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Further Information - William J Elliott Biography
William J Elliott was born 1886 and had the following series characters: Anthony England, Royston Frere, Ed Gunning and Bren Hardy. We should like more information on this author, if you are a family member and would like to help please do get in touch - thank you.
Sample from Shot Silk
SCOTLAND YARD SEEKS ASSISTANCE
Almost everyone to-day knows what is meant when they hear or read any reference to "the Underworld." They know it for that strata of society wherein move and have their being, murderers, thieves, swindlers, courtesans, and all those pests and parasites who, by dishonest means, live and batten upon the rest of society. Most people are also aware that the Underworld, like the upper one, has its clearly denned social distinctions (thus the killer does not usually associate with the mere burglar, or the burglar with the sneak-thief—just as his Lordship does not associate with his butler, or his butler with the fellow who cleans the windows) and also that it is more or less national—that the Underworld of Paris, for instance, differs in many respects from that of London, and the Underworld of New York is different from either of them.
But what a great many people are not, perhaps, aware of is that behind (or beneath ?) the ordinary Underworlds, there exists what one might describe as a tower-Underworld, which is international and which comprises only one class of individual. The inhabitants of this lower Underworld are comparatively few in number, but these few are infinitely dangerous to society. For they are the super-criminals—the King-pins of villainy. The men who finance, and frequently organise, the greater and more commercialised criminal avenues, such as the dope and the white-slave traffics, organised blackmail, and so on. And the trouble is that these individuals, responsible as they are for so much sin and misery, are very, very rarely called upon to pay socially for their crimes. They are far too clever for that!
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