March 2017

East life
Imagine a concoction of the
notorious East End gangster
Kray twins and fraudster Robert
Maxwell, then you’ve got an
inkling of Merceron’s character.
In the early 1900s, husbandand-wife
sociologists Sidney
and Beatrice Webb wrote what
little description existed of
Merceron’s crimes.
Their dry passages didn’t cut it
for Julian, though, who set out
to investigate further and pen
a richer, justifiably appalling
narrative.
Julian’s journey towards
publishing The Boss of Bethnal
Green is itself a dynamic story,
full of coincidences and nearmisses.
My meeting with him even
conjured up an odd twist of
its own. We realised that the
would-be assassin of King
George III, James Hadfield, had
been sectioned in Bedlam –
which had once stood right
where we sat in Liverpool
Street.
Hadfield had been deemed "not
guilty" of trying to kill the king
due to mental instability.
"It was the first record of such a
court verdict," Julian says.
His pistol found its way into
Rocque map of Brick Lane area
Merceron’s hands, as did most
objects of any worth in East
London at the time. Eventually
it reached Merceron’s living
descendants.
Through The Times’ obituaries,
Julian came across a handful of
family members.
Merceron’s great-greatgranddaughter
was just shy of
her 94th birthday when he got
in touch with her. He recalls
how this extraordinary lady,
Susan Kendall, had said simply:
“You’d better hurry over to
Wiltshire, I’m 93!”.
Susan hoped Julian’s book might
lift what seemed to be a “family
curse”, so put him in touch
with her nephew – a military
chaplain.
Together they hauled an old
tin chest down from the attic.
This mysterious box opened
to reveal the Hadfield's gun,
once a treasured possession of
Merceron himself.
Over a decade in the making,
The Boss of Bethnal Green is the
kind of book that makes you
contemplate the city where so
many millions live.
How many more strange flukes
or branches of family trees lurk
around the corner? What other
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