Cigar – Gangsters always have a cigar in hand and a shot of “bootleg” whiskey in a flask by their side.

Last year he apologised to neighbours after a peacock he had been given as a gift escaped his garden and “ran amok” in the neighbourhood.Dave Courtney, who has died aged 64, was a nightclub bouncer, knuckle-duster wielding debt collector and latter-day henchman of the Kray brothers; he was nicknamed “Yellow Pages” for his gangland connections – until he decided to adopt the persona of media-friendly mobster, publishing a best-selling true crime memoir and making a living from television documentaries, films and speaking engagements, while also raising money for charity. Our fashion history blog helps you create the look from decades past using vintage, vintage inspired and thrifty clothing. He and his brother Dominic were responsible for at least 25 unsolved murders during their 20-year reign in Manchester's underworld. One of the most infamous criminal duos in history is Bonnie and Clyde, whose bank robbery spree spanned multiple states.

His first two marriages, to Susan Ray and Annette Barn, were dissolved and he was separated from his third wife, Jennifer Pinto, a rap artist known as JennyBean. Lured to an underworld party, he was murdered by Reggie Kray following the failed gangland hit on suspected informant Leslie Payne. Youngest armed robber in Britain at 16, became a brutal hitman in the 70s but then went to prison, where former gangster Charlie Richardson persuaded him out.

The index to his memoirs was littered with such names as Caesar the Geezer, Fred the Head, Bulldog Dean, Eight Ball Pete, Jimmy Five Bellies, Jack “The Hat” McVitie and John “Mad Dog” Mangan; there were 23 entries under “B” for “Big”.

Involved in the Brink's-Mat robbery in 1983 and subsequently stabbed police officer John Fordham to death. Despite causing widespread turmoil, the Prohibition era and Great Depression provided gangsters with an opportunity to thrive. Rivals of the Kray Twins, [27] they were eventually imprisoned after being implicated in the murder of a South African businessman in 1967. Head of the Clerkenwell crime syndicate until an investigation by MI5 and the Inland Revenue resulted in his imprisonment in 2003. Along the way he claimed to have been shot, stabbed and had his nose almost bitten off in a pub brawl (“I’ve got holes all over my body”).

TERRY ADAMS: THE LAST BRITISH GANGSTER AND THE 'GOODFELLAS' TAPES Archived 4 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine – Rex Williamson-Travis, Courtnews. Scottish mobster involved in extortion, narcotics and drug trafficking in Glasgow from the 1970s until his death in 2007.

Capone owned several Panama hats and even imported a hat maker from Ecuador just to make them for him.Yet Courtney certainly established impressive contacts in the criminal underworld, albeit after most of them had ended up behind bars or on the run.