Darby Sabini Emperor Of The Racetrack THE race gang war between the Brummagem Boys and the Sabini gang raged for more than two years before the authorities took serious notice, and it was another two years before they were provoked into meaningful action. The Jockey Club, as slow as a tortoise, stirred at its own pace. At the end of 1922, Sir Samuel Scott, the senior steward, suggested a conference with senior police officers following complaints respecting the increase of ruffianism in the rings at race meetings. While the Jockey Club stewards, chief constables and Home Office officials pondered, the ruffians continued their ruffianly conduct. Following the 1923 Derby, Darby and Harry Sabini appeared at Epsom Police Court charged with assaulting Maurice Fireman, alias Jack Levene, during a pitch dispute on the Downs. Darby had allegedly hit Fireman with a knuckleduster, while Harry threatened to take Firemans eye out with a knife. There was some evidence that Fireman was the aggressor, and the case was dismissed. By then, the Sabini gang had almost won the battle for southern supremacy, and settled into a lucrative routine of overcharging racecourse bookmakers for a peaceful pitch, lists of runners and other tools of the trade. Detective chief superintendent Edward Greeno later recalled: The obliging man with the large bucket and small sponge who ran up the lines wiping out the odds on the bookmakers boards between races was not doing it for love. It cost half a crown a time, and it was no use the bookmaker trying to save his half crown by doing it himself. Nor was it any good saying he had brought enough chalk for the day he had to buy chalk from the man who offered it. For every race the bookmaker needed a printed list of runners. They were printed by a Mr Edward Emmanuel for maybe a farthing apiece. To the bookies they were half a crown a set. Sometimes a bookmaker with a mistaken idea of independence refused to pay, and there are still a few around with razor-scarred faces to show how foolhardy they were. One anonymous correspondent, writing in 1923, informed the Home Office that Emmanuel was still financing the Sabinis, was still often seen in the company of friendly police officers, and that nine racing men out of every ten live in absolute terror of them. There is no doubt that some, perhaps many, police were in the pay of the Sabinis, and gang leaders who controlled teams of violent thugs were sometimes referred to in surprisingly complimentary terms, even by senior officers. Former chief inspector Tom Divall, writing in 1929, described Billy Kimber, the leader of the Birmingham gang, as one of the best and some of his gang as really good fellows. In Divalls eyes, the fact that Kimber and George Sage refused to give evidence after they had been shot by members of the Sabini gang showed what generous and brave fellows Sage and Kimber were. Many years later, in 1940, former detective superintendent F Taylor, when asked for information on Darby Sabini, who Taylor claimed to have known for 20 years, confined himself to observing: His livelihood has always been among the racing world. To me, Sabini appeared straightforward and one who would go a long way to prevent trouble. Although it was true that Sabini preferred persuasion to violence, it was a remarkably indulgent assessment of the leader of a gang that owed its success to physical intimidation, a gang made up of violent crooks and villains. Even Walter Beresford, president of the Racecourse Bookmakers and Backers Protection Association, once described Sabini as a prince of a fellow after Darby had escorted him to Doncaster for the St Leger meeting, in defiance of a warning from Kimber that southern bookmakers should stay away. The authorities intervene to break up the gangs During 1924 and 1925, on the racecourse and off it, a variety of gangs engaged in what the press depicted, often exaggerating wildly, as full-scale battles, until the government and Jockey Club finally responded. In 1925, Sir William Joynson Hicks, the Home Secretary, declared: It is a state of affairs that cannot be tolerated, and pledged to break up the gangs. Under chief inspector Nutty Sharpe, the Flying Squad began to target potentially troublesome race meetings, while the Jockey Club appointed a team of about 60 ring inspectors, mainly retired police officers, to patrol the courses. The regionally based Bookmakers Protection Associations, which would unite to form the National Bookmakers Protection Association in 1932, set up pitch committees to make pitch allocation fairer, and racecourse officials became involved in pitch administration. Some of the rules that later acted as an obstacle to modernisation, including a prohibition on the buying and selling of pitches, were designed partly to protect the ring from criminal gangs. They were only partially successful. In 1926, Darby Sabini denied a suggestion that he made pounds 20,000 to pounds 30,000 a year on racecourses, but two years later an anonymous Londoner informed the Home Secretary that: Upon the racecourse, the Sabini gang reign supreme. The police never interfere with them. It is foolish to cry God save the King -one is safer if one shouts God save the Emperor, Darby Sabini, a far more powerful monarch. In 1929, Nutty Sharpe, commenting on two recent assaults, observed: Assaults of this kind by desperate racecourse-frequenting criminals are not infrequent, but police have the greatest possible difficulty in obtaining evidence. Persons who obtain their living on racecourses shrink in fear from the thought of attending courts of justice to give evidence. As if to confirm Sharpes assertion, when Darby Sabini appeared in court at Brighton later that year, charged with assaulting David Isaacs, a bookmaker, following a dispute at Hove greyhound stadium, there was the usual distinct shortage of witnesses. Asked for an explanation, Isaacs replied: How can I get witnesses against a man like this, when everyone goes in fear of their life of him? Sabini was fined pounds 5. The Sabini gang changes its focus of operations Darby had moved to Brighton in about 1926, while his brothers remained in London, although Harry Sabini later moved from Clerkenwell to a palatially furnished house in Highbury. Brighton was a popular home for criminals, and the racetrack, like Epsom, was difficult to police because it was not fully enclosed. With their racecourse operations increasingly curtailed by police and Jockey Club action, the Sabini brothers turned their attention to West End clubs and greyhound tracks. Fred, the eldest brother, operated a pitch at Harringay and the White City, trading under the name of Bob Wilson Charles worked with Joseph Levy, supplying lists of runners at the West Ham greyhound stadium Joseph stood as Harry Lake, at Harringay, while George supplied tissue prices at Harringay and the White City. The police regarded Charless and Georges businesses as rackets. Alfred Solomon, a former Sabini associate who had once shot Billy Kimber and killed Barnett Blitz, was also active. A 1930 police report suggested that he was now the leader of a gang that demanded money from bookmakers at greyhound tracks. When the track manager at Clapton threw Solomon out, the manager was later attacked by Solomons men. As the 1930s progressed, blatant intimidation of racecourse bookmakers became rare, and Darby Sabini, reaching his fifties, reduced his involvement. This left the way open for Alfred White, his former lieutenant, who was also active at point to point meetings, to challenge the Sabinis control. The fracas at Lewes in 1936 reflected the changing location of power, and whatever control Darby Sabini retained ended when Italy joined the war on Germanys side in 1940. Darby and Harry Sabini, together with many other British citizens with Italian ancestors, were both interned as persons of hostile origin. Darby, who was living in Hove under the name of Fred Handley Handley being his mothers maiden name was arrested at the greyhound stadium. Local inquiries about him produced a range of responses. Hoves chief constable reported that he knew Sabini as Fred, that he stood as a bookmaker at Hove dog meetings, collected money from racecourse bookmakers in return for protection and racecards, and that Sabini and his brother Harry are persons who were at one time feared among the lower type of bookmakers on horse and dog racing tracks. Detective inspector E Greens was more outspoken. He is a drunkard and a man of most violent temperament, Greens wrote, with a heavy following and strong command of bullies of Italian origin and other undesirables. A dangerous gangster and a racketeer of the worst type. Darby appealed against his internment and, during his examination in December 1940, testified: It is like going to church today, on a racecourse. All that rough business is finished. For the previous three years he had been standing as a bookmaker under the name of Dan Cope, and also worked for the Bookmakers Protection Association, selling lists of horses on a commission basis. During a court appearance in 1929, Sabini had described himself as a printers agent and, in a statement he made shortly after his internment, he said that he worked as the representative of a printing company. The company was the Portsea Press, whose proprietor was Edward Smith, alias Edward Emmanuel, the Jewish Al Capone reputed to have controlled the Sabini gang in its early days, now producing lists of runners and betting tickets for sale to bookmakers. Emmanuel and Darby Sabini were still working together. Times change, and Sabinis influence wanes In February 1941, the Home Office advisory committee dealing with Sabinis appeal recommended his release. The following month, a report sent to the Home Secretary by the Brighton police made it clear that they regarded Sabinis criminal activities as a thing of the past. There is little doubt, the report stated, that Sabini was the head of a race gang and considerable trouble was experienced by police with this gang, and others running in opposition on various racecourses. These gangs were finally broken up and it is safe to say that gang warfare during the past few years has been practically negligible, owing to police action, whilst the Sabini gang can rightly be said to be non existent. Sabini was apt to be violent when drunk, but this was a rare occurrence. Contrary to Greens opinion, he was not now regarded as a dangerous gangster or racketeer. Harry Sabini also appealed against his internment, and claimed to have been a professional punter since 1932, but a police report described him as dangerous and violent, and remarked: He does not appear to have been engaged in any honest work, although a fairly wealthy man, wealthy enough to embark on an ill-advised legal action in an attempt to accelerate his release. In January 1941, an application for a writ of habeas corpus was made in the High Court, on Harrys behalf, on the grounds that he may have been a victim of mistaken identity. The Lord Chief Justice, Viscount Caldecote, and two fellow judges were wholly unpersuaded. Mr Justice Humphreys considered that Sabini, who used the alias of Harry Handley, had committed deliberate perjury and deceived this court. Although the internment order was revoked that March, Harry was soon back in custody, serving a nine-month sentence for perjury. Two years later, in 1943, it was Darbys turn, when he was sent to prison for three years for receiving stolen goods. While there, he received the news that his only son, Harry, who had joined the Royal Air Force, had been killed in action in Egypt, aged 21. After the war, a new generation of London gangsters, led by Jack Spot Comer and Billy Hill, took control. They concentrated on clubs rather than racecourses, and Hill recruited several former members of the Sabini gang, including Pasquala Poppa, alias Bert Marsh, and Alberto Dimeo, alias Albert Dimes. Darby Sabini, for a while the criminal emperor of Britains southern racecourses, lived on in a small terraced house on the Old Shoreham Road in Hove. He died, barely noticed, in 1950, aged 62, his death certificate giving his occupation as turf commission agent. It was a quiet end to an explosive life.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 08:09:49 +0000
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