showbiz stars. Unfortunately, despite Ray’s guilt in this instance, there were to be more fit-ups. The outline for the official biography of Ray’s life (the book was never written) includes the following: “Within eight days of leaving prison he was arrested for living on the immoral earnings of prostitution. Despite the fact that he had only been out of prison a week, and that the woman concerned was not a prostitute he was sentenced to a further 6 months. Ray says that years later the officer who had arrested him, admitted that he had been framed on directions from someone in Scotland Yard.”

Another frame-up took place in 1957, the filth used a nark to lure Jones to a London cul-de-sac in which they’d parked a a stolen car and then arrested him for the theft. This led to Ray’s famous escape from Pentonville in October 1958, when using ladders left by a work gang doing repairs to the prison, he and Johnny Rider got onto the roof and then down the walls. When Ray fell and injured himself, Rider attempted to carry him but Jones insisted his friend run on because it was important at least one of them got away; sadly Rider was recaptured very shortly afterwards. Jones managed to crawl to safety and eventually asked a couple of men, one of whom was an ex-con, for help in return for money. They drove him to a pub run by one of his cousins (one of the sons of his west London based gangster uncle Dennis ‘Dinny’ Callaghan), who gave him the keys to a flat where he could clean himself up and rest. Unfortunately the landlord was inspecting the property when Jones arrived and told him to go away, since he didn’t want someone covered in blood going into his building. Ray then directed the men aiding his escape to the home of a fence called Benny Selby, who paid them £50 and helped him clean up.

Eventually Ray found a flat to stay in, and his wife Anne who worked at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital For Children in Hackney Road, persuaded a doctor she knew there to attend to her husband’s injuries. Once he’d healed up, Jones went back to his chosen profession of robbing the rich. While Ray was on the run, Peter Scott approached him and said he’d been given inside information on a big job by a couple of bent coppers. Scott needed a skilled accomplice to rob Sophia Loren (who was making The Millionairess in England) of her jewels; once these had been flogged the detectives who’d put them up for the theft would be paid off with £6000.

The raid took place in May 1960, with the bumbling Scott acting as look-out and Ray breaking into Loren’s bedroom to steal the diamonds. The haul was sold to a fence for £44,000, with Scott and Jones netting nearly £19,000 each (slightly less because of expenses on top of the bung to the filth). Scott visited Jones immediately after paying off the bent coppers at a White City Stadium dog race, claiming that they’d read in the papers the stolen jewels were worth £185,000 and they wanted another £6000 for putting up the job. Ray thought Scott was trying to con him out of three grand and refused to give him any cash.

After he was recaptured in October 1960, Ray suspected that Scott may have given the cops the information that enabled them to track him down; the look-out was pissed off that Jones hadn’t coughed-up the extra money he later discovered the bent detectives had indeed demanded. Despite his suspicions on this score, when Ray decided to go public about having done the Sophia Loren job in the early 1990s, he warned Scott he was going to do so. At the time Scott begged Jones not to mention his name, and Ray respected his wishes although he harboured serious doubts about the integrity of this ‘man’.

Ray’s 2 years and 28 days on the run from Pentonville apparently earned him a place in The Guinness Book of Records. Michael Morgan also told me that Ray’s younger daughter Anne-Marie Jones was both conceived and born while he was on the lam; her older sibling Beryl was born before the 1957 fit-up. Thanks to Michael Morgan I also have yet more tales to tell about Ray The Cat, but they won’t all fit into one blog…. So the further adventures of this 20th century Robin Hood will have to wait for now! But before going, I would like to emphasise the injustice of the fit-ups Ray suffered: he claimed that 17 of the 33 years he spent in jail were for crimes of which he was innocent…

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in True crime | 15 Comments »

A possible appointment in Old Street with the literary heir of Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones…

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

A few days ago I got an email from Michael Morgan, who’d acted as press agent for Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones (the greatest burglar ever and one of my mother’s cousins to boot): “I wonder if you could find time and get in touch with me regarding a story about ‘Ray the Cat’ in Wales on Sunday on 1st November?” I replied: “I have to go into The City on Friday, if you’re still based around Dalston maybe we could meet at the The Masque Haunt (the Wetherspoons on the corner of Old Street and Bunhill Row) at 3pm on Friday? If this isn’t good let me know another day or time that is… And if you’re not in Dalston any more let me know…” Since I’d not heard back, and I felt like heading home to The Island (Isle of Dogs E14 that is, not Long Island) when I’d finished my editorial tasks on the Semina fiction series in the Book Works office, I called Michael Morgan on his mobile. Unfortunately all I got was an answer service, so I left message saying I’d head to the Masque Haunt anyway in the hope that he was there.

I arrived bang on time and had the joy of going around all the solitary afternoon drinkers (about a dozen) asking if they were Michael Morgan. None of them were, but I got asked plenty of questions by a couple of drinkers who seemed a bit bored. Is he a relative? Why don’t you know what he looks like? Why do you want to find him? Where’s he from? Is he thin and tall? So as a psychogeographical exercise in the classic ‘letterist’ style, this non-meeting sparked off many conversations and was very revealing of the ambiance of that particular bar (progressively proletarian, during the daytime anyway, and far more so than when I used to drink there a decade ago)… but I’m still curious to know what there is to discuss about the recent Wales On Sunday article. The piece by Nathan Bevan merely repeats in Michael Morgan’s words a story I’d blogged way back in June using a rare example of Ray The Cat’s own writing.

The long and the short of it is that Ray was always insistent he became a major league burglar to avenge himself against the cops, who’d fitted him up and in the process inadvertently caused the death of his brother. It’s nice to see information about my most famous criminal relative becoming more widely known, since Wales On Sunday clearly reaches a few people who don’t regularly check this blog, but what really interests me is putting fresh information about Ray The Cat into the public domain. This was, of course, one of the things that really pleased me about my last Ray Jones blog, I was making available a story that as far as I knew was not until then a matter of public record. And it is, of course, particularly important that this tale of a fit-up becomes as well known as Ray’s legendary jewel thefts and prison escapes.

Hopefully I will manage to meet up with Michael Morgan soon, and get some new stories. But if you have any tales about Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones, please post them in the comments below or email them to me via my website contact form. Only by stories about Ray being collected and disseminated can his legend live on!

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in deep topology aka psychogeography, True crime | 24 Comments »

The testament of Ray Jones, the greatest cat burglar in the world, ever!

Monday, June 8th, 2009

After clocking my earlier blogs about Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones, a couple of readers kindly passed on further information about this legendary criminal. As a consequence, I can now bring you a written statement in which Ray The Cat explains that he embarked on his career as a master thief in order to get his revenge on bent cops; these crumbs wrecked Ray’s boxing career by fitting him up on trumped-up assault charges. The story is best told in his own words:

“I have never had much schooling but I have learned a great deal from life.

From the age of 12 my whole dream was to have become the middleweight boxing champion of the world. I honestly believe I would have got there but for the evil of the police and the dishonesty of some judges. Because of the wrongs done to me – first of which was that I served a Borstal sentence of 3 years and I also served a total of 6 years imprisonment. I was innocent of both counts.

The 6 years I served, it was for hitting a policeman  – who happened to be the metropolitan police boxing champion – in self-defence. I started that six years in 1940 but the offence took place in 1937 when I was 21 years old. It did not happen but only a few weeks later I was due to box a leading middleweight contender and had I won I would have fought the British middleweight champion for the title with Mr. Jack Solomon, the boxing promoter, who believed I would have beaten the both of them and won the title.

At the time I got the 6 year sentence, when I was taken into custody, the police question you as if you are responsible for all kinds of assaults on the police and one evil policeman at Gerald Road Police Station did falsely charge me for hitting him as well as the police boxing champion, when he knew I had not done so. It was that officer that took charge of the two charges – the one with him and the other with the police heavyweight champion.

I got convicted on the charge for hitting the police champion and I got 6 years imprisonment. I did get acquitted on the evil officer’s charge but to do so I did have my younger brother David come up to London from Wales and give evidence on my behalf and prove that I was not in London at the time. My brother never did get back home to Wales in 1940 because he was killed with the first bombing of London in the war and went home in his coffin, and I went to prison for the 6 years and I was innocent.

That was in 1940. In 1982 I was charged on the evidence of a supergrass and I am pleased to say that the presenting barrister on behalf of the Regional Crime Squad police did inform the trial judge that I was innocent of the 6 years sentence I served in 1940. That barrister also cleared me of a sentence of 18 months I did wrongfully serve in 1944.

When my brother was killed and I got that 6 year sentence I swore and vowed to myself that I would hit back at the rogues that had wrongly condemned me, and that I would become the greatest cat burglar and jewel thief that ever was. I kept that vow and I never ever stole from anybody poor. I only robbed the elites and most wealthy such as lords, ladies, dukes, duchesses, multi-millionaire industrialists and three of the world’s richest film stars – Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren and Bette Davies. Also the best Home Secretary of all time R. A. Butler.”

So there you have it, an unequivocal statement of opposition to the cops who fitted Ray up and set him off on his life of crime. I assume the 18 month sentence in 1944 was for an alleged prison misdemeanor and led to Ray doing a continuous six-year stretch inside. Likewise, it would appear Ray’s boxing career ended in 1937 because he was forced on the run. If anyone is able to clarify these matters or add new information please do so in the comments below. Jones was very keen to have his story told right up to his death, so anyone who can contribute to his biography is assisting in the realisation of his dying wishes. There is a further story I can add here, emailed to me by another of my blog readers:

“Ray and my grandfather were brothers.  My grandfather’s name was Ambrose Jones.  I was told by my grandad that when Ray was on the run he dressed up as a woman so he could go to his mother’s funeral.  The police were at the funeral but no-one recognised him for a while and when he was spotted he had to scale a fence so he could get away.  My dad was at the funeral and he said there were loads of old time criminals there, he said it was great.”

If anyone has press cuttings or videos of Ray The Cat’s TV appearances, I’d love to see those too. Ray Jones is a legend and by getting as much of his life-story online as possible we’ll ensure that his memory lives on! And I’m also looking for information on some other relatives of mine and Ray’s who lived in the Victoria area of London in the 1950s and 1960s, the Callaghans. The head of the family was Dinny Callaghan and he’d lost an eye in a fight over who ran the protection at The Derby. His sons were involved in criminal exploits too. According to family legend, the south Wales filth took a dislike to Dinny when he was a young man, and after illegally conveying him to the border with England, they told him never to return to Wales. The west London underworld is not nearly as well documented as that in south and east London, and by getting some leads on the Callaghans we can hopefully start filling in some more ‘lost’ history. Again any information placed in the comments section below will be greatly appreciated. Just to clarify, Dinny Callaghan was Ray The Cat’s uncle.

Checking again I was able to find Will Cohu’s hatchet job on Ray The Cat from The Independent on that newspaper’s site, so you can see it there for free rather than having to use a pay-to-view web archive service. With the statement from Ray above, it becomes possible to see that Cohu didn’t fully grasp everything Jones told him.

I also recently came across a couple of sentences on Ray The Cat AKA Raymond The Climber in Villains’ Paradise: Britain’s Underworld from the Spivs to the Krays by Donald Thomas (John Murray, London 2005, page 365): “In June 1952, Raymond Jones, known as ‘Raymond The Climber’, was also sent to prison, in his case for six years, for robbing Colonel Charteris. He had fifteen criminal convictions going back to the age of twelve.” A footnote informs us that Ray The Cat was found guilty and sentenced at the Old Bailey on 23 June 1952. Citing Peter Scott’s unreliable autobiography as his source, Thomas goes on to credit Ray’s assistant with sole credit for carrying out the 1960 Sophie Loren Elstree jewel theft, a claim Ray consistently contested (see my earlier blog).

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in True crime | 17 Comments »

Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones rides again!

Monday, March 30th, 2009

What a difference a blog makes! The flurry of excitement that kicked off after my January entry on Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones continues apace with the greatest cat burglar of all time being featured in yesterday’s Wales On Sunday. There are few new details in the piece by Nathan Bevan but there is a lovely photo of Ray The Cat as a part of the print version (not with the online variant, which you can find here). Of course, there has to be a news angle, and in this instance it is the fact that the account of Ray The Cat’s escape from Pentonville as quoted in my earlier blog features in Paul Buck’s recent book The E-list. Having done some further research, Wales On Sunday give a variant account which suggests Ray was one of two men to escape together. I suspect this version is more accurate than the solo escape tale Buck quotes from an old Frankie Fraser book. Bevan also says the infamous Sophia Loren jewel theft took place while Ray The Cat was still on the run after his 1958 Pentonville jail break. He also notes that in his younger days Ray was a boxer. I’d not mentioned this detail in my blogs but I had clocked it elsewhere.

Something else that has come up in relation to Ray The Cat is the ‘Princess Margaret story’. I’ve got no real leads on it, but someone I asked ‘guessed’ that Ray The Cat was the uncaught mastermind behind the 11 September 1971 safety deposit box robbery of the Lloyds Bank on the corner of Marylebone Road and Baker Street (central London). Supposedly a series of sexually compromising photographs of Princess Margaret were found by the robbers in one of the riffled safety deposit boxes. This particular heist had a very different modus operandi to Ray’s jewel and fur thefts, but I suppose anything is possible. However, I would stress that the person who suggested this to me was ‘guessing’, there is no evidence to back it up. I am, however, confident that there is a reader of this blog who could throw more light on the matter, should he care to do so. Moving on, in my last piece on Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones I mentioned news reports about him that had been posted on the web and subsequently come down. What follows is just one example of these lost posts retrieved from my archive:

Last Bid For Imprisonment

The man campaigning to be credited with the £185,000 burglary of Sophia Loren’s jewels from an Elstree hotel is fighting his last battle in his war against a “cover-up”.

Ray “the cat” Jones, who has an estimated career haul of £60 million, was never charged with the 1960 raid on the Norwegian Barn in the grounds of the Edgwarebury Hotel in Barnet Lane — but was incensed when his accomplice claimed sole credit for it in a 1994 book.

Together with his spokesman, Michael Morgan, Ray was back in the village recently, delivering hundreds of leaflets door-to-door, calling on the public to demand police arrest him for the crime.

“This is definitely our last protest,” said Mr Morgan, “we want to finally lay this to rest”.

Ray, now in his 80s, claims the police do not want to re-open the case because it would come to light that officers accepted £12,000 from him for information to help him carry out the raid.

Another claim is that a senior officer, “knowing” Ray had earlier been jailed for a burglary he did not commit, ordered colleagues to let him off for the Elstree job. Mr Morgan added: “I’m convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt there’s been a cover-up.” Police have denied the claims.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.  Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion. Saturday 20 February 1999. Borehamwood and Elstree Times.

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in True crime | 19 Comments »

Ray “The Cat” Jones again…

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

My post of 24 January 2009 about career criminal Ray “The Cat” Jones caused a flurry of interest. I got a couple of messages saying Ray was dead, and further confirmation of this in a comment added to that blog yesterday:  “Ray died in 2001, just so you know.” Likewise, Neil Milkins told me: “I have made some enquiries with a nephew of Ray, Michael O’Dowd of Nantyglo. (Ray was his mother’s brother.) He said Ray died of cancer in London about 7 years ago.” To clarify my own distant relative status with the greatest cat burglar of all time, Ray’s mother was an older sister of my maternal grandfather David Callaghan (AKA Dai Callan), and my mother – Julia Callan-Thompson – was named after this particular aunt.

Moving on, Ray “The Cat” Jones appears as ‘Taffy Raymond’ in the autobiography of the old school heavy Eric Mason. After flashing up the name of Peter Scott, Mason gives an account of Jones loosing heavily in a Notting Hill spieler and then slipping out with his criminal accomplice George “Tatters” Catham to do a quick robbery. Upon their return Jones and Catham negotiated the price of a jewel with the governor of the spieler before resuming their places at the gaming table. South London gangster Mad Frankie Fraser tells a similar tale about Billy Benstead, and as a lead in to this story mentions that Tatters Chatham and Ray Jones numbered among the other leading cat-burglars who were also degenerate gamblers. As noted in my previous Jones blog, Fraser also cites the unaided escape Ray made from Pentonville as one of the greatest prison breakouts of all time;  Mad Frankie says Jones broke both legs going over the wall and still managed to get away. Elsewhere, Fraser makes a passing reference  to cat-burglar Raymond Jones having a brother known within the London underworld as Taffy Jones. But since Ray was lumbered with this appellation by Cockney villains, it may be that Mad Frankie is getting confused. In my experience Fraser and his ghost writer are not 100 percent reliable as sources.

Towards the end of his life,  Ray garnered a certain amount of newspaper attention as a kind of aftermath to  Peter “The Human Fly” Scott publishing his autobiography Gentleman Thief:  Recollections of a Cat Burglar (1995). Scott had been a small time tea leaf until Ray introduced him to major league larceny and the support network that is essential to the headline grabbing criminal. Scott incensed Jones by using his book to claim sole credit for stealing movie star Sophia Loren’s jewels when she was filming at Elstree in 1960.

In the late nineteen-nineties and using a spokesman called Michael Morgan, Jones ran a campaign to get the public to demand that the police arrest him for this 1960 burglary. Jones asserted there had been a cover-up and that the authorities wouldn’t charge him with stealing Loren’s jewels because he’d paid corrupt police officers twelve thousand pounds for information that enabled him to secure the haul. It has even been claimed that because the police knew Jones had been wrongly jailed for another burglary, they decided not arrest him for this particular theft.

Ray claimed to have nicked sixty million pounds worth of goods during his life-of-crime. Like many other underworld figures, Jones and Scott seem to have constantly bigged up their own importance. That said, Jones was an ‘honest’ working-class criminal, not a middle-class slimeball like Scott, so while Ray may have on occasion bent the truth, what he had to say is considerably more reliable than the rot on offer in Gentleman Thief.

According to gangster Albert Donoghue, Loren’s valuable gems were fenced by George Mizel whose Hatton Garden jewellery repair business was a front for this type of activity; however, many London villains active back then believe that upon examination the Loren ‘treasures’ turned out to be paste copies, and not the valuable originals. The same sources add that fortunately Jones and Scott had also lifted this Italian sex siren’s smalls and they did terrific business flogging off her underwear. Peter Scott certainly enjoyed targeting female film stars and he readily admits he got a sexual thrill from riffling through their possessions and stealing their knickers; so this tale about Loren’s paste jewels and stolen underwear is credible albeit unproven. Regardless of its truth or falsity, it certainly makes a good story.

Bruce Reynolds in his Autobiography Of A Thief also applies the name Taffy Raymond to Ray The Cat and says: “Michael Black’s real name was Michael Hackett, a former Leicester boy who had originally been taken under the wing of Taffy Raymond in the early 1950s. Taffy was one of the older climbers who was good at finding up-and-comers, normally at the Billiard Hall in Windmill Street or somewhere like that, and he would ‘educate’ them and set them to work..” (Page 266)

Sources:  Eric Mason – The Brutal Truth: The Inside Story Of A Gangland Legend (Mainstream, Edinburgh 2000).  Bruce Reynolds – Autobiography Of A Thief (Virgin Books, London 2005). Albert Donoghue and Martin Short – The Enforcer: Secrets of my life with the Krays (John Blake Publishing, London 2001). Peter Scott  – Gentleman Thief: Recollections of a Cat Burglar (Harper Collins, London 1995). Frankie Fraser with James Morton – Mad Frank: Memoirs of a Life of Crime (Warner Books, London 1995); Mad Frank And Friends (Warner Books, London 1999); Mad Frank’s Diary (Virgin Books, London 2001); Mad Frank’s London (Virgin Books, London 2002). Seven or so years ago when I last checked Ray out online there was some local south Wales newspaper coverage of him freely available on the web, and although that has subsequently disappeared, I made notes from it at the time. That said, you can still check “Who Done It?” Independent, November 8, 1998, via HighBeam Research or a copyright deposit library -  this carries the strap-line: “Ray ‘The Cat’ Jones, who has spent more than 30 years in prison, now wants recognition for the Sixties theft of Sophia Loren’s jewels. Will Cohu hears his story”. Also available via the same sources is “Ray The Cat Book Bid,” Wales On Sunday, March 3, 2002.  For this blog entry I also made use of notes from conversations I had with Mad Frankie Fraser and various other ‘old hands’ circa 2002.

Further details of Ray’s life and crimes – including exact dates for his birth and death – would, of course, be greatly appreciated in the comments.

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in Julia Callan-Thompson, True crime | 23 Comments »

The return of Ray Jones, the greatest cat burglar in the world, ever!

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

I’ve known Paul Buck for years and the other day I went to see him do a talk in which he covered his entire career as a writer, from a recent true crime book to his involvement with heavy weight French theorists back in the day. While Paul has endless tales about the innumerable highbrow chancers he has known, when we spoke after his presentation I asked him about The E… List: Notorious Prison Escapes, and specifically whether my relative Ray “The Cat” Jones had featured in it. Paul said he had covered Raymond Jones. I’ve never met Ray but he is one of my mum’s many cousins and my uncles like to talk about him. Indeed, my mother was named Julia after Ray’s mother. This is what Paul has to say about Ray in his book:

“Frankie Fraser gives cat burglar Ray Jones his vote for the best single-handed escape, when he went over the wall at Pentonville Prison,  breaking both his legs in the process and yet still getting away. Fraser gives scant details, but somehow, in 1958, Jones managed to climb onto the prison roof and, in scaling down the sheer face of the outside wall, smashed one kneecap, then fell and broke his ankle. Nevertheless, he continued, scaled another wall, and broke the other leg when he jumped.

“Still he persisted, crawling into a block of flats and making his way onto a roof, where he fell headlong through a skylight as he tried to prise it open. When he regained consciousness he made his way out of the building, pulled himself along using the railings on the Caledonian Road, crawled across the road to King’s Cross station, over the railway lines and into someone’s garden. Eventually he decided to seek help and attracted the attention of some young men, asking them to give him a lift “because I had had a bad fall.” They guessed who he was, but didn’t betray him. After they left him at his relative’s flat, his wife arrived and arranged for him to stay elsewhere, where he remained for five months while recovering from his injuries. He was not recaptured for two years.”

I’d seen the Frankie Fraser book Paul picked this up from, and I’ve come across stories about Ray in various other tomes. Peter Scott who was trained up in the art of cat burglary by Jones includes poison pen portraits of my relative in his autobiography Gentleman Thief, and there are other criminal memoirs that include tales of Ray losing large sums of money in illegal gambling dens. Typical too that a pathetic middle-class fantasist like Scott would have his account of the post-war burglary scene published; whereas Ray Jones and his long time partner-in-crime George ‘Taters’ Chatham, who between them taught Scott this trade but came from working class families, weren’t given that kind of break – and unlike their apprentice they haven’t been handsomely rewarded for appearing on ‘reality’ TV shows like Channel Four’s The Heist either.

And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!

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Posted in books, Julia Callan-Thompson, True crime | 28 Comments »