On 16 July 1956 Mrs Mullins collected hundreds of cut
diamonds worth £100,000 from the London Diamond Bourse, then at 57 Hatton
Garden, as she had done every week for the past six years and got into the
chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce of her employer, Moses Wijnberg. They were taking
the diamonds to his office in Kimberley House, Holborn Viaduct where Wijnberg
traded diamonds twice a week on Monday and Wednesday. The unsold stones were
returned in the evening to the Hatton Garden
vaults.
Just after 11.00am driving along St Cross Street into the Farringdon Road, the car was stopped in traffic. Suddenly a man wearing a cap and blue dungarees opened the back door, snatched the attaché case from Mrs Mullins and ran off. The driver, Frank Baker, chased the man but slipped and fell just as he was about to tackle him. The robber jumped into a waiting black Ford Zephyr car in Clerkenwell Road and sped off. The Flying Squad soon found the car abandoned in a cul-de-sac nearby. They issued a description of the robber as 5 feet 9 inches tall and aged between 20 and 30.
Just after 11.00am driving along St Cross Street into the Farringdon Road, the car was stopped in traffic. Suddenly a man wearing a cap and blue dungarees opened the back door, snatched the attaché case from Mrs Mullins and ran off. The driver, Frank Baker, chased the man but slipped and fell just as he was about to tackle him. The robber jumped into a waiting black Ford Zephyr car in Clerkenwell Road and sped off. The Flying Squad soon found the car abandoned in a cul-de-sac nearby. They issued a description of the robber as 5 feet 9 inches tall and aged between 20 and 30.
Later in court Moses Wijnberg said that Mrs Mullins had
worked as his secretary for 40 years and Frank Charles Baker of High
Wycombe, had been his driver for over six years.
On Tuesday 17 July, acting on information, the police
searched the three-room flat of 22 year old Phyllis Betty Clark in Greencroft Gardens (no
number was given in the reports). She was described as a needlewoman who shared
the flat with one Frederick Harmsworth. On the 26 July he was arrested in his
pyjamas at 5am by 30
armed officers, while he was hiding out in a boarding house at Westcliff-on-Sea.
At the end of August, four men appeared at Bow
Street court charged with stealing the diamonds.
Frederick Joseph Harmsworth described as a bricklayer aged 30 of Greencroft Gardens; John
Morley Kelly, 37, a deck hand of Landsdown Lane Charlton; Leslie Beavis a 26
year old salesman of Church Road Acton and
William Cyril Manning an electrician aged 29 of Chichester Mews in Paddington
(now demolished). Phyllis Clark was charged with receiving the registration
book of a car, a TV, six ounces of plaster gelatine explosive and four
electrical detonators. She appears to have cooperated with the police and the
case against her was dropped.
The prosecution barrister Mr Nugent said the Ford car had
been stolen outside Park West in the Edgware Road area
in May. Manning admitted he had taken the car and fitted it with false number
plates on Harmsworth’s instructions. The finger prints of Harmsworth and Kelly
were found in the car. Kelly left the country the day after the robbery,
sailing to South Africa as a
deck hand. Detectives flew there and arrested him as he arrived in Cape
Town on the liner ‘Bloemfontein Castle’.
On 19 November 1956 the men originally charged at Bow Street appeared at the Old Bailey. The Daily Mirror revealed that the blonde girlfriend of a petty criminal known as ‘Screwie Louie’ had been jilted. To get her revenge, she went to the police and told them about Louie who was arrested for buying a suit in the West End with a stolen cheque which had been left in the stolen Zephyr car. When questioned Louie said, ‘Why are you bothering about me? You should look at the big boys like Freddy the Fly’s gang’. He said the gang worked out of a garage in Chichester Mews in Paddington. He told the police that Freddy the Fly was Frederick Harmsworth the best ‘twirler’ (skeleton key maker) in the business, who was living with his girlfriend Phyllis Clark in Greencroft Gardens.
In court DCS Sheppard said Harmsworth had 11 previous
convictions, mainly for housebreaking. Harmsworth was sentenced to 7 years for
the diamond robbery, even though the police admitted he had not planned the
raid, nor was he the man who grabbed the diamonds. John Morley Kelly who had
three previous convictions, received three years, and William Manning also got
three years for stealing the car. Leslie Beavis was bound over for being an
accessory. Passing sentence the Judge said to Harmsworth, ‘You are one of those
people who choose to be a criminal and to lead a criminal life. You prefer it
to any honest way of getting a living’. To Kelly he said, ‘I am satisfied that
you fell under the influence of Harmsworth. It was he who induced you to commit
these crimes’.
Chief Superintendent Robert Lee, head of the Flying Squad in
1954, and Detective Chief Inspector Tom Sheppard were in charge of the case. In
an amazing outburst at the Old Bailey, John Kelly shouted out, ‘There is
corruption going on in this case, I am innocent’. Kelly
said he had met a man called Amos in Brixton, who worked with criminal gangs.
Amos told him the diamonds had been sold to a fence for £65,000 and Lee and
Sheppard had each been bribed with £13,000 to keep people out of court.
The following year on 2
August 1957, Kelly’s case was raised in Parliament by his
MP Mr Price, who said that Kelly had not been driving the getaway car during
the robbery. His prints were only found on the stolen number plates which he
admitted to. Kelly’s alibi, supported by his mother, was that he was home in
Forest Gate at the time of the robbery. The MP said that the driver was a Mr
Gosling now in prison, who had made a statement exonerating Kelly. Amos had told police that the two Dunn brothers had planned the robbery. They were
arrested but then released, (we couldn’t trace the Dunns). One of the two
officers accused of receiving bribes had resigned shortly afterwards. A police press
statement said this had nothing to do with the case, rather that his wife
objected to his irregular working hours. This could have been Chief
Superintendent Robert Lee, known in the underworld as ‘one of the smartest
bogies in the business’, who announced his retirement in 1957.
In the House, Mr Simon the Joint Under Secretary of State for the Home
Office, replying to Mr Price said that Kelly’s appeal had been turned down on 11
February 1957 and that a senior police officer had
carried out an investigation of the claims made by Kelly but not found
sufficient evidence to proceed.
The press speculated that diamonds were passed to ‘Mr Big’
or ‘The Phantom’, the man who had planned the robbery. It was generally believed he was
Billy Hill, known as ‘the Boss of the Underworld’, but he always denied it. Mr
Big was not named and the diamonds never found.
After serving his seven year sentence, Freddy Harmsworth,
now a street trader living at Birchington Court in West
End Lane, was arrested in September 1963 for the theft
of £13,000 from the Sheerness Co-operative Bank.
He and Dennis James Hawkins from Clapham, had spent 18 hours over a weekend hidden in the bank, and had burned through the steel strong room door using an oxy-acetylene cutter. We were not able to find out how long Harmsworth was imprisoned for this crime.
He and Dennis James Hawkins from Clapham, had spent 18 hours over a weekend hidden in the bank, and had burned through the steel strong room door using an oxy-acetylene cutter. We were not able to find out how long Harmsworth was imprisoned for this crime.