Sowerbutt's Washing

"As Jimmy used to put it, he was as clean as a whistle in '49," the retired writer for the East London Pioneer, who still has the notebook from his early 1960s interview with Sowerbutt, said. "With his eye for business, he invested in launderettes which were just starting in the Smoke. Most families didn't have a washing machine in those days and many housewives were working to make ends meet. So they were a good investment. But Jimmy had an ulterior motive. Being a cash business, the laundrettes allowed him to legitimise some of his ill-gotten gains from the war. Called money-laundering these days. It meant that the turnover and taxation went right up, but the Professor, what a genius, knew how to send deductible costs sky high. It all worked out in the end and it made investing in property and so on much easier in the post-war world. Who would have thought soap powder would build a business empire?"
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