8) Soho Barons – W1 Retailers 1954-82
As noted, Holywell Street – a narrow, overcrowded thoroughfare running behind the Strand’s north side between the churches of St Mary Le Strand and St Clement Danes – was for about 200 years the centre of London’s Dirty Book trade, crammed with shady establishments run by many of the characters we have already met, from Curll to Cannon to Dugdale and beyond. However in 1902 a major scheme to widen the Strand saw it totally demolished and no trace of it remains today. If you stand in front of Thorneycroft’s 1905 statue of Gladstone outside St Clement Danes, and follow the direction of his disgusted gaze, you are staring directly down the obliterated street.
Soho had been associated with prostitution since the early C18th, but did not begin to gradually fill up with Dirty Bookshops until after Holywell Street was pulled down. Early (Edwardian era) retailers included Joseph Vachon and Peter Reuter with premises on Little Newport Street and Shaftesbury Avenue, Charles Hirsch on Coventry Street and our old friend Harry Nichols (later to decamp for Paris) on Soho Square. Reuter was particularly unlucky – his place superficially looked like any other second-hand bookshop, and a naive Oxford undergraduate wandered in there one day to purchase what must have seemed an unusually expensive ‘medical textbook’ for £5. Later examining this properly (and no doubt going through it several times to confirm it was as bad as he thought) the shocked student indignantly took it to show his tutor. 400 books was seized in the subsequent police raid, and Reuter was carted off to appear before County of London sessions.
By the end of WW2 there were still only about half a dozen shops (Holywell Street had boasted twenty in its prime), and these were comparatively discreet, generally with a curtained-off back room containing the hard stuff (often kept in suitcases for ease of swift removal). Lookouts were regularly hired to hang about outside and warn of approaching police (sometimes deliberately allowing themselves to be chased down the road as a distraction), while transactions were brief and to the point: the visiting punter would ask ‘Anything New?’, quickly inspect the goods, pay the quoted price (perhaps £20-£50 for imported ‘French books’) then leave. The whole thing would be over in a couple of minutes and browsing was most definitely discouraged – anyone lingering unnecessarily would be told in no uncertain terms to Pay Up or Get Out.
Three Victorian views of Holywell Street
Two early names involved soon after the War were John Hawkesford and Tom Fletcher. Hawkesford carried a near-legendary reputation for meanness, and – despite apparently cutting a notably dapper figure – was infuriated to be named ‘Rat of the Week’ in a News of the World expose. He was also the first character to employ Ron ‘the Dustman’ Davey, about whom we shall be hearing a great deal more shortly. Fletcher had a happier – indeed Bohemian – reputation, nicknamed ‘The Duke of Richmond’ for his generosity to tramps and beggars. Supposedly “the nearest thing to Errol Flynn in looks” he had shoulder-length hair – very unusual in those days – and a Gauloise permanently drooping from the corner of his mouth. He ran several shops, most famously the Long Shop on Old Compton Street (next door to the Swiss Tavern pub) and eventually retired to Aix-en-Provence where he was later killed in a car crash.
Even at this early stage. running a Dirty Bookshop involved certain overheads. In 1932 the Met had established its ‘C’ Division Clubs and Vice Unit, which from 1941 was based in the newly-opened West End Central station (on the junction of Savile Row and Boyle Street). By the early 50s, C&V had spun off into five separate squads, of which by far the best known was Obscene Publications – the so-called ‘Dirty Squad’. This was inevitably bent virtually from its inception (when it fielded a mere five officers) but really hit its stride in Jan 1965 with the arrival of Det-Sgt William ‘Wicked Bill’ Moody, who over the next decade – to quote the judge who finally imprisoned him – “organised corruption on a scale which simply beggars description”.
This part of the story is already well-documented elsewhere, so we can restrict ourselves here to a few brief observations. Once the revised 1959 Act liberalised / weakened the very law they were (poorly) paid to enforce, the Dirty Squad quickly saw their official task was quite hopeless, and pragmatically decided the best way to control pornography in Soho was to simply liaise with the pornographers themselves in operating a highly unofficial licensing system. Huge sums of money routinely changed hands to ensure stability, while the resulting ‘protection’ meant any new arrivals chasing a slice of the action had to buy their way into what had effectively become a closed shop. Control was very tight – if, for example, a window-display was judged too provocative, a discreet word in the right ear would get it toned down within the hour. Unlicensed outsiders were mercilessly raided out of business, while – conversely – show-raids on protected shops were tipped off in advance via a coded phone-call. Early pioneers of recycling, the squad then simply sold the resulting seized stock back to its original owners at very competitive Mates Rates. To state the obvious, the fact that Soho flourished so dramatically over the 60s and 70s was not despite close police supervision, it was actively because of it.
Holywell Street shortly before demolition, and a contemporary map showing its location
Three key figures really ran Soho during the period under discussion, and we can now consider each one in turn. The ‘village’ (as it is sometimes dubbed) is effectively so small they all inevitably knew each other and would nod politely in the street etc, but generally avoided socialising (outside formal police functions) and instead tended to drink in different pubs with their own crowds. The only thing they really had in common was that they were all methodically bribing the same officers.
Ronald Eric ‘John’ Mason (1917-1994) was a massively-built bear of a man with a severe Russian-style crew-cut, known (none too affectionately) to his contemporaries as ‘Big Head’. He was an occasional wine-waiter in the Connaught Rooms and later scene-shifter at The Globe Theatre from where he had been caught stealing a pair of curtains, earning the alternate nickname ‘Carpet’ (from the old Cockney term ‘Carpet Stretch’ for a three-month term of imprisonment – supposedly the length of time it took an inmate to weave a mat for his cell in the prison workshop). His wife meanwhile worked part-time as a cleaner, and in 1953 got a job with Tom Fletcher in his Long Shop on Old Compton Street. When Fletcher needed some shelves putting up, handyman John was recommended and casually hired. His patron was subsequently stunned when – mere weeks later and clearly inspired by what he’d seen – Carpet opened up in direct competition with a shop of his own (in fact Fletcher was privately convinced the Masons had been systematically pilfering his stock, but was never able to prove this).
For the next quarter of a century (until his final retirement to Spain) Mason made a fortune from porn, steadily opening up more and more shops. He was an astute businessman and devoted himself to meticulously bribing the Dirty Squad – by the time of the latter’s downfall he had (by his own reckoning) personally paid-off a total of 148 separate officers right up to the level of Commander. By 1970 he was routinely handing over a basic license-to-operate fee of £1,000 a month plus other individual payments, and on one infamous occasion was given a CID tie to wear before being taken down into the basement of Holborn station (where seized material was stored in huge quantities) to identify his own stock then later have this helpfully chauffeured back in a squad car.
By 1960 the number of Soho shops had grown to roughly a dozen (though these were still very discreet) with Mason owning about half. He had already bought himself a holiday home in Sitges, Spain, and began spending an increasing amount of time there, leaving things to be run by a handful of trusted lieutenants like Georgie Vinn. There were occasional hiccups. A new manager ‘Roy’ had been put in charge of the Long Shop, but hadn’t been fully briefed on one particularly unlikely tradition: a pair of Sister of Mercy nuns called there weekly soliciting a charitable donation, and were always given £5 from the till and a polite Good Morning. Roy, oblivious to this and assuming some sort of practical joke, told them in no uncertain terms to Fuck Off. The resulting phone call to West End Central brought the Squad careering around within minutes, and all the stock had to be seized for appearances’ sake. Roy was obliged to make himself scarce for six months, grow a beard, and turn up every week sporting a ludicrous ‘disguise’ including Oxford bags and suede boots to collect his wages.
Soho. The key Courts off Brewer & Wardour Streets are the central dotted red lines
Mason had a wide range of contacts and an apparently unquenchable thirst. His favourite tipple was Pils, and during one legendary afternoon in the De Hems pub on Macclesfield Street he and Ron Davey consumed an entire crate of 36 bottles between them, with the latter only claiming responsibility for eight. Other notable early suppliers included Ben Holloway and Charlie Short. Holloway was another hard character, an ex-merchant seaman who started out as rep for Time-Life magazine but soon discovered there was more money to be made from wholesaling porn. He formed distributor Ben’s Books of Acton, whose warehouse at 24B Crown Street W3 was one of the key addresses appearing in the ‘Importers Concerned With Indecent Or Obscene Books’ appendix of the secret 1969 Customs report already noted. Charlie Short (who later sold Mason what became his most lucrative shop at 4 Gerrard Street, so busy it boasted four separate tills) started out as a steward on the Queen Elizabeth liner sailing to and from New York. On every trip he discreetly brought back hundreds of copies of Nutrix books, bondage-themed magazines illustrated with line drawings by the likes of Bill Ward and Gene Bilbrew etc. He would buy these in bulk in Times Square for $1 each – about 5s. (ie 25p) then – and later retail them in Soho for £10. He eventually sold up and – like many of his contemporaries – retired to permanently warmer climes. Holloway in contrast ended up taking a far bolder – indeed reckless – route, as we shall see shortly.
Mason meanwhile concentrated on quietly building up his empire – by the late-60s he owned ten shops, including one as far afield as Victoria. He invested in a prestigious art gallery (Spencer S.A), bought an apartment above the Monaco Embassy on Grosvenor Street plus a house on the St George’s Hill estate in Weybridge, and joined various golf clubs including ultra-exclusive Highgate. He lunched the Dirty Squad (by this point grown to about fourteen men) monthly at the White House restaurant in Albany Street, though – being essentially a realist – was also cautiously setting himself up for a possible swift exit, establishing comfortable bolt-holes in both Spain and Guernsey. This was to prove prescient.
The Syndicate on a night out. Left to right: Bernie Silver, ‘Carol’, Rocky Marciano and Frank Mifsud in the Latin Quarter Club on Wardour Street, c.1962
The second key figure in this story is Bernie Silver (1922-2002), born into a respectable Stoke Newington Jewish family but already an aspiring Brick Lane villain by the early-50s. An ex-paratrooper with a deceptively cherubic face and impish smile, Silver – while certainly prepared to use violence when necessary – generally preferred talking his way out of trouble, and his real legacy is an acknowledged genius for organisation / negotiation. He started his West End career as a runner for the Messinas, a gang of Maltese brothers who controlled Soho prostitution until their spectacular downfall in 1955. Following their imprisonment / exile, Silver went into partnership with ‘Big’ Frank Mifsud (1926-2017), a huge 18-stone Maltese ex-traffic policeman who had arrived in England five years earlier to run an olive-oil import business. They made an unlikely pair: Silver was short and dapper with a taste for expensively-tailored suits, while Mifsud was 6 foot 5″ and permanently rumpled (his suits in contrast tended to look as though they’d been slept in). But their fearsome joint reputation mustn’t be underestimated – for two decades the so-called ‘Syndicate’ ruled Soho with a grip of iron, via a subtle mix of intimidation and calculated diplomacy.
Though the details are predictably murky, the pair’s high-profile arrival came with the murder of Tommy Smithson in June 1956. Smithson – a violent East End gangster who had been extorting protection from Maltese clubs in Soho for years – was feared and loathed in equal measure. When he was shot dead, underworld gossip was that Mifsud had supplied the gun and Silver the finance, though the gunman himself stoically went to prison without talking. By that point Bernie had already been charged and acquitted of living off immoral earnings (an eccentric judge ruled that a landlord renting flats to prostitutes was no more criminally liable than the grocer who sold them lunch), and on his release set about patiently welding together a loose alliance of disparate (and previously warring) Maltese gangsters. From headquarters on Romilly Street, and beginning with just one club (Gigi’s on Bower Street) by the late-60s The Syndicate controlled 19 of Soho’s 25 strip-joints plus numerous other illegal drinking and gambling dens, not to mention the existing network of prostitutes’ flats located in the floors above. Noting the fortune being made by Mason’s expanding dirty bookshops, from the early-60s Silver similarly began opening up his own as a lucrative sideline.
If Mason had established an impressively businesslike approach to paying bribes, Silver turned corrupting the police into a virtual art form. His strategy was to get them young – junior PCs out on the W1 beat would be sympathetically slipped a fiver and told to buy something nice for their wives or girlfriends. This friendly relationship would then be nurtured while they steadily rose through the ranks, and when they later transferred out of Soho a introduction to their replacement would be made to ensure continuity. In this way Silver bribed an entire generation of police, to the extent that the whole of West End Central eventually came to be viewed with deep mistrust by provincial officers (or ‘Swedes’ as they were contemptuously known). The ‘little firm within a firm’ not only guaranteed long-term protection, it kept Bernie and Big Frank very well-informed about anyone rash enough to think about making a complaint. It was generally known that talking to the police would simply get straight back to them, with the inevitable dire consequences.
The Syndicate’s favourite pub was the Coach and Horses on Greek Street – long and narrow, it had two entrances and plenty of mirrors so anyone walking in could be easily scrutinised. Bernie habitually drank double-scotches, though most of his crew preferred vodka and orange – the Dirty Squad stuck to gin and tonic. The Coach’s tiny toilets behind the corner of the bar were where the cash was usually handed over, neatly sellotaped inside a brown paper bag – the recipient was often so drunk he’d have difficulty stuffing this into his jacket pocket. Another regular rendezvous was Patisserie Valerie on Old Compton Street, where Bernie liked to hold court over early-morning coffee. Although accumulating an increasing fortune he spent his own money fairly discreetly, preferring to keep a low profile. One visible indulgence was a string of Rolls Royces and Jensens, but otherwise he simply liked good clothes and expensive restaurants, dividing his time between a luxury Knightsbridge penthouse and townhouse in Little Venice. He made a down-payment on a £27,000 twin-diesel yacht, and assembled an impressive property portfolio based in the Channel Islands.
However it must be admitted that he wasn’t always a particularly healthy person to know, and a string of ex-associates seem to have had an unfortunate habit of falling fatally from a height. Names here would include first wife Albertine Falzon in 1964, gofer Frank Holpert in 1973, call-girl Odette Weston in 1975 and brothel manager Irene Micallef in 1979. To lose one colleague in such circumstances is tragic, but to lose four (at a minimum) is… well, even more tragic obviously. All were later ruled accident or suicide, so presumably just happened to enjoy standing very close to sheer drops.
Jimmy and Rusty Humphreys, Soho 1972
Silver was directly involved in facilitating the arrival of the last of our three key figures, and like everyone else involved soon came to regret it. Jimmy Humphreys (1930-2003) was born in Bermondsey and was a career criminal by his teens, in and out of various borstals for theft and housebreaking. By 1957 he’d graduated to the big time and broke into a sub-post office to blow open the safe. Arrested yet again he served four years in Dartmoor and on his release in late 1962 abruptly changed direction.
Together with second wife June (a popular and shrewdly business-minded stripper with the professional name Rusty) he opened a strip-club on Old Compton Street, which proved modestly successful (though half the profits inevitably ended up with the police). The couple later moved to Macclesfield Street, then later still opened the Queens Club on Walker’s Court, directly opposite the Raymond Revuebar in the very heart of sleazy Soho. (The key sites for the sex industry have always been the narrow Courts leading off Brewer and Wardour Streets – namely Green’s, Walker’s, St Anne’s and Tisbury). The Queens was quickly making a fortune – initially via the Revuebar’s overspill but soon on its own account thanks to Rusty’s management skills – and allowed the couple to open an even bigger club on the corner of Berwick / D’Arblay Streets. By this point however Jimmy was already eyeing the success of his immediate neighbour on Walker’s Court, a booming dirty bookshop owned by Bernie Silver.
In early 1969 Humphreys approached Bill Moody (now risen to the all-powerful rank of DCS) about the possibility of opening his own shop, but was firmly rebuffed – Wicked Bill didn’t want any new arrivals upsetting the established Mason / Silver set-up, and moreover thought the notoriously volatile Jimmy too unreliable a risk (an entirely accurate assessment). But Humphreys had another card to play – he was owed a favour by Moody’s immediate boss, Commander Wally Virgo, and promptly called it in. Virgo agreed to get Silver to broker another meeting with Moody in an attempt to talk him round. After two further lunches Moody reluctantly acquiesced, though demanded (and got) £4,000 for his cooperation. To disguise the fact that a new force was entering the porn game it was agreed that Silver’s top manager, Joey Janes, would be the front man for the new shop on Rupert Street, while the profits would be split 50/50 between the (uneasy) new partners.
Over the next three years Humphreys opened ten further shops (bringing the Soho total up to about thirty) and made an absolute fortune. His chief suppliers were new boys Gerald Citron for books / magazines and Jeff Phillips for films. With the recent repeal of Denmark’s obscenity laws, homegrown product was already on the wane as it was cheaper and easier to just smuggle in Scandinavian hardcore. Even Mason eventually started importing, though (according to Ron Davey) nearly ruined every transaction by insisting on communicating with the Danes (who all spoke perfect English) in a mix of monosyllables and sign language.
The Dirty Squad: DCS Bill ‘Architect’ Moody and Commander Wally ‘Man Upstairs’ Virgo
Like his predecessor Samuel Pepys, Humphreys kept a private diary methodically recording every meeting with the police, in terms of Who, Where, When, and (critically) How Much. If Moody and co had been aware of this they might have been a little more circumspect in their conduct, but by this point it seemed like the good times would roll forever. By general agreement the period 1969-72 were the Fat Years in Soho, when all the old controls (relating to window-displays and careful spacing of shops) began to be abandoned. Porn had never been more visible, and a backlash was inevitably approaching.
From 1971 the newspapers (notably the Observer and Sunday People) began to take an interest in Soho, particularly how fast the sex business was expanding (the number of shops virtually doubled over 1972) and how the men responsible appeared mysteriously immune from prosecution. The novel phrase Police Corruption began to be bandied about, and – just as things were approaching boiling point – with classic timing Humphreys decided to go on holiday to Spain with his old friend Commander Ken Drury, head of the Flying Squad. This was front-page stuff, and while Drury later tried to bluster they’d been chasing a lead on train robber Ronnie Biggs, the damage was done. In April 1972 Sir Robert Mark – the ‘Lone Ranger from Leicester’ – was controversially put in charge of the Met, sending the clear message a major spring clean was on the way. A wave of immediate resignations and early-retirements followed, as Mark put ‘old grey fox’ DCS Albert Wickstead of Limehouse’s Serious Crimes Squad onto fumigating West End Central.
Wickstead’s main target was naturally Bernie Silver, but the Syndicate’s long-prepared Wall of Silence meant this initially went nowhere and it was decided it might be easier to start with Humphreys. This was shrewd, as the excitable Jimmy could be virtually guaranteed to drop himself in it. In Oct 1972 Rusty was released from Holloway after serving six months for unlicensed possession of a firearm, and apparently celebrated by rekindling a friendship with old flame Peter ‘Pooky’ Garfath. Humphreys was furious, and told lieutenant Ronnie Bergin – known as the fastest knife-man in London – to ‘cut his hands off’. Garfath was badly injured in the resulting attack, and Wickstead finally had the excuse he needed to steam in.
Silver promptly left for Spain and Mifsud for Brazil (via Ireland), while Humphreys – after dithering for a few weeks – decamped to Holland on a false passport. Only Mason refused to budge, adamant the mess had nothing to do with him. However when Wickstead’s men later raided Jimmy’s house and recovered his crucial diary the cat was almost out of the bag. Humphreys passed his time in exile writing a lengthy account of his dealings with Moody and co, and was pondering giving himself up and cutting a deal when arrested outside Amsterdam in June 1973.
Greek Street 1973, after Robert Mark had deliberately put Uniform back into Soho
With the key players out of the way, one Saturday morning in Jan 1973 Wickstead and his team hit Soho like a whirlwind, smashing down doors, handcuffing managers and seizing forty tons of porn. Amongst those netted were Citron and Phillips, who later gave long statements vitally corroborating all Humphreys’ allegations (which had initially been considered barely credible). Silver incautiously allowed himself to be lured back to Soho and was arrested in Dec, while Mifsud was picked up in Switzerland and extradited. All subsequently went to prison, Silver (as before) for living off immoral earnings – he was also convicted of involvement in the 1956 Smithson murder, though this was quashed on Appeal when it was pointed out that the relevant testimony all came from convicted career criminals drawing on (extremely unreliable) twenty-year-old memories.
There was one remaining name Wickstead wanted, and in Dec 1974 a thoroughly-rattled Bill Moody met John Mason late one afternoon by the Serpentine and told him that unless he left immediately he’d be arrested next morning at 6am. Mason fled to Guernsey, but the old grey fox soon caught up with him and spelled matters out: either he joined Jimmy in testifying against his old pals or faced prison himself. Mason reluctantly gave evidence in the big Dirty Squad trial of May 1977, sold up the following year (partly to ‘Bookshop Billy’ O’Connor) and retired permanently to Spain, never to return. Twelve members of the Squad went to jail, Moody (‘the architect’) and Virgo (‘the man upstairs’) drawing twelve years apiece in what was by far the most embarrassing series of trials Scotland Yard has ever had to live through.
Silver returned to Soho on his release in 1978, and – though inevitably a slightly diminished force – retained interests in at least three sex-cinemas and five bookshops for several years. In the early-90s he retired to Newton, a picturesque rural village on the outskirts of Rugby, and died there more or less forgotten in 2002. Mifsud was similarly sentenced to five years for his part in the Smithson murder but this was likewise quashed on Appeal, and he returned to Malta to live on the proceeds of his Swiss bank accounts.
Humphreys was released in 1977 and proceeded to predictably crash from one disaster to another. He moved to Knocklong in Ireland, ostensibly to run a greyhound-breeding business but in fact to set up a vast amphetamine factory. Tipped off that the Gardai were about to raid this he fled to the US and invested in a drug-smuggling business but was cheated out of his money. Returning with Rusty to the UK in 1988, he opened a restaurant in Blackheath followed by at least three brothels in Marylebone and Marble Arch. Following a covert surveillance operation the couple were arrested yet again in Nov 1993 and charged with living off immoral earnings – pleading Guilty they were sentenced to a year each, with Rusty finding herself back in Holloway (for the third time). Shortly before his death Jimmy was in discussions with Channel 4 about the possibility of making a film of his life, which should certainly prove entertaining if it ever materialises.
The Holloways begin to take over – Brewer Street 1980
With the Dirty Squad in tatters and the original porn-men all in prison or enforced retirement, Soho was a temporary vacuum waiting to be filled. Silver’s effective replacement was another young Maltese, Charlie Grech (b.1950), who took over some of the existing shops and also began renting vacated properties from Paul Raymond, biggest of the W1 landlords. The other major emerging name was Ben Holloway, one of Mason’s veteran suppliers, who took things in a bold new direction that pleased no one.
In 1972 Reuben Sturman (qv) had approached Bernie Silver with a proposal for an international business deal, but had been politely rebuffed. Silver knew exactly where Sturman’s backing came from and wanted nothing to do with it (“it’s a lot easier getting into some of these partnerships than getting out” as he later pointedly phrased it), and furthermore assumed (correctly) that whatever else the police might be prepared to put up with, they would definitely draw the line at US organised crime buying its way into Soho. However, with Silver soon out of the picture Sturman just turned to Holloway instead, who proved less fastidious. The basic proposal was straightforward: Sturman was keen to export his new coin-operated video-booths (already making a fortune in Times Square) but needed suitable W1 premises for these, and accordingly offered to bankroll Holloway’s dramatic expansion into Soho on a simple 50/50 profit-split. In 1974 a new company Pleasure Books Ltd was set up, while Sturman bought a 50% share in Ben’s Books of Acton. By 1979 Holloway was running about ten shops, most branded with Sturman’s ‘Doc Johnson’s Love Shop’ US trade-name (the homely KFC of porn).
Silver and Holloway had never disguised their dislike of each other: Holloway was contemptuous of Silver’s willingness to work with the ‘Dirty Malts’, while Silver saw Holloway’s contrasting eagerness to take Mafia money as final conclusive proof of his greed and stupidity. Holloway had a large family and employed them all in the business: wife Mary wrote many of the early books and magazines, while twin sons Chris and Dennis ran the Soho shops, Dennis handling the bookshops and Chris (with the assistance of younger brother Alan) dealing with the rapidly expanding film & video side. Daughter Katy supervised mail order, and at 24 claimed to be unshockable. According to mother Mary: “When the children were young I used to write fairy tales for them. Writing sex magazines is just the same. They are all fairy tales really. I just read a lot of the sex books to get the drift and then it was easy. You’ve just got to use your imagination. None of it is my scene, but you feel you are helping people who like that sort of thing, poor dears.”
Walkers Court c.1978
The problem was that the family’s aggressive drive and undisguised contempt for the law deliberately antagonised everyone: Planning regs were continually flouted as huge neon signs and explicit posters sprung up everywhere, window displays openly showcased hardcore, and the twins’ Rolls Royces were routinely left parked across pavements in an unrepentant gesture of bravado. Even the more liberal observers began to feel things were getting out of hand and Soho was being actively despoiled. By the end of 1981 the square mile boasted an incredible 185 sex-shops, cinemas and clubs, and – with the police having finally regained their confidence and ready to make a point – another crackdown was clearly imminent. Bernie Silver immediately grasped the way the wind was blowing, and began converting his remaining properties into offices, restaurants and flats, confident that with spiraling inflation he could make just as much money operating them as straight businesses.
Over April-May 1982 Soho was comprehensively blitzed. The various Holloway shops and warehouses were raided and forty tons of material seized. The entire family (barring Mary) were arrested on Obscenity charges, successfully prosecuted and sent to prison for a year each, along with a host of lesser figures. Two months later in July the groundbreaking Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982 came into force, licensing sex shops for the first time. One key clause automatically debarred anyone with a previous criminal conviction from applying, instantly disqualifying 90% of the likely contenders. Of course there were potential loopholes (nominee front-men anyone?), but the effect on Soho – combined with the fall of the Holloways – was swift and unmistakable. By 1991 there were only 30 sex shops left, back to the level of twenty years earlier. Soho largely gave up being sleazy, and instead transformed itself into the fashionable hipster hangout it is today.
So much for the men in charge – what about the material they were selling? It is time to shiftily peruse some of the wares on display, specifically the legendary Soho Typescripts. WARNING: those of a sensitive literary disposition should look away NOW!
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