James Daly is one of the many curious underworld figures who knew my mother Julia Callan-Thompson. It seems my mother first came across Daly when they were both scoring smack at 75a Cambridge Gardens in the early 1970s. The gear sold at this address was supplied by a former jockey of Australian extraction called Larry Benns. He’s been described to me as a hot tempered man suffering from low self-esteem who excelled at pissing off his girlfriends. The scene at 75a was intense, a number of addicts seem to have overdosed there including, it is said, one of Brenda Grevelle’s boyfriends. Benns apparently went on the run while on bail facing drug charges; he is rumoured to have returned to Australia where he died.
Turning our attention to Jim Daly, he was a blonde-haired small-time thief from an Irish family who’d take stolen goods to 75a Cambridge Gardens and exchange them for drugs. The absurd nature of Daly’s criminal life is evident from an escapade in which he played a peripheral role that garnered coverage in The Times under headings such as ‘Man On Firearm Charge’ (5 February 1973), ‘Escape Plot Alleged’ (6 February 1973), ‘Shotgun Court Breaks Up In Disorder’ (6 April 1973) and ‘Escape Bid Was Based On Black Power Type Plot’ (12 June 1973). The gist of the story is that while on remand in Brixton Prison, Daly then aged 24 met a 38 year-old American consultant engineer called Nathan Greenberg who was facing a fire-arms charge and wanted to make an escape bid. With others they cooked up a plan inspired by the antics of the Black Panthers in California, whereby Greenberg’s 19 year-old German girlfriend Erika Pijanka would smuggle guns into the West London Magistrates’ Court during his next hearing and use them to free him.
Thus on 1 February 1973 Pijanka entered the public gallery of the court, pointed a sawn-off shotgun at the magistrate and screamed: “All right, stay where you are!” As a cop wrestled Pijanka to the ground, a single shot went off. The escape bid was foiled without loss of life or serious injury. Greenberg eventually got a seven year sentence for his fire arms offences, and nine months to run concurrently for contempt of court. William White, the man who Daly had allegedly placed Greenberg and Pijanka in touch with to supply the guns for the escape bid, was found not guilty of furnishing the weapons. Daly got an eighteen month suspended sentence for his role in the plot.
Daly evidently spent a lot of time in jail in the 1970s and my mother visited him at least once while he was banged up. Among her extant papers is a letter dated 23 October 1975 on Blenheim Project headed paper and addressed to the “The Officer on the Gate, H. M. Prison, Wormwood Scrubs, Du Cane Road, W6”:
Re: James Daly.
Miss Julia Callan-Thompson is a bona fide Social Worker at the above named Blenheim Project and is the bearer of this letter.
A visit had been arranged for Miss Druecilla Verney, also of the Blenheim Project, to visit the above named at 4.00 this 23rd day of October, and we hope that it will be possible for Miss Callan-Thompson to accompany Miss Verney on this visit. Miss Callan-Thompson is also a member of the S.C.O.D.A. working team.
Yours faithfully,
Kathrine Parker,
Social Worker
The Blenheim Project.
If my mother was ‘a bona fide Social Worker” at the Blenheim Project, this was due to a touch of fraud on her part. I have a copy of a job application she made to the Blehheim Project in the summer of 1975 on which she falsely claimed she attended University College London and gained an upper 2nd philosophy B.A. Hons. in 1963 and an MPhil 1966. In fact, my mother left school at the age of 16 in 1960, and during the period she told the Blenheim Project she’d studied at UCL, she’d been far more gainfully employed as a showgirl and hostess at Murray’s Cabaret Club and Churchill’s in the west end of London. Despite her job as ‘a bona fide Social Worker’ providing my mother with an excellent front when visiting jailed friends, she didn’t like the nine-to-five regime that went with it and soon jacked it in.
As for Jim Daly, I’ve no idea what happened to him. Blog comments from anyone with information about him would be appreciated. I don’t know whether or not William White was a part of the well-known London crime family of that name, it seems possible but is certainly not proven right now; one of Alf White’s sons, known to friends and family as Billy, went by this name.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Comments
Comment by George Dixon on 2009-06-16 11:02:47 +0000
‘Allo, ‘allo, ‘allo, wot’s goin’ on ‘ere then?
Comment by Billy Hill on 2009-06-16 12:14:08 +0000
I’d tell you a thing or three about the Whites if I could, but I can’t coz I’m dead.
Comment by Freddie Foreman on 2009-06-16 12:46:33 +0000
Brown bread.
Comment by Jack Spot on 2009-06-16 13:54:05 +0000
Leave it out, we don’t want brown bread, we want a dozen egg bagels!
Comment by Babs Payton on 2009-06-16 14:21:46 +0000
Covered in poppyseeds.; no I’m not ashamed of my bagel fetish.
Comment by Jim Daly on 2009-06-16 14:27:21 +0000
HA!
Comment by West London Police on 2009-06-16 14:40:03 +0000
You’re nicked, Jim ‘Poppyseed Bagel Fingers’ Daly
Comment by Scotch Alex on 2009-06-16 14:45:54 +0000
Its police oppression if you ask me! And only a criminally insane capitalist society would make skag illegal in the first place!
Comment by Col. Blimp on 2009-06-16 15:11:31 +0000
Yes met that Trocchi character, nice chap, nice chap, but always complaining that he was having to investigate pornographic practice in order to make his literature sell in our capitalist society – just as bad back then. He told me that the illegality of skag was not a problem, quite the tolerated thing, as long as you kept it to the artworld or aristo. circles!
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-16 21:15:22 +0000
HA Ha!!!
Comment by On The Run In Tumbridge Wells on 2009-06-16 22:22:41 +0000
They’ll try and do you for anything especially if you’ve got political views they don’t like!
Comment by Charles Jolly on 2009-06-17 00:28:52 +0000
Oh and you thought I was Maurice Joly who wrote “Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu”! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dialogue_in_Hell_Between_Machiavelli_and_Montesquieu
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-17 08:26:01 +0000
The Ha-ha by Harold Pinter
Ha, ha-ha, ha-ha!
Ha…
ha
Oh?
Ha!
all rights reserved
Comment by Noel Coward on 2009-06-17 09:17:11 +0000
Going to jail does not form a part of travelling through life first class.
Comment by Capability Brown on 2009-06-17 10:24:20 +0000
The Ha-ha was designed not to interrupt the view and to be invisible until seen from close by. This might be employed as a useful ideological trope in the fight against capitalism: ‘Ha-ha, you didn’t see that coming’ etc.
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-17 10:27:28 +0000
On the run – and what have they tried to do you for? Ah, radicals and their fantasies…
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-17 10:35:59 +0000
Oh Harold how we laughed, and then, then we cried quite a bit.
Comment by Jeff Nuttall on 2009-06-17 10:37:41 +0000
Ode to Pinter
boo
hoo
you are gone
like me
dead
boo
hoo
All Rights Unreserved
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-17 11:56:46 +0000
you’re just jealous of my poetic mastery, face it.
(Ha-Ha-ha-ha-ha!)
To Nuttall (by Harold Pinter)
Nuttall, nuts, ha-ha-ha
Nutty, nuttal, nuts, he-he
Nuts!
HA!
All Rights Reserved and Booked
Comment by Jeff Nuttall on 2009-06-17 12:19:19 +0000
Well at least my concrete wordsmithery is pure [if completely unknown] and I didn’t sell out and marry Lady Antonia Hack-It -Out. Granted I was forced into the position of taking minor parts on ‘On Creatures Great and Small’ but I would happlily have freedom and my hand up a cow rather than buy into your brand of ‘poetic mastery’!
Yes, you’re right, I am jealous – go on get it out and I will suck.
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-17 12:22:57 +0000
I’ve got Joan W. to do it instead of you, ta
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-17 12:41:43 +0000
Yeah, keep yer hands off Nutty
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-17 12:59:53 +0000
oh baby Joan, you’re the one!
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-17 13:02:04 +0000
if only
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-17 13:13:02 +0000
but also
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-17 13:20:01 +0000
so what
Comment by Harold Pinter on 2009-06-17 13:29:03 +0000
it’s time Trippy posted a new blog. I need inspiration for my new poetic masterpiece
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-17 13:42:43 +0000
arts council and art fascism
the hermenutics of pinter’s dyslexia
how to write novels in the style of pinter
swine flu – scaring the masses
how to deal with sexual tension in the workplace
sex and drugs
drugs and sex
4th plinth and patterns of regulated protest as containment
why did everyone ignore schutte’s 4th plinth after the opening party
apathy art protest on 27th june in traf. sq.
nah, sorry, will have a cuppa and think on
joany xx
Comment by Grammar Nazi on 2009-06-17 15:06:30 +0000
hermeneutics
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-17 17:39:38 +0000
what’s my punishment then?
Comment by Amy Wellsme-Smith on 2009-06-17 17:41:12 +0000
wok a dit? wo da doke?
Comment by Grammar Nazi on 2009-06-17 18:00:44 +0000
100 lines of “hermeneutics hydraulics pharmaceuticals” and no treats from Harold Pinter for a while
Comment by Joan Webster on 2009-06-17 19:31:53 +0000
but that is one of my usual treats from Harold! i obey.