I was born on 13th of December 1923. I hate the 13th; I've been nicked so many times on the 13th. My mother and father were two honest, hardworking people so there's no excuses for me there.

In the area where I grew up and was brought up, right where the Festival Hall is now, on the docks, people were tough and rough and ready. Every other family was into crime. You had more chance of winning the Lottery than finding six straight families. So it was inevitable that I would fall into crime.

My Mother  

From Left: Me, my sister Kathleen, my mother
my sister Eva and my brother Jimmy

There were five of us, three older sisters and an older brother. My sister Eva and me was the only two thieves in the family and we was thieves from being kids.

 And we'd go home and say to Mum, look we found £2. She was so naive my mum, by the way she was born in Ireland, her father was Norwegian and her mother Irish, from Cork. My father was born in Canada and his father was Canadian, his mother was a red Indian. He ran away to sea at 10 years of age, if he be alive today he'd be 117, 118.

 So when he ran away to sea almost a hundred years ago, that'd be nothing unusual in them days. He joined the American Navy at 16; seven years there then back to the Merchant Navy. He came over in the 1st World War on a convoy of food, met my mother, fell in love and married. He went back to sea but time I was born he had to turn it in.

But me and my sister were the two villains, we'd go home to mum and say "we just found £2. She obviously thought, like all the Irish in them days, that the streets of London really were paved with gold.

She'd go "Ooh my god, what lovely children I've got". We must have found more money than any children alive and she believed us. We were good little thieves. But she would never tell my dad; he was so honest he would march us down the police station and say, "my children have just found £2 could you find out who lost it?" "All right sir, give us your name" and all that. If he'd have done that and you got outside the police station and said "are you mad, them police will share it out amongst themselves" he'd have given you a clip round the ear even for suggesting it, when £2 by the way over 60 years ago was a lot of money. A man went to work for a week happy to get £2.

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