"Not many people know that Jimmy set up his own police force," the retired writer for the East London Pioneer, who still has the notebook from his early 1960s interview with Jimmy Sowerbutt, said. "Not with uniforms or sergeants or anything. During the Blitz, he set up a security squad, headed by one of his young blokes, Missionary, to take care of any bombed out houses and keep an eye on strangers. Most of the stoppers had been called up, those remaining were the old blokes or reservists who didn't do much.
"He kept it going during the war with so many foreigners in the Smoke and then the Americans arrived."After the war, they started recruiting stoppers again. But they reckoned there were 20,000 deserters - or at least blokes who had left early - on the streets as well as all the young delinquents, kids without fathers.
"Stupid break-ins as well as assaults on women were the real problems and Jimmy wouldn't have his people touched.
"One gang tried it on in Jimmy's patch in '46. He had to put a couple of them in The River before they learnt their lesson and disappeared."
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colour-Lemon-Surrender-1940-ebook/dp/B008USR7FA
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