Aftermath

Over 8,000 people attended the funeral of William Plommer. His murder had caught the headlines and shocked the nation. Questions remain to this day as to the guilt of the brothers who hung for his murder.Jail finally caught up with old gang-leader George Mooney. He was sentenced for biting a man’s ear off on a train coming back from a race meeting.Sillitoe became known as the saviour of Sheffield. He earned his own nickname as Britain’s first ‘Gangbuster’. With the Sheffield gangs destroyed, he was sent to Glasgow to deal with the razor gangs. Local historian and author JP Bean argues that Sillitoe picks up too much of the credit for finishing off what his predecessor had started. But Sillitoe’s five years in Sheffield coincided with the end of the gangs. After five years of ‘knifings, shootings and razor slashings’ the gangs were smashed.After Glasgow, Sillitoe would go on to become head of MI5 in 1946. His cockney hard man ways weren’t liked but he was successful. During his time he dealt with the threat of Communist spying and exposed the Cambridge spy ring and the ‘atom spies’. He left after seven years. He then became head of the International Diamond Security Organisation. There he successfully stopped the smuggling of diamonds from Sierra Leone.Aged 73, the ‘gangbuster’ died at home in Eastbourne in 1962.