First published in 1972, Inside the Underworld gives a general picture of the underworld, showing it as it really is, stripped of romanticism and popular misconceptions—a non-stop resistance movement against the forces of law and order, whose ranks include both the weak and the strong, the skilled and the bungling.
How do robbers, con-men, and heisters function? What makes a top gang? Is underworld society different from ordinary society? What kind of clubs do criminals frequent? What is their taste in clothes, in girls, in jokes? Is the modern criminal most at home in Mayfair, Cannes, or Soho? What happens to his wife, his girls, his family when he goes to prison? Can he get policemen to take bribes or turn a blind eye to flagrant crimes? Questions such as these are answered as Peta Fordham unfolds her panorama of the underworld, and the reader will be able to learn many of the humdrum, sad and funny facts of life on the wrong side of the law. The author introduces an amazing variety of underworld characters, refugees from ‘straight society’ as well as callous and compulsive villains. Among her vignettes is the story of the young man who was largely responsible for changing the nature of British criminal expertise.
Mrs Fordham shows in considerable detail the changing attitudes of the underworld to the law, the police, to violence, and to international gangsterism.