A Liverpool-born gang boss who recruited the young Kray twins paid for challenging London's top mobsters with his life.
Tommy Smithson was only 37 when he died under a hail of bullets from rival gangsters. Born in 1920 in Liverpool, his family moved to London's East End two years later.
Growing up, he served time for theft in a reform school where he learned self-defence and boxing. After serving in the Merchant Navy during WWII, he returned to East London in 1950 and shortly after he was jailed for 18 months for robbery.
READ MORE: Lime Street's lost Las Vegas arcade where kids 'bunked' school to spend pocket money
In prison he got to know the criminals who ran the Soho gambling clubs. By 1954, he had his own gang which included the young Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, who reportedly looked up to Smithson as a hero.
During this time, clubs and gambling dens of London's Soho were controlled by the Maltese gang and Smithson decided to take them on. He set up his own club and gambling den in defiance of the Maltese gang.
Tensions between the rival gangs grew when Smithson opened a bookmaker in competition with one of the main Maltese gangs. A fight which led to the brother of a rival gang member being slashed by Smithson saw a swift and brutal revenge dealt out on the Liverpool-born gang boss.
For more nostalgia stories, sign up to our Liverpool Echo newsletter here.
Under the false notion that a truce had been called, Smithson was told a peace offering was on the table and so went to meet rival gang bosses behind a cigarette factory in Camden Town. It was there he was slashed across the face, arms, legs and body, and left to bleed to death.
The latest series of Memory Lane is in major retailers including Asda, Tesco, Home Bargains and selected newsagents now. This series of the bumper picture special looks at fun in the sun - with stunning photographs and treasured memories of family holidays from years gone by. You can also buy Memory Lane online here.
Miraculously, he survived and as a reward for honouring the 'code of silence' he was paid £500 from the head of the Maltese gang and earned the nickname 'Scarface'. Perhaps having learned his lesson not to challenge the Soho gangs, he decided to work as a protector for his former rivals.
On June 25, 1956, Tommy Smithson was found dying in a gutter with a bullet wound to his neck. He had been sent to a brothel on a job he thought was to collect protection money when rival gangsters were waiting for him.
He was waiting in the room of one of the sex workers when Philip Ellul, Vic Spampinato and Joe Zammit walked in. Ellul shot him in the arm and the neck before his revolver jammed.
Smithson is said to have crawled, bleeding, down the stairs into the street. It's said his last words to the people who found him were said to be: "Good morning, I'm dying."
He was taken to Paddington Hospital where he died a short time later. The two accomplices with Ellul on that night, Spampinato and Zammit, were tried but acquitted of the crime. Ellul was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. 48 hours before his execution was due to take place, Ellul's sentence was commuted to life, of which he served eleven years in prison.
Smithson's funeral was a huge affair with over 500 people attending including many of the most feared faces in London's criminal underworld, including the Kray twins who were around 20-years old at the time. The funeral was filmed and photographed by the press capturing mobsters mingling among the Rolls Royce hearses and flowers while hundreds looked on at the spectacle.
Read more stories from Merseyside's past in our nostalgia section
35 things from growing up in Liverpool that you don't see anymore
Legendary Liverpool nightclub that became an institution
Naked initiations and posh nosh at Liverpool's lost revolving restaurant in the sky
