Glasgow Crime Stories podcast: Billy Fullerton

Often dressed in a smart three-piece suit, tie, and with a clean white handkerchief in his top pocket, he could easily have been taken for a businessman or a member of one of the professions.

However, Billy Fullerton was no middle-class, white-collar worker.

He was the leader of the notorious 'Bridgeton Billy Boys' and their reign of terror in the 1920s and 30s had Glasgow gripped with fear.

The savagery meted out by the 500-strong mob that Fullerton ruled with an iron fist matched anything dreamed up by the makers of the ultra-violent Birmingham-based BBC street gang drama Peaky Blinders.

Born in 1904, his upbringing was coloured by the deep sectarian divisions in the city at the time.

Huge groups of men from the ranks of the unemployed, with nothing better to do than fight or steal, would gather under Protestant or Catholic banners to fight each other in often pre-arranged battles.

Fullerton's power base was in Bridgeton in the east end of the city from where his gang took its name.

Then it was a hotbed of sectarian tension where mass brawls, slashings and extortion were a way of life.

He is the only person who can lay claim to inspiring both a bigoted football song and a poem by the late Edwin Morgan.

However, Fullerton was a man of contradictions.

Despite being a staunch Protestant, his mother and wife were both Catholics.

When he and his wife Nan moved to Shettleston two years after their wedding in 1924, one gang painted his front door green.

While he provided security for Oswald Mosley's fascists during their visits to Glasgow, he also served his country during the second world war in the fight against Hitler, Mussolini and right-wing extremism.

It is not clear if the Billy Boys - who took their name from King William of Orange - were formed by Fullerton or if he simply joined up and became their leader.

However, he made them one of the largest and most powerful organised street gangs in British history.

The staunchly 'protestant' gang was initially set up to fight back against what they saw as an influx of hostile Irish immigrants.

Fullerton was said to have become a key member after he was ambushed and attacked by an Irish gang. They then broke both his legs and ruined a promising football career.

Regardless of the exact truth of the events, the story of the attack on Fullerton spread like wildfire across the east end of the city, earning him great notoriety.

Soon the charismatic Fullerton was giving regular speeches at Bridgeton Cross, agitating against the local Catholic community.

Bridgeton was a completely Protestant area at the time.

But the parliamentary constituency - in which it was contained - had the second highest Irish Catholic community in the whole UK.

In hardly any time at all, the young hoodlum had built up a considerable following. His gang had their own flute band, they wore uniforms and even marched to street fights against their main rivals.

They would conduct regular orange parades through hostile areas of the east and south side of Glasgow, which would predictably end in riots.

Wars raged for two decades with Catholic gangs such as the Kent Star, Norman Conks, the San Toy and the Calton Entry.

The rivals fought with a terrifying arsenal of deadly weapons.

This included hatchets, swords, machetes, knives, bottles, sharpened combs, bicycle chains and even lengths of rope with heavy bolts attached, not unlike the South American bolas.

But the weapon of choice was the fearsome open razor.

Light, easily concealed and lethal, it earned these roaming gangs of thugs their terrifying soubriquet - the 'razor gangs'.

Under his command, the Billy Boys had become the largest and most powerful of the city's gangs by the early 1930s.

Drilled with near-military efficiency, they would stand in all weathers at Bridgeton Cross and play God Save The King.

Their signature tune was The Billy Boys, an infamous sectarian tribute to both William of Orange and 'King Billy' Fullerton.

On Catholic holy days, the Billy Boys would form a flute and drum band and march down nearby Norman Street - home to the Catholic Norman Conks gang - playing sectarian songs to enrage their bitterest rivals. They in turn would pelt the parade with stones, broken glass and human waste from every tenement window.

At a Billy Boys wedding in 1926, the groom stood before the minister with a sword concealed in his morning suit, while the best man had a gun in his pocket and Fullerton, wore a bloodstained bandage on his head.

When the wedding party emerged, the Calton Entry boys threw bottles and bricks rather than confetti.

Being in a gang was seen not only as a way to defend your area, but your religion and your political beliefs. It was also a release from the harsh realities of life in general in pre-war Scotland.

At the time poverty and unemployment were endemic in the east end of Glasgow.

However, gang membership bestowed a sense of belonging and self-respect on the unemployed and organised violence provided an antidote to boredom and deprivation of the time.

They would also fight with equal enthusiasm against the ranks of policemen led by Glasgow's then Chief Constable, Sir Percy Sillitoe who would later go on to become head of MI5.

Dubbed the 'Hammer of the Gangs', he met force with force in a bid to stamp them out.

In those days gangs didn't just comprise of local neds or track-suited teenagers, instead, their ranks were bolstered by older men in their 30s and 40s who had families and jobs.

Sillitoe’s first plan was to toughen up his own officers for the battles ahead.

He once famously said of his force: “We are the biggest gang in Glasgow.”

Sillitoe recruited the biggest and toughest cops in Scotland that he could find. Many came down from the Highlands and Islands and had an inbred loathing of what they saw as so-called “weegie” hardmen.

They were more than prepared to go head-to-head with the city's gang members and dispense summary justice.

In 1936, trouble broke out when a Protestant gang paraded behind a flute band in Parkhead.

One of the members attacked a policeman with a spear.

Using their long riot batons, the police, backed by officers on horseback, scattered the marchers.

The road was littered with casualties and gang members were arrested and charged with causing a disturbance and assaulting the police.

There was a public outcry against what was perceived as police brutality. The mounted police were then dubbed the “Sillitoe’s Cossacks” after the fearsome eastern European horsemen of the same name.

Sillitoe was also said to have used his influence to have gang members convicted by the courts and then committed to mental institutions – what we would now call psychiatric hospitals – where they remained beyond their sentences.

After their eventual release they were threatened with being permanently incarcerated in the then terrifying establishments should they be re-arrested.

At the same time, Fullerton tried to portray himself as a Robin Hood figure who would look after the wives and children of jailed members and help local people avoid eviction on rent arrears.

In reality, the Billy Boys were organised criminals who preyed on the communities they claimed to protect. They extorted money from shopkeepers, publicans and back-street bookmakers and amassed a fortune as a result.

Jewish traders around Bridgeton Cross in the 1930s complained they were singled out for particularly harsh treatment based on their faith.

Police at the time would tell Sheriffs there was no point fining a gang member as a local shopkeeper would simply end up footing the bill.

Cinemas and dance halls were also targeted, with gang members raking in up to £20 a night from owners or around £1500 in today’s money.

Fullerton boasted his gang had up to £300 at any one time held in a bank account in Bridgeton.

The gang even used to break up strikes and Communist Party meetings and on one occasion act as bodyguards for a Tory party election candidate - in return for payments to Fullerton.

He even formed his own band of Blackshirts to act as a Scottish bodyguard for the British fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley. There was also a glamour attached to being in a gang in the 1930s.

It was the time of the celebrity gangster and real-life crime bosses such as Al Capone and John Dillinger were household names.

Actors like Paul Muni, who portrayed gangsters in films such as Scarface, were much admired and imitated.

Many revelled in the fear that the gangs inspired and in the sexual favours of the girls who ran with them.

Some gangs reputedly had a sort of transfer system under which they could buy a star fighter from another gang if they had a big fight coming up. In many ways, Billy Fullerton was also the first modern gangster celebrity in Scotland.

When he sold his story to a paper in 1932, Fullerton revealed what life was like inside one of the biggest criminal organisations in Britain.

He had just been released from Barlinnie prison after a conviction for organising yet another gang street battle.

Fullerton claimed he was trying to go straight and leave his lawless past behind because of fears for the safety of his wife and family.

He said: “I was always pretty handy with my fists and I was in a few gang scraps shortly after I became a Billy Boy.

"A few months later, I found myself the chief of the 500 young men who formed the gang at that time.

"It meant a lot of work for me, I had to make plans for fights, look after the funds, and attend to a hundred and one other matters connected with the gang and its members.

"Each of the 500 members at that time paid a sixpence or a shilling a week. This was devoted to the fighting of our court cases.

"Shopkeepers also give willingly each week for protection against other gangs.

"I am unemployed. But I have hopes of work and, if I get a job, the first thing I will do is look for a new home in a different district – far away from the centre of the city and the gangs.

"When that happy time comes, my wife and two bairns may know peace they have never known. I want a chance for the sake of my wife and children."

Despite the horrifying toll of casualties from such urban warfare, there was no shortage of recruits.

Fullerton is also said to have also dabbled in the racist politics of the Ku Klux Klan, founding the short-lived Knights of Kaledonia Klan.

Speaking on the violence of the gangs, he added: “Only a short time ago, two gangs clashed in the Mile End district. There were 300 young men engaged in the battle. Broken bottles, knives, razors, batons and hatchets were among the weapons used.

"But as soon as the police appeared on the scene, the streets were cleared as if by magic. "There were no arrests. And although there were many casualties, none of the injured went to the infirmary.

"One night when I arrived home, I found five members of a rival gang waiting for me in the close. After a struggle in which I was slashed with a razor across the forehead, I managed to get into my house.

"Armed with a hatchet, I chased my enemies into the street.

"Bent on revenge, I gathered together some of the boys and we set off to the home of one of the rival gangsters. When we reached the close, we were met with a pail of boiling stew which was flung in our faces.

"One of the Billy Boys was scarred for life.

"I know that if I get mixed up in gang warfare again, I can expect nothing less than penal servitude.”

There was a lot of peer pressure at the time in the east end of Glasgow for young men to become involved in gangs There was status, glamour and romance associated with membership, but once they were in, it was very hard then to get out.

The end of the thirties would see the end of razor gangs such as the Billy Boys, thanks in part to the work of Percy Stilltoe.

However, as war broke out across Europe in 1939 their influence further waned as many were called up to fight - something that they were very good at.

Fullerton signed up for the Navy as a boiler scaler.

It was filthy and often dangerous work and Fullerton survived being badly burned when a boiler blew up.

Many gangland figures ended up battling the Germans, Billy Boys fighting alongside their former Catholic enemies from the likes of the San Toy.

Half of Bridgeton's Billy Boys are said to have enlisted after the war was declared.

It has also been claimed that Fullerton turned his life around after his military service and became a committed family man.

On leaving the Navy, he worked at John Brown's Clydeside shipyard and as a doorman for a boxing club, but suspicions about his links to the underworld were about to take a remarkable turn.

Rumours have always abounded that the former King of the Billy Boys had not gone quite as straight as people thought.

At the 1958 trial of serial killer Peter Manuel, Fullerton gave evidence that he had sourced a handgun for a gangland figure, similar to the one used by Manuel to murder three members of one family.

Manuel was later convicted of seven killings at the High Court in Glasgow and sentenced to hang.

By then, Fullerton was already a sick man.

In 1960, he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and he succumbed to the disease two years later.

When Fullerton died in July 1962, aged 56, more than 2000 people paid their respects outside his single-roomed flat in Brook Street in Shettleston.

Newspapers sent their correspondents to report on the funeral including the prestigious London Times.

Perhaps in recognition that a notoriously violent era in the city's history had finally come to an end.

It was also said that grown men wept as his coffin was carried through the streets of Bridgeton and the Gorbals.

His remains are thought to lie in an unmarked grave in Riddrie Park Cemetery in Glasgow's east end with his family unable to afford a headstone at the time.

While he may have achieved fame in his criminal past, it appears that fortune eluded him and his loved ones.

Following his funeral, Edwin Morgan wrote the poem King Billy, which has the lines: 'King Billy, dead, from Bridgeton Cross: a memory of violence, brooding days of empty bellies.'

Recently Stephen Knight, who created Peaky Blinders, revealed he had researched Fullerton's Billy boys for the shows and was in awe of the terrifying levels of bloody mayhem they unleashed at the time.

He added: “The truth is that in the late twenties and thirties, really the hardest gangs were in Glasgow."