Biography
Hill was born into a London criminal family and committed his first stabbing aged fourteen. He began as a house burglar in the late 1920s, then specialized in "smash-and-grab" raids targeting furriers and jewellers in the 1930s. During World War II, he moved into the black market, specializing in foods and petrol. He also supplied forged documents for deserting servicemen and was involved in West End protection rackets with fellow gangster Jack Spot.
In the late 1940s, he was charged with burgling a warehouse and fled to South Africa. Following an arrest there for assault, he was extradited to Britain, where he was convicted for the warehouse robbery and served time in prison. This was Billy's last jail term. After his release he met Gypsy Riley, better known as Gyp Hill, who became his common-law wife.
In 1952, he planned the Eastcastle St. postal van robbery netting £287,000 (2010: £6,150,000), and in 1954 he organised a £40,000 bullion heist. No one was ever convicted for these robberies. He also ran smuggling operations from Morocco during this period.
In 1955 Hill wrote his memoir Boss of Britain's Underworld. In it he described his use of the shiv:
- I was always careful to draw my knife down on the face, never across or upwards. Always down. So that if the knife slips you don't cut an artery. After all, chivving is chivving, but cutting an artery is usually murder. Only mugs do murder.
Hill was the mentor to Ronnie and Reggie Kray, advising them in their early criminal careers and relations remained cordial throughout.
Read more about this topic: Billy Hill (gangster)
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“There never was a good biography of a good novelist. There couldnt be. He is too many people, if hes any good.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (18961940)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, memoirs to serve for a history, which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every mans life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (174095)