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.
