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Sensing that the coppers were on their case, the pair attempted to make off but were foiled by their Cuban heels and were quickly nicked. Running the blockade – How Clyde shipyards supported Confederacy and slavery in the American Civil War.Photographer Harry Benson looks back on his picture legacy from The Beatles to Muhammad Ali.With Paton already known to the police, suspicious officers followed them on to a tram going to Woodlands. In October 1924, gang leader Paton and his accomplice Thomas Dalgleish put out an advert that they were collecting money for the aged poor in the east end – and for people to look out for them in fancy dress.ĭressed as a Spanish cabaret dancer and a French peasant girl, Paton and Dalgleish rattled tins along Sauchiehall Street. With bad rap sheets making it difficult to find proper work, many of the men who joined up viewed it as a last resort to make money – and they'd go to great lengths to do so. It may also come as a surprise to learn that some of the White Hats were blackmailed into being prostitutes or were "gay for pay". The spots were known to the police, with reports from the time describing the men and women who went to these spots as "fashionably dressed" – an innocuous description which held rather subversive undertones in Glasgow in the conservative 1920s.ĭr Meek said it's likely that many of the men and women were sex workers, who lived, worked and socialised in these "safe spaces". Originally from Dundee, he was a pimp who lived off the earnings of female sex workers, running an illegal nightclub on Woodlands Road, and preyed on people arriving in Glasgow looking for work and accommodation, taking them to these illicit venues. Ringleader Paton, once described by the Sunday Post as the “leader of the criminal underworld”, cut a notorious figure in the city.
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They were known for targeting wealthier clients in particular, who had a fair bit to lose at a time when homosexuality was illegal. "Even then, it played into the certain stereotype of Glasgow being more earthy and Edinburgh being more cosmopolitan."Įvery single man in the White Hats had a criminal record: mostly petty crimes such as gross indecency, theft and blackmail. He tells Glasgow Live: "The names the White Hats used are interesting because they were mostly of variety hall artists who performed at the Empire, Panopticon and the Pavillion, whereas in Edinburgh, men's 'camp names' were glamorous filmstars like Tallulah Bankhead, Myrna Loy and Lillian Tashman.