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Harold Taylor reminisces about his younger days when in the police force.
When I went to Worthing in 1951 there was a vast amount of land between Goring and Ferring laid out in roads and only lightly built on which had been prepared before the war by a real estate tycoon of local repute.
I presume the same man still controlled it through some company or other. However during my period in Worthing this man died and I was sent to control traffic in and around Tarring Church where the funeral was to take place.
Since having heard of the connections of the Masonic movement with crime, I have often meant to have a look at this church to see if it could be called a Mason's Church.
About five years after I left the force I was on the Plymouth Breakwater Lighthouse, and who had come to that place, but a namesake of myself, Harold Robert Taylor. He was labourer to a mechanic and an old lag.
He was brother to a long time serving employee of Trinity, and really only doing temporary work, probably between stretches.
One day he said to me, 'You come from Worthing, did you know so and so?' I replied that I did not know him personally, but knew of him and that he was dead, and that I had in a way attended his funeral.
He replied, 'He was a lad, do you know I left school because of him, it was during the war and I was not old enough to leave school and was playing truant one day when this fellow approached me and asked if I wanted to earn a few bob.
From then on I worked full time for him hawking black market goods about all over London in an old pram. It would be whisky, meat, cigarettes, anything that was in short supply that you could make a bomb on.
He was one of the big barons in organised crime. Things got too hot for me and I got out before he died. His wife was making a play for me and it was getting too risky, and my mate was having an affair with his brother's wife.
The brother had a big garage in Croydon and they handled a lot of stolen cars and such like. My friend ran the garage by day and was knocking off the wife at night, while her husband was knocking off someone else.
Anyhow the whole business was getting too hot, with the wife wanting him to run off with her and the police beginning to get inquisitive into the garage.
One day he told me he had decided to emigrate, but couldn't do so as he had a police record. He asked me to help, so he emigrated on my identity card and name to New Zealand. At the time I had not got a record.
After he left, both brothers' wives were after me and it got too difficult that I broke away altogether, but it caused me some sweat, because I did not know what one might say against the other, nor how important my silence was against all the activities.
Fortunately, the one from Worthing died and he was the one I worked for.
There were many things that this man told me that I knew we were talking about the same real estate tycoon, whose family still live in the Worthing area.
There are also large construction efforts still being made with the name of this family on the billboards. Whether the family has any involvement, I do not know, they may have sold the name.
There were some odd repercussions from us both being on the same station together. One was that when I got home there was a summons for me for driving without due care and attention, to appear at some police court in West London.
This was interesting as I did not possess a car nor hold a driving licence. Another summons arrived while I was at home to appear at another court for non-payment of maintenance arrears. This was all due to the fact that the depot or agents were forwarding the mail and did not realise there were two of us on the same station with the same name.
The next time I met Harold was on the Eddystone Lighthouse a few months later, where we had some hilarious laughs and he told me that the man who had emigrated on his identity particulars had been back to England and he had met him whilst ashore.
Harold Taylor West Sussex, 2001
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