By Reg McKay - DailyRecord.co.uk

October 19, 2007

THE gangs ruled Glasgow's streets with razors and coshes but one man terrorised them for a simple reason - The Fiend of the Gorbals, Patrick Carraher, was in love with violence for its own sake.

For decades, the Protestant Billy Boys and Roman Catholic Norman Conks had battled it out on the city's streets.

So huge was the issue, that Glasgow cops had head-hunted the man they called The Gangbuster.

Sir Percy Sillitoe, as he came to be titled, will forever be recognised for his role as Chief Constable of Glasgow.

Yet, when he was recruited to the job in 1931, he already had a great track record of dealing with gangs in the steel-hard city of Sheffield.

In Glasgow, Sir Percy set about hiring the toughest men he could find as beat bobbies.

Scores and scores of big, hardy men were recruited from the Highlands and other rural areas, given basic training, a uniform and told to mix it with the gangs every chance they got. Most relished the work.

Yet by 1938, the Billy Boys and Norman Conks were joined by the San Toi, Tongs, The Fleet, Govan Team, Bingo Boys and scores of other gangs all of whom were as strong. Some were even getting political.

Billy Fullerton, founder and leader of the Billy Boys, always claimed he only did so when beaten up by a gang of Roman Catholic youths after performing well in a football match against their team.

He saw himself as a responsible man forced to take action to defend himself and others like him.

The Billy Boys adopted military style behaviour. They marched on parade, had their own bands, composed their own songs and music, members were expected to dress to a particular standard and paid a weekly levy to help others when in need - and not just to pay off fines.

With the onset of war, Billy Fullerton and the Billy Boys became involved, forming a Glasgow branch of Sir Oswald Moseley's Black shirts.

They'd march on Glasgow Green, on Orange walks and other significant days, though their major role was as part of Moseley's bodyguard.

There was no surprise that the Billy Boys had moved in this direction. Pre-war, all the major gangs worked to a code.

Mainly, they fought each other and the involvement of non-combatants was frowned upon.

Whether you agreed with their code or not, they still had one - unlike some folk.

These were the evil men who really worried the citizens of Glasgow and Sir Percy Sillitoe couldn't control. No one could.

Individual hardmen. No aims or plan or allegiance, simply moved by the love of violence and dishing out pain.

Every area of Glasgow had at least a handful of brutal renegades like that but the most notorious of all was the man they called The Fiend of the Gorbals, Patrick Carraher. Born in 1906 into a decent working class family, Carraher went off the rails as soon as he could walk.

By the time he was 14, he was shipped off for his first spell in borstal and would be in and out of jails for the rest of his life.

Scottish prisons were hard, brutal places then - even more so than today. Knifings, scaldings and lynchings were all part of the risks a prisoner ran. Carraher loved it.

While for most other cons jails are academies of crime, teaching how to steal better and bigger stashes, Patrick Carraher wasn't that interested in making money. Fighting was his thing, especially with a blade.

I By 1938, aged 32, he had stabbed, slashed and gouged his way through life, more often than not the victims being hapless, innocent bystanders. Worse, he had developed a serious booze problem, making his temper simmer constantly.

Carraher's reputation was well formed but it wasn't everyone who was scared of him They should have been.

A young woman who he had gone out with ended the relationship and he wasn't happy. One night, he ordered her pal to pass on a message that he wanted to see her and pronto.

Knowing that her friend wouldn't be interested, she thought it best not to tell her. It would just have worried her.

Later that same night, Carraher, now very drunk, spotted the woman out walking with her young man, James Durie, a sensible, straight bloke who worked hard as a window cleaner.

Realising his orders had been ignored, Carraher called the woman every name under the sun and threatened worse.

Jim Durie, of course, defended his girlfriend, although he knew all about Patrick Carraher's brutal reputation.

The young man, however, declined The Fiend's invitation to a fight, probably because of the big blade he was waving in the air.

Later that night, Durie's older brothers heard of the incident and decided that they had to see to Carraher because if they didn't, their brother would be plagued by the man forever.

When they and some pals caught up with him, Carraher refused to fight, saying that he was too drunk. Yet he continued bawling and shouting at the Duries as they walked away.

At that, a passing serviceman on leave, Jannes Shaw, told Carraher to be quiet and when, Peter Howard, one of the Durie party turned round, Shaw was lying on the ground and Carraher was walking away.

Howard rushed to help the young soldier but he was wounded on the neck and died within the hour at Glasgow Royal Infirmary.

At first, the cops charged Peter Howard. Well, there were no witnesses.

But soon word reached the police that The Fiend of the Gorbals had been up to his old tricks and he was arrested.

All the Duries stood as witnesses against him, as did others to whom Carraher had boasted of the killing.

At his trial at Glasgow High Court, it was obvious he had knifed Shaw but then his lawyer got to work.

By a brilliant use of the evidence, he convinced the jury that no one actually saw Carraher knife the man.

They found him not guilty of murder but guilty of the lesser charge of culpable homicide and he was jailed for three years. The Fiend had escaped the gallows.

By the time Carraher walked through the gates of Barlinnie in 1941, World War II was under way. He was called up, of course, the Army not being able to afford the luxury of refusing people with crime records in those dark days.

However, the man who terrorised the streets of Glasgow was rejected as unfit to fight for his country, due to a dodgy stomach and bad chest.

During the blackout years of the war, his violent behaviour got worse.

Usually a friendless soul, Carraher took up with a guy called Daniel Bonnar, the brother of his then girlfriend, Sarah.

Mainly, they escaped the cops' wrath. The number of police was down to a minimum at that time, as all able-bodied folks joined the war effort.

Besides, the cops had other serious problems to tackle apart from a mental chib merchant.

Yet in 1943, after a day-long orgy of violence, Carraher was once again arrested and sent to jail for three years.

As the war raged on across the globe, Glasgow became a slightly safer place because Patrick Carraher was in jail. By the time of his release in November 1945, the war was over and the city buzzed with servicemen returning home.

John Gordon was a career soldier, having served 20 years with the Seaforth Highlanders and spent years in a German PoW camp. Now, he was set to be demobbed and was having a few celebratory drinks with his brothers.

Later that evening, Daniel Bonnar bumped into the Gordon crew all drunk. There was an outstanding issue between Bonnar and one of the Gordons but when the latter invited him to fight, Bonnar took to his heels.

When Carraher found out, he decided to settle the matter and, with Bonnar in tow, went looking for the Gordons.

Eventually they found John Gordon along with his brother-in-law Duncan Reevie, an Army deserter hiding out in the Scotland at that time.

When the fight started, Bonnar once again ran but Carraher simply reached out and punched John Gordon in the neck. Well, that's what it looked like.

But as people, including his own girlfriend would later testify, Carraher had slipped a razor sharp chisel into his pocket as he left home.

He hadn't punched John Gordon but plunged the blade into his neck. The man died in hospital in less than an hour.

By a strange co-incidence, Carraher was arrested by a cop called John Johnstone, the same man who had lifted him on his first murder charge.

Now Johnstone was going to get another chance to get Carraher off the streets.

The evidence against Carraher was undeniable, especially when his so-called pal Daniel Bonnar turned King's evidence.

All Carraher's defence could do was bring in doctors to say he was psychopathic, claim diminished responsibility and hope for a lesser sentence.

It didn't wash. The jury took only 20 minutes to find him guilty. But would he hang?

Glasgow, along with most other British cities, hadn't hanged any civilians during the war. Bad for public morale was the line. But if Carraher thought that trend would continue, he was mistaken.

Though it was never admitted, through the war years, crime on the street increased massively.

But now the war was over, and it was time to bring order to the streets again.

In February 1946, a young man called John Lyon was hanged in Glasgow for a gang-related killing.

Then on 6 April, 1946 Patrick Carraher was hanged in Barlinnie Prison, where he had spent so many years for violent crimes. In fact, aged 40, he had spent half his life incarcerated.

Many citizens of Glasgow believed that The Fiend of the Gorbals should never have been free. After all, they'd say, he had already cheated the hangman once.

He stabbed, slashed and gouged his way through life.

SEX: M RACE: W TYPE: T MOTIVE: PC-argument

MO: Killed soldiers in drunken brawls

DISPOSITION: three years for manslaughter (1934); hanged Apr. 4, 1946