For criminals, 1939 to 1945 were “the golden years”, as a crime boom swept Britain, The blackout and the black market that rationing encouraged were a gift to them. Mark Ellis explains why law-breaking rose by 60 per cent during the Second World War.
I am the author of a series of crime thrillers featuring Detective Chief Inspector Frank Merlin, a Scotland Yard policeman working in World War Two London.
People often ask me why I chose WWII as the historical period for my books. I suppose the main factor in my choice was my family background. Both my Welsh parents were young adults during the war. My father joined the Navy and served abroad in places like West Africa. My mother, who was in her mid-teens when the war began, worked in the local railway offices in her home town of Llanelli.
She used to tell me fascinating tales of watching from her hilltop garden as, 12 miles away, Swansea was pounded by the Luftwaffe in the Swansea Blitz.
Among her other stories were those of journeys to London to trip the light fantastic with her friends even as the doodlebug bombs were falling. (Then as now, I believe, railway employees had a lot of free ticket perks.)
Unfortunately, while on service, my father contracted a wasting lung disease, and returned from the war a sick man. My parents got married and I was born but eventually my father succumbed to his illness.
The fact that he died when I was very young as a consequence of his wartime service meant the war loomed large in my mind as I grew up.
When, after a long career in business, I decided to try my hand at becoming an author, I decided to write historical crime fiction and when I found out in my research that there was a massive crime boom in Britain between 1939 and 1945, my choice of period was made.
Reported crime in England and Wales rose by approximately 60 per cent during the war years. People are usually very surprised to learn this. They like to think that the British criminal classes made sacrifices like everyone else and exercised restraint in their nefarious activities. This was very far from the case.
As the infamous London gangster Mad Frankie Fraser said later, the war years were golden ones. He also commented that he still found it difficult to forgive Hitler his cowardice in giving in so easily.
There were many reasons for the crime boom. First off Britain had the blackout. With all town and city streets shrouded in complete darkness at night, there was obviously more scope for robbery, theft and violent crime.
In 1942, a young British airman called Gordon Cummins took full advantage of the London blackout to murder and mutilate four young women. The press named him the Blackout Ripper. He went to the gallows.
Another development that boosted crime was the introduction of rationing. This inevitably led to a vibrant black market in which scarce goods such as meat, butter, milk, petrol, cigarettes and clothing were hawked to the general public at big markups by unscrupulous criminal gangs.
Billy Hill, one of London’s leading gangsters, regarded himself, with some justification, as King of the Black Market. He was also an extremely successful organiser of major heists and robberies both during the war and after.
The huge list of wartime regulations introduced by the authorities was another source of increased crime. Failure to observe the blackout was treated as a serious offence, as were many other wartime rule infractions. Some well-intentioned schemes introduced by the Government were open to abuse in the chaotic conditions of war.
For example, government grants were available to people who’d been bombed out of their houses. Many cases came to court where people had cheated the authorities by claiming the grants multiple times when they’d only lost the one house.
When the bombing of London and other cities was at its height, looters made hay. This wasn’t just a case of criminals scavenging in the ruins. All classes of person participated. There were over 4,000 cases of looting tried at the Old Bailey in the closing months of 1940 and convicted defendants included policemen, firemen, air wardens and army officers.
In one famous instance in 1941, during the Blitz, a popular restaurant and nightclub called the Café de Paris took a direct hit from German bombs. There were hundreds of casualties. When emergency workers arrived they found scores of well-dressed looters fighting to remove rings, necklaces and other valuables from the dead and injured.
Another crime category which boomed during the war was vice. Pimps, brothel and club owners did good business in the early days of the war but things moved to another level when American troops started arriving in 1942 after Pearl Harbor.
Soon they, along with hordes of other soldiers, British, American, Canadian, Polish and more, were crowding into London and other British cities and towns on their leave days looking for a good time.
Powerful gangsters battled to take the biggest share in the vice business. The big winners ultimately were the part-Maltese, part-Sicilian Messina Gang who, with Mayfair as their main patch, clearly established themselves as top dogs.
I have only really touched the surface of the wartime crime scene here. Suffice to say that if you’re creating a wartime crime series, you have a rich store of material to mine. I do a good deal of research for my books and that research often yields major plot ideas.
With my last book, Dead In The Water, the intense racial prejudice existing between whites and blacks in the US forces provided the inspiration for one of the book’s main storylines. In the new book, Death Of An Officer, the wartime activities of the Messina Gang mentioned above proved helpful.
So soon I’ll be plunging back into wartime London for Merlin number seven. The period will be 1944. I haven’t got any plot ideas yet but remain hopeful that when I start digging into the reality of London life in that year, something will come to me.
Death of an Officer by Mark Ellis is published on 29 May, 2025.
Read more about this book.
Mark is a former barrister and entrepreneur. Death Of An Officer is the sixth in his Frank Merlin series.
You may also be interested in these related features:
Blitz Kids: celebrating the 80th anniversary of VE Day by Duncan Barrett
Bethnal Green’s underground wartime library and
Why I started a podcast – and what I learnt (about interviewing Britain’s wartime generation) by Kate Thompson
The voices of the Second World War by Ros Taylor
“Put those Christmas lights out!” The Home Front during World War Two by Jean Fullerton
How WWI veterans saved Britain’s treasures in WWII by Caroline Shenton
From Taranto to Pearl Harbor – spies and inspiration by Alan Bardos
And, for a French perspective, The bureaux d’achats: how the Nazis bled France dry and The French Resistance: shadier than you think by Chris Lloyd
Images:
- A Railway Terminus: the platforms of St Pancras station at night by Henry Carr, 1941: IWM (Art.IWM ART LD 1947) (IWM Non-Commercial Licence)
- Caer Street, Swansea: bomb damage following the ‘Three Nights’ Blitz’ of 1941: © West Glamorgan Archive Service 2025 via Casgliad y Werin Cymru / People’s Collection Wales (non-commercial Creative Archive Licence)
- Royal Air Force serviceman Gordon F Cummins, 1940 or 1941: Wikimedia (public domain)
- People queuing at a greengrocers in High Road, Wood Green, North London: IWM (D 25035) (IWM Non-Commercial Licence)
- At Piccadilly Circus in 1940, traffic passes the boarded-up statue of Eros during The Blitz: © IWM D (000712) (IWM Non-Commercial Licence)
