London's biggest and baddest gangsters

Billy Hill – aka the Bandit King – started off as a house burglar, before becoming became a smuggler, 'project manager' of massive robberies, and swindler, conning hundreds of aristocrats out of their casino money thanks to a gambling trick known as 'the Big Edge', which involved bending certain cards. Hill became notorious for 'chivving' or stabbing people in fights, and liked to carve a 'V for victory' sign on his victims' faces. He once said: "I was always careful to draw my knife down on the face, never across or upwards. So that if the knife slips you don't cut an artery. After all, chivving is chivving, but cutting an artery is usually murder. Only mugs do murder."

Eddie Richardson and his brother Charlie hated being likened to the Krays: the former once called his East End rivals "small timers" who "weren't in his league". The duo terrorised London in the 1960s and 1970s with their Richardson mob, while their business empire extended from London scrap metal yards to Welsh slagheaps and South African mines. They became notorious after their 'torture trials', where their enemies were subjected to those unorthodox dental practices again, or were nailed to the floor by their feet. Some were even subjected to electric shocks to their genitals – and no, not it a Fifty Shades way…