Billy Hill (gangster)

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William Charles "Billy" Hill (13 December 1911 – 1 January 1984) was an English criminal, linked to smuggling,

I was always careful to draw my knife down on the face, never across or upwards. Always down. So that if the knife slips you don't cut an artery. After all, chivving is chivving, but cutting an artery is usually murder. Only mugs do murder.[9]

Hill was mentor to twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, advising them in their early criminal careers.^[10]

Phone tapping

In late 1956 Home Secretary

The Bar Council approached the police and requested the tapes to provide evidence for an investigation into the professional conduct of Hill's barrister, Patrick Marrinan. Sir Frank Newsam, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, allowed them access.^[13] When this use of tapping powers was revealed to Parliament in June 1957, Leader of the Opposition Hugh Gaitskell demanded a full explanation. Rab Butler pledged that it would not be a precedent and that he would consider withdrawing the evidence and asking the Bar Council to disregard it.^[14]

Marrinan was subsequently disbarred and expelled by

In the 1960s Hill was busy fleecing aristocrats at card tables. In Douglas Thompson's book The Hustlers and the documentary on Channel 4, The Real Casino Royale, the club's former financial director John Burke and Hill's associate Bobby McKew, claimed that John Aspinall worked with Hill to cheat the players at the Clermont Club.^[17] Some of the wealthiest people in Britain were swindled out of millions of pounds, thanks to a gambling con known as "the Big Edge".^[18]

The club's former financial director John Burke quit in late 1965, a year into the scam.[18] He had been tipped off about an investigation but Aspinall was determined to carry on.^{[citation needed]} Aspinall no longer had someone to deal with "the dirty end" of the operation. After two years' operation the Big Edge was closed. Hill respected Aspinall's decision, and the partnership dissolved.^{[citation needed]}

Later life

Hill was also involved in property development. He bought the biggest nightclub in Tangier, Churchills, for his wife, Gypsy, who ran it from 1966 until the mid-1970s.^{[citation needed]}

Billy Hill died on 1 January 1984, aged 72.^[19]

Other

In 1963, Mickey Spillane was playing Mike Hammer in The Girl Hunters in London where he met Hill and showed him around the set. When the prop department could not find Spillane a real M1911 pistol, Hill brought the producers several real pistols to use in the film.^[20]

Hill's only child, Justin, republished his father's memoirs in December 2008 with a modern introduction and previously unpublished photographs.^[21]

Hill is a major character in the 2019 film Once Upon A Time In London.^[22]

References