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leather. After each lash, the prison doctor would check the prisoner’s heartbeat. The ‘Cat’ would strip the skin from a man’s back. On top of the beating, flogging, solitary, bread and water and loss of wages, Chirpy lost remission time, increasing the length of his sentence.
    The experience of prison hardens a man, providing justification for the crimes he is going to commit.

5
CLIMBING THE CRIMINAL LADDER
    I was moved to Pentonville to finish my sentence. By the time I was released, 1948 had given way to 1949, and winter had given way to summer. It was on a bright sunny morning that I walked away from north London’s notorious debtors’ prison. I was a free man again. There were a number of vehicles parked in the street outside the gates. One was a black taxi cab. I passed by without giving it a second thought, for the moment all I wanted to experience was the sense of freedom. As I passed the cab, the back door was thrown open and a voice that I recognised called me: ‘Morning Roy, want a lift?’. The voice belonged to Johnny Collins. We drove to Billingsgate market where the pubs were open early to cater for the market traders. We had some drinks, then went for a large cooked breakfast. From there we booked into the Great Eastern Hotel in Paddington. In the hotel room, I took offthe clothes that I had worn as I walked away from the prison, and threw them away. This was a ritual I would observe after every sentence. After luxuriating in a hot bath to wash away the prison stench, Johnny told me of his plan. For professional villains, smash-and-grab raids on jewellers were becoming fashionable. Our smash-and-grab team would consist of three men. The ‘driver’, Dave Perry – a man who could do almost anything with a car; the ‘smasher’, Collins himself, whose job was to break the large plate-glass windows, without injuring us with falling glass or knocking the jewellery pads out of reach; and the ‘grabber’, someone with a knowledge of jewellery who could select what should be taken and take it. I was to be the final man in Collins’ team. I was climbing the criminal ladder.
    The first jewellery shop to have their window display rearranged by Messrs Collins, Hall and Perry was the London Goldsmith Co. on Cricklewood Broadway. Dave Perry parked the car, engine running, level with the window. We had already decided earlier in the day what we were going to take. Johnny claw hammered the window at all the right points and the shattering pieces of glass dropped well away from the pads I wanted. The evening pedestrians just stood and stared, as if watching a scene from a gangster movie.
    Johnny, hammer in hand, kept a watchful eye on the staring public. Remaining calm and focused, I lifted the pads of jewellery that we wanted and dropped them into a small bag, then we both stepped back into the car. Perry, engine at full throttle, sped off into the Londonnight. Sitting alone in the back seat, I took the jewels out of the display pads and wrapped them in handkerchiefs. Perry, having taken a series of turns in back streets, dropped me off at a designated point. From there I would either take a tube or pick up a waiting vehicle. There was a publican at the Raven in the City of London who acted as our fence. I went directly to him and upstairs away from nosey drinkers, we did our business. The jewels became money and the money was split three ways. Over the next two years, jewellers all over the city and suburbs would be visited by us. The three of us lived the high life – we worked when we wanted and we spent as much as we wanted.
    We had separate social lives – Dave lived in Paddington and was a family man; Johnny, whose family all lived around the Cable street area of the East End was a home boy, spending his time at the dog tracks, gambling houses and pubs of the East End. My tastes were a touch more cultured – Turkish baths in the city, first-class hotel bars, theatres and museums. I lived