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The Underworld Podcast

The Maltese Mobsters who Ruled London's Empire of Vice

The Underworld Podcast

The Underworld Podcast

True Crime, Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.6871 Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Messina family came from Sicily, then Malta and North Africa, before settling in 1930s London—whose underworld was about to be supercharged by wartime blackouts and love-lorn American G.I.s. They would soon control an empire of brothels and gambling dens in the British capital, conning, bribing and killing their way to gangland dominance. And while the Messinas' flame died in the early 60s, their mantle would be taken up by a new generation of Maltese mobsters, whose legacy lasted until the 21st century arrival of another viceland behemoth: the Albanians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:29.0

Meck-a-Bingo are legends of play since back in the day. Back when cavemen hunted, when Egyptians bathed in milk,

0:40.0

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1:01.6

Tommy Smithson's nickname in post-war Gangland London is Scarface. A more accurate

1:07.7

name, if one that would require a fluency in ancient Greek legend rare on the streets of

1:12.0

Stepney, Shortich or Soho, might have been

1:14.8

Orpheus. Because Tommy, raw bone, drawn-faced and slick-haired has stared death right in its

1:21.6

ugly sanguine face bunge you down into the underworld and come

1:25.9

rebounding right back. Only Tommy's done it in 1954, and this wasn't Hades, but somewhere,

1:32.2

if not similar, then at least grimy, in the snug

1:34.9

alleys that snake around the back of a hulking, Camden Town cigarette factory.

1:40.9

By this time, Tommy's already a fixture in the vice scene of Soho in the British

1:44.9

capital's neon-soaked West End where call girls and exotic dance halls rub

...

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