Sowerbutt's Visit

"A visit Jimmy and the lads made to the Soviet Embassy school in Hampstead in '46 or '47 was a real caper," the retired writer for the East London Pioneer, who still has the notebook from his early 1960s interview with  Sowerbutt, said. "He'd had a few run-ins with the Reds during the war.

"The school was for the kids of the Embassy staff and all the Russki businessmen who flooded over after the war. He took a peterman with him, Captain Morgan, as the government blokes asked him to check a safe there. Jimmy and Captain Morgan managed to crack the safe without explosives and they took all the papers. The lads searched the building and found an Aladdin's Cave behind the classrooms at the back. Black market stuff, ready to be shipped home. Spirits, cigarettes, tinned stuff - you name it. Tipper legged it to a nearby builder's yard and brought back a lorry. They loaded up and had disappeared by dawn.
"Jimmy got paid handsomely for the papers, the lorryload was worth a fortune and the Russkis couldn't report the theft to the stoppers, could they? They all had alibis anyway and Tipper took the lorry back to the builder and squared him."
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