One night in a club, Roy Shaw protected, the owner was given a chilling ultimatum. Pay a weekly pension or have his home and business burned to the ground leaving him and his family destitute if not killed. The man applying the pressure was Paddy Mullins, a heavyweight Irish enforcer who did not make idle threats.
A 26-year-old Roy Shaw was called. He was paid to protect the club. When Shaw confronted Mullins in the bar, the fight would be so brutal, one of the men was rushed to hospital and the other remanded to Brixton Prison. This is the story of the Limbo Club, a late-night drinking den, a protection racket, and a London underworld where threats were answered in blood.
By the time Roy Shaw was 26 and moving into the protection game, he had already been through more than most men see in a lifetime. Whilst doing his national service in Germany, he was sectioned after a string of violent incidents, then subjected to electric shock treatment in a military asylum. He was shipped home and discharged on the grounds he was mad.
After that, a spell in Borstal for robbery, the short, sharp shock treatment. But he escaped and ended up on the run boxing under the pseudonym Roy West for promoter Mickey Duff. Unfortunately, he lost his professional license due to his Borstal antics and this put paid to a promising boxing career and sent him down a darker path.
London in those days was the wild west. Little firms all over the city, all at it. Then there were the pub and club hard men. Fred Foreman called them the Saturday night cowboys. Many were straight goers in the week but would be out causing mayhem after a few pints on the weekend. The club sat right in the middle of it.
Late nights, cash, drink, women, gambling, men full of testosterone testing boundaries. If you run a club, you needed protection. And who better than Roy Shaw, a 26-year-old hard case who was not afraid to go up against anybody. Protection was his new racket and he took it seriously. The Limbo stood in Wardour Muse in the West End.
A late-night drinking den owned by a Maltese businessman. He was a family man, not a fighter. He was sick of having the strong arm put on him, so he employed Shaw to ward off the bully boys. Inside, it was exactly the kind of room that attracted trouble. Drink, music, women, villains, cash changing hands. Before we get to the bloody confrontation with Paddy Mullins, there’s another story from a week prior.
It involved the very person who was supposed to be protecting the club. In 60s London, you would still see signs in some pubs and guest houses. No blacks, no dogs, no Irish. But in the West End in the Limbo Club, that type of prejudice was not in force. It had a multicultural vibe, which at times could cause friction.
Shaw was in there one night with his wife, Carolina. He was dressed sharp, wearing an expensive cashmere overcoat. Two black men asked Carolina to dance. Shaw did not see it as harmless. He saw it as disrespect and he was not in the mood to let it pass. He says in his book he had no issue with someone’s skin color, but he did with them asking his wife to dance.
He grabbed one of them and shoved him away from the table. The man smashed a beer bottle and beckoned Shaw on. Big mistake. The doorman threw Shaw an equalizer to level things up. In a flash, Shaw was into them swinging wildly with a weighted cosh. With such venom, he battered both men to the ground. He continued to stamp and smash them until a big Irishman stepped in to pull him away.
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Shaw, in a complete frenzy, frothing at the mouth, launched a savage attack on the Irish guy, beating him to the floor where he pummeled him. Eventually, Shaw was persuaded to leave. And an ambulance came to pick the three men up who had been battered unconscious. But according to Shaw’s book, he wasn’t satisfied with the violence he had dished out.
I don’t know why he took such a dislike to the man who tried to break the fight up, but he followed the ambulance to the hospital in a taxi. Left Carolina outside, walked in, found the man being treated, and whacked him with the cosh again. That was the warning sign. Roy Shaw was not just violent. He could be dangerously unhinged when his temper exploded.
Then came Paddy Mullins. Mullins was a serious hardman over from Ireland, 6’3, broad-shouldered, a fading scar from a previous knife fight. He was not one to be trifled with. One night, he walked into the Limbo Club and demanded a weekly pension from the owner. He terrified the man so much, he agreed to give him money and free drinks.
The Maltese owner went to his office and called Shaw. It was like a red rag to a bull. He armed himself with a hunting knife and went down to the club. Shaw walked over to Mullins and bought him a pint of Guinness. It looked almost civil at first. It wasn’t. Shaw explained that the club was protected by him, that he should ask around about Shaw’s name.
Mullins sneered at the younger man, told him straight that it was his pub now. Wrong answer. Shaw hit him first, a huge punch straight on the chin. Mullins wobbled, but grabbed hold of him. They grappled, crashing around the club, trading blows as people backed away. Then Mullins went down. Shaw stood over him and bludgeoned him with kicks, stamps, and punches, one after another.
Mullins on the floor trying to cover up and preserve his teeth and skull with thick forearms covering his head. Then something darker crossed over Shaw, that flicker of madness. He reached for a hunting knife. Shaw took the blade and began plunging it into Mullins’ legs and backside as he lay on the floor. Soft flesh torn apart as the serrated edge pierced the skin.
Blood started spilling out across the floor. The feared Irish enforcer, who had walked in to muscle in on Shaw’s club, was left in a bloody mess at his feet. It was an act of barbarity that would spread far and wide throughout London’s underworld. Roy Shaw was not a man to [ __ ] with. Due to the savagery of the attack, a witness contacted the police.
Shaw was arrested and charged with grievous bodily harm with intent and remanded to Brixton Prison. A hunting knife, a wounded man, a club full of witnesses, if the victim went into court and spilled his guts, Shaw was going away for years. When the matter came before Bow Street, the prosecution had one problem. The victim, according to Shaw, stood up and claimed he’d saved his life.
He had stopped the attack and pulled him to safety. Without his bravery, he would have surely died. And with that tale, Roy Shaw walked free. But here’s the interesting bit. I researched this story to verify it actually happened. Many stories are made up in books, but not this one. I found the court reporting in a deeply buried archive.
However, the facts were different from the book. The Irishman was Mullins, Daniel Mullins. But the club was not in the West End as some versions of the story suggest. It was the Nucleus Club in Holborn. And the court scene, that was added for a touch of drama. The reality was more frustrating. Mullins never appeared in court.
Police could not track him down. And that part of the story simply disappeared into the fog of London clubland. But whilst researching it, I came across something else. In 1964, a year after Roy Shaw had fought two men inside the Limbo Club after the incident involving his wife, there was a killing outside the same club.
The Maltese owner was a man named Frank Farrugia. And the archives show the club had been linked to a number of violent incidents. This one was described as a gang battle involving up to 40 men, black and white, fighting in the street. A 25-year-old man from Deptford, John Howard, was stabbed in the chest and died.
It’s a small detail in the wider Roy Shaw story, but it says something about the world around him. The Swinging Sixties are often remembered for music, fashion, nightlife. But under the surface, London’s clubs could still be brutal places full of pressure, violence, racial tension, gang disputes, and men trying to build reputations.
In the end, Roy Shaw went home from prison in time to greet his son Gary into the world. But it would not be long before he began a much darker journey through the British prison system after being jailed for armed robbery. That story is for another day. Okay, if you enjoyed watching this on London’s clubland from the 1960s.
I did a video last week on Fred Foreman’s Club 211, which Foreman ran a casino at the top, and the person who asked him to get involved ran a bar downstairs. In that bar on this night, a young woman, around about 16, 17, a kid really, got a jaw broken by an ex-boxer. And this ex-boxer was in a gang.
They armed themselves with pickaxe handles, and Foreman came rushing down from the casino, and there was retribution in the car park, let’s put it that way. Okay, thank you for watching. Hit the like and subscribe. It really helps the channel. Until next time, that’s the Inquirer out.
