Crime

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On the Mersey Beat - policing Liverpool between the wars
Mike Brogden
Oxford University Press 1st 1991

On the Mersey Beat tells the story of police life in one of Britain's great cities before the Second World War. This is the story of the policemen (for there were no policewomen) who policed Liverpool between the wars. Related in their own words it tells of working conditions which, judged even by standards of the day, were appalling, of a hostile public wary of police officers and of dictatorial police chiefs willing to go to extreme lengths to keep the streets of Liverpool free of `undesirables'.
Using the oral testimony of survivors from this period On the Mersey Beat brings to life the often mundane, yet occasionally dangerous life of the 'beat policeman'. Tales of relations with bookies and prostitutes, the pettiness of CID work, and the all-important relationship of the police with industrial workers and ethnic minorities are recounted by the men, often ill-trained and ill-prepared, whose task it was to police the streets of Liverpool.
This is the compelling, dramatic, and often moving story of the men who walked `The Mersey Beat'.

8vo. Short crease and a small tear to the dustwrapper, otherwise the book is in Fine condition in a VG++ wrapper. 465 gms £90.00

London's Underworld
Henry Mayhew, edited by PeterQuennell
Bracken Books rep 1987

In 1862, eleven years after the publication of Henry Mayhew's gigantic survey of conditions among the London proletariat, London Labour and the London Poor, a fourth volume was added to the series.

Previously Mayhew had concerned himself with those who were prepared to work, provided employment could be found, or whose means of livelihood, though often haphazard or bohemian, were not definitely outside the law. In this new volume, however, he and his collaborators described the lawless — thieves, beggars, prostitutes, swindlers—the outcasts of society, who supported themselves by preying upon the vice or credulity of their more prosperous neighbours.
The result was a remarkably vivid picture of an aspect of Victorian life that few other writers of the age had dared to examine: the teeming underworld of 19th century London, whose headquarters were established a few yards from what is today Piccadilly Circus.

As the Observer wrote when reviewing this selection: `Mayhew was a Victorian Defoe. He had Defoe's curiosity, his eye for detail, even, under the Victorian strait-jacket, the artists's fascinated interest in violence and horror.' Certainly the book is a mine of odd and intriguing information, throwing valuable sidelights on the feelings of guilt and state of moral tension that underlay the apparent sanctimoniousness of so much Victorianliterature

Large 8vo. Fine in a VG dustwrapper. 674 gms £4.50

The English Godfather Owney Madden
Graham Nown
Ward Lock 1st 1987

Owney ‘The Killer' Madden, declared America's most dangerous public enemy, was one of the most influential godfathers of organized crime this century.
Born in Leeds in 1891, he emigrated to America with his family at the age of eleven, although he never completely lost his Lancashire accent. His family settled in one of the most notorious areas of New York, 'Hell's Kitchen' ,where Owney was drawn into a life of petty crime and gang violence.
By the 1920s and 30s, Madden, the Duke of the West Side, ran New York. He was the owner of the Cotton Club, a place synonymous with the jazz era, and his rich and famous companions included George Raft, his best friend, and Mae West. During the dry years of the Prohibition he ran a chain of speakeasies, selling bootlegged beer and smuggled alcohol, and in this corrupt city he found little opposition from the police, the judges and the politicians, many of whom were on his payroll. Then in 1933, at the height of his notoriety, Madden agreed to be exiled to Hot Springs, Arkansas to avoid prosecution, in a million dollar deal that was so secret it could never be officially recorded.
In Hot Springs, Owney settled down into a life of quiet respectability. He married the postmaster's daughter, Agnes Demby and joined the local Chamber of Commerce. He was, however, constantly shadowed by FBI agents, who failed to pin anything on him in spite of the fact that he remained a supremely powerful underworld figure until the day he died in 1964.
The author, Graham Nown, has spent over four years researching his subject, travelling a total of 10,000 miles to interview Madden's widow, friends and former business associates. By studying Madden's voluminous FBI file, searching through government archives and dusty newspaper libraries, and persuading Agnes Madden to allow him access to her private collection of letters, diaries and photographs never before revealed, he has pieced together this thrilling account of Owney Madden's life.

8vo. Tanning to pages; very, very slight creasing to the head of the dustwrapper spine, otherwise Fine in a Fine wrapper. 520 gms £45.00

Inside Outside - The Story of a Prison Governor
Alastair Miller
Queensgate Press 1st 1976

ALASTAIR MILLER joined the Prison Service in 1945, as an officer at an Approved School. By 1953 he was Governor of Dover Prison, and then went on to become Governor of
Winchester, Hindley, Parkhurst and Pentonville Prisons.
INSIDE OUTSIDE is a personal account of Alastair Miller's experiences within the Prison Service, and the problems facing a Governor at some of Britain's Top-Security prisons. He describes for the first time in detail the tensions that brought about the dangerous riots at Parkhurst Prison in 1969
Mr Miller also describes the many radical and controversial changes he introduced into the Prison Service, and his views on how men should be treated whilst in prison.
This book gives the reader a rare insight into the day-to-day workings of prison life and what it is really like for the prisoners and staff behind prison walls.
ALASTAIR MILLER also tells about the time he spent as Director of the Old Charing Cross Hospital, run by the St. Mungo Community for Dossers in London: he describes a very different life, dealing with and caring for the unwanted men of London. The same
compassion and concern for the well-being of others shine through this final chapter, as they do throughout this story of deep knowledge and understanding of the problems facing men under stress and disillusionment.
This autobiography is full of many very funny stories, and will provide fascinating and highly entertaining reading.

8vo. Creasing to half-title page, otherwise the book is in VG++ condition in a VG++ wrapper. 454 gms £4.50

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
John Berendt
Random House 1st 1994

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty, early morning hours of May. 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defence? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. John Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and witty narrative reads like a thoroughly engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of nonfiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.
It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery of remarkable characters: the well-bred society ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club; the turbulent young redneck gigolo; the hapless recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful it could kill every man, woman, and child in Savannah; the aging and profane Southern belle who is the "soul of pampered self-absorption"; the uproariously funny black drag queen; the acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer; the sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist; young blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante ball; and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works her magic in the graveyard at midnight. These and other Savannahians act as a Greek chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances, hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town where everyone knows everyone else.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story is a sublime and seductive reading experience. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written, this enormously engaging portrait of a most beguiling Southern city is certain to become a modern classic.

8vo. Signed by author. Fine in a Fine wrapper. 634 gms £60.00

The Queen's Peace - the origins and development of the Metropolitan Police 1829-1979
David Ascoli
Hamish Hamilton 1st 1979

Introducing his Metropolitan Police Bill in the Commons on 15 April 1829 Sir Robert Peel had this to say: `It is the duty of Parliament to afford to the inhabitants of the Metropolis and its vicinity the full and complete protection of the law and take prompt and decisive measures to check the increase of crime.' One hundred and fifty years later, in a society increasingly contemptuous of law and careless of order, those words have lost nothing of their force and urgency.

The 1829 Act which created the Metropolitan Police was the culmination of generations of near-anarchy and of the efforts of a handful of dedicated reformers across a hundred years to bring order out of chaos. Peel's `New Police' was the physical expression of one man's vision. Its survival, balanced precariously on the tight-rope of public opinion, was due to the patience and determination of its first Joint Commissioners, Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, to whom history has been less than extravagant in its praise. There have been times when a visitor from another planet might have thought that the prevention and detection of crime are impertinent invasions of civil liberty. There have been occasions when the behaviour of some police officers might have justified the belief that if liberty is sacrosanct, licence is more profitable. Yet over a century and a half the Metropolitan Police has survived often indifferent leadership, political animosity, and derisory rewards. It is a proud achievement.

The Queen's Peace, which Sir Robert Mark has described as `a quite exceptional tour de force', traces the history of the Metropolitan Police from its origins in the mediaeval partnership of justices and constables, through the long years of struggle for public acceptance, down to the disorderly climate of our time. Brilliantly researched, it is a unique study of a unique institution, critical, funny, often disturbing, always readable. David Ascoli has been given complete freedom to go where he wished and talk to police officers of every rank and shade of experience. The result is a remarkable book which invites debate and illuminates the unchanging problem of the maintenance of law and order in a complex democratic society.

8vo. Signed by author on title page, minor bumps to the boards, very minor creasing to the dustwrapper, otherwise the book is in VG++ condition in a VG+ wrapper. 604 gms £12.00