Peter Rachman

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Peter Rachman
Ukraine
Died29 November 1962(1962-11-29) (aged 43)
Edgware, London, England
Resting placeBushey Jewish Cemetery
NationalityPolish (1919–1946)
Stateless (1946–1962)
Occupation(s)Landlord, property developer
Spouse
Audrey O'Donnell
​
(m. 1960)​
Military career
Allegiance Poland
Service/branchPolish Armed Forces in the West
Years of service1941–1948
UnitII Corps
Battles/warsWorld War II

Perec "Peter" Rachman (16 August 1919 – 29 November 1962) was a Polish-born landlord who operated in Notting Hill, London, England in the 1950s and early 1960s. He became notorious for his exploitation of his tenants, with the word "Rachmanism" entering the Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for the exploitation and intimidation of tenants.

Early life and World War II

Rachman was born in

Britain. Rachman was demobilised in 1948 and became a British resident.[5]

Business career

Rachman began his career by working for an estate agent in

Wessex Gardens estate.[7][8]

According to his biographer, Shirley Green, Rachman moved the protected tenants into a smaller concentration of properties or bought them out to minimise the number of tenancies with statutory rent controls. Houses were also subdivided into a number of flats to increase the number of tenancies without rent controls.[9] Rachman filled the properties with recent migrants from the West Indies. Rachman's initial reputation, which he sought to promote in the media, was as someone who could help to find and provide accommodation for immigrants, but he was massively overcharging these West Indian tenants, as they did not have the same protection under the law as had the previous tenants.[10]

By 1958, he had largely moved out of slumlord-landlordism into property development, but his former henchmen, including the equally notorious Michael de Freitas (aka Michael X/Abdul Malik), who created a reputation for himself as a black-power leader and Johnny Edgecombe, who became a promoter of jazz and blues music, helped to keep him in the limelight.[11][12] A special police unit was set up to investigate Rachman in 1959 and uncovered a complex network of 33 companies he had set up to control his property empire. They also discovered Rachman was involved in prostitution, and he was prosecuted twice for brothel-keeping. At the time, he lived in Hampstead, and was using a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce.[6]

In 1960, after

Reggie approached Rachman with a business proposition. Rachman would buy properties for the Krays and they would take a percentage from the rentals as "protection". Rachman realised this was a ruse by the Krays to slowly take over his property empire and made them a counter offer, to run a central London nightclub Rachman owned. When the Krays agreed, they took over Esmeralda's Barn in Knightsbridge (now the location of the Berkeley Hotel).[13]
By giving the Krays a club, Rachman knew they had got what they wanted and they would leave him alone.

Rachman did not achieve general notoriety until after his death, when the Profumo affair of 1963 hit the headlines and it emerged that both Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davies had been his mistresses and that he had owned the mews house in Marylebone where Rice-Davies and Keeler had briefly stayed. As full details of his criminal activities were revealed, there was a call for new legislation to prevent such practices, led by Ben Parkin, MP for Paddington North, who coined the term "Rachmanism". The Rent Act 1965 gave security of tenure to tenants in privately rented properties.

In Popular Culture

In the 1989 single Sheriff Fatman by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, which rails against slum landlords and their intimidatory tactics used against tenants, mentions Rachman in the lyrics: "There's bats in the belfrey. The windows are jammed. The toilet's ain't healthy. He don't give a damn. Just chuckles and smiles. Laughs like a madman. A born again Rachman. Here comes Sheriff Fatman".

Personal life and death

Rachman was denied British citizenship. As his home city was transferred from Poland to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (part of the Soviet Union) in February 1946, he became stateless.[14]

Rachman married his long-standing girlfriend Audrey O'Donnell[15] in March 1960 but remained a compulsive womaniser, maintaining Mandy Rice-Davies as his mistress at 1 Bryanston Mews West, W1,[16][10] where he had previously briefly installed Christine Keeler.[17] After suffering two heart attacks, Peter Rachman died in Edgware General Hospital on 29 November 1962, aged 43. He was buried at the Bushey Jewish Cemetery in Bushey, Hertfordshire.[18]

References

Citations

  1. ^ UK, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878–1960
  2. ^ Shirley Green Rachman, 1979, London: Michael Joseph, p. 7.
  3. ^ Green, Rachman, p. 9.
  4. ^ Green, Rachman, pp. 10–12.
  5. ^ Green, Rachman, pp. 12–19.
  6. ^ a b "Peter Rachman". Virtual Museum: Famous/infamous residents. Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Retrieved 2 October 2016.
  7. ^ British History Online – Paddington & Westbourne Green
  8. ^ Flickr photo-set illustrating aftermath of Rachmanism in Westbourne Park area of London
  9. ^ Green, Rachman, pp. 56–69.
  10. ^ a b "Landlord Rachman gets rich on racial tension". The Sunday Times. 7 July 1963. Retrieved 30 January 2020.
  11. ^ Getting it Straight in Notting Hill Gate, Tom Vague, 2007
  12. ^ "Notting Hill History Timeline,6: in the Ghetto, early 1950s" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 August 2008. Retrieved 28 January 2008.
  13. ^ "History". the Berkeley Hotel. Retrieved 4 December 2012.
  14. ^ Green (1979), Rachman.
  15. ISBN 978-1-62517-202-0
    . Retrieved 1 February 2020.
  16. ISBN 978-0-7181-9203-7
    . Retrieved 31 January 2020.
  17. ^ Baker, Rob (28 August 2019). "Sex, spies and Nazi waxworks – the fascinating history of Marylebone". The Telegraph. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
  18. ^ Green, Rachman, pp. 232–33.
Look up Rachmanism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Bibliography

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