A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

the brothers ninety per cent of their takings - which, during the war years, amounted often to £100 a
night.
The brothers recognised that ‘non-professionals’ - the kind of girls who would not normally drift
into prostitution - are more desirable to the male than the usual tired-looking streetwalker, and
developed their own efficient methods of recruiting a higher class of girl. She would be courted by
one of the brothers, seduced, and installed in an expensive flat. When she realised that her lover
was getting tired of her, and that the life of luxury was about to end, she was usually in the right
frame of mind to agree to receive a few selected male guests. Within weeks she was a full-time
prostitute.
During the Second World War, the Messina brothers became very rich. They were also very
discreet, and their habit of moving between England and the continent made them elusive as well.
They first came to the attention of the police when another gangleader, Carmelo Vassalo, tried to
exact ‘protection’ from three Messina girls; there was a fight in South Kensington in which Vassalo
lost the tips of two fingers. Vassalo and his gang were charged with demanding money with
menaces, but Eugenio Messina also found himself in the dock for wounding Vassalo. He was
sentenced to three years in prison. While he was awaiting his appeal in jail, one of his brothers tried
to bribe a guard to ‘look after’ Eugenio, and received a sentence of two months.
In 1950, a newspaper reporter, Duncan Webb, ‘exposed’ the brothers in the Sunday People, and
four of them hastily left the country. The fifth, Alfredo, made the mistake of remaining in his home
in a respectable district of Wembley, convinced that the police had no evidence against him. Two
policemen called on him, and when one left the room, the other alleged that Alfredo tried to bribe
him with bundles of £100 notes. A judge disbelieved Alfredo’s defence that the policeman had
asked to see into his safe, and extracted the notes himself, and Alfredo received two years in jail. A
large proportion of London’s underworld was convinced that he had been ‘framed’.
Two of the brothers, Eugenio and Carmelo, established themselves in Brussels; but the Belgian
police were determined not to allow them to establish a foothold, and in 1955 both were charged
with carrying loaded revolvers. At their trial in Tournai, one indignant middle-class mother told
how her daughter had been seduced by Eugenio, who had then proposed that she should go to
London to ‘work’. The mother accused Eugenio of being a white slaver and persuaded her daughter
not to go. Evidence like this led the judge to sentence Eugenio to seven years. Carmelo, whose
health was poor, received two.
Attilio Messina, who had returned to London, was also brought to bay by angry parents. Edna
Kallman, a woman in her early forties, told how she had been returning home from her job as a
dressmaker in 1947 when Attilio had offered her a lift in his car. He took her to dinner, seduced
her, and installed her in a flat in Knightsbridge. After two years, he told her that she either had to
get out, or work as a prostitute. Cowed and miserable, she agreed. She was moved to a flat in Bond
Street, and made to solicit in the street. As her health began to fail and her looks to deteriorate, she
attracted a poorer class of customer; Attilio made her work twice as hard. One night, she called the
police to help a fellow prostitute who was being beaten up by a client. Attilio told her grimly that
he would deal with her the next day. Convinced that this meant something worse than the usual
beating, she fled to the home of her mother and stepfather in Derby, and told them the whole tragic
story. They went to the police, and Attilio was arrested. Although he insisted that he was a
respectable antiques dealer, he was found guilty, and sentenced to four years in prison. This was
virtually the end of the Messinas as a power in the underworld.