Charles ‘Ruby’ Sparkes, aka Rubberface because he pulled grimaces in police photographs; and Lily Kendall, the real Bobbed-Hair Bandit [Mirrorpix]

THE story of Charles Sparkes ends in 1988, when the quiet newsagent of Regent’s Park Road, Primrose Hill, passed away.

He had been a well-respected and popular shopkeeper on the parade, and if his customers had any inkling of his colourful past, they were too polite to mention it. Because Charles Sparkes was better known by a name gangland friends gave him as a youngster – Ruby Sparkes, the robber who invented the smash-and-grab raid, and who was so prolific the Metropolitan Police formed the Flying Squad to catch him.

As part of our new online social history YouTube channel, Untold London, I’ve been delving into newspaper archives to find hidden stories of Londoners who trod these streets before us. And it was while looking into the wartime archives of the Sunday Pictorial that I came across the story of Ruby and his mystery accomplice named the Bobbed-Hair Bandit, an upper-class debutante called Joyce Alexandra Powys-Wilson.

Joyce’s background was a far cry from Ruby Sparkes, who grew up in Camberwell. His father was called Oliver Cromwell Sparkes. A bare-knuckle prize fighter, his family were burglars and fenced stolen goods.

As a child, Ruby broke into an Indian Maharajah’s Park Lane mansion and walked off with jewels. A fence told him the red stones he had pinched were worthless, so he gave them away while socialising in Soho coffee houses. He would read the following day of a daring cat burglar who had stolen £40,000-worth of rubies. It gave him a nickname that would stick through a 20-year crime spree.

The story in the Sunday Pictorial said Sparkes had become “notorious for his daring smash-and-grab raids with a woman known to the Yard as the ‘Bobbed-Hair Bandit’.”

How a 1936 Illustrated Police News depicted the Bobbed-Hair Bandid escaping from a raid; top: the 1940 Sunday Pictorial story by Joyce Powys-Wilson [Image: With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive]

In the article, Joyce confesses to being the accomplice: “I was behind the scenes of this great crime wave. Ruby took a lead in organising the gang who harassed the police most. The smash-and-grab raiding was not just casual brick throwing or spur-of-the-moment robbery. It was carefully and painstakingly planned.”

Described as “society girl-turned-bandit…her confessions form the most amazing crime dossier ever published,” roared the paper.

But while the Met had it there in black and white – a notorious criminal was handing herself in – alarm bells rang with detectives.

And rightly so.

They spoke to Miss Powys-Wilson and concluded she was an attention seeker who thought the publicity would help her break into films.

Another theory emerged, stating the real Bobbed-Hair Bandit had put Joyce up to it. Many of the details in the articles, it was said, could only have been written by someone with a good knowledge of Ruby’s life and career as a criminal. Ruby used the alias John Wilson – was there a connection between Joyce Wilson and the robber?

The police believed the real Bandit was called Lily Kendall.

How she and Ruby met is lost in the mists of time, but she appeared on the police’s radar when her husband Henry Goldstein was arrested for living off her immoral earnings.

In 1926 Ruby, also known as Rubberface because he pulled grimaces in police photographs, was having a drink with Lily and two others in the Railway Hotel, West End Lane.

A barman overheard them plot to burgle a house. He tipped off police and three detectives lay in wait.

A high-powered car waited outside the Fairfax Road address with the Bobbed-Hair Bandit at the wheel. Police pounced as men emerged carrying stolen goods. But the woman, sporting the trendy haircut, fled along Belsize Road.

In 1924, a Brooklyn-based husband and wife team had been on a crime spree. When Celia Cooney was arrested, the papers had a field day due to her hairstyle. The British media were now delighted they had a homegrown Bobbed-Hair Bandit of their own. A criminal star was born.

The detectives had a good look at the woman, they identified her as Lily Goldstein. Her brother Victor was known to the police, and he had worked with John Wilson – a cover name used by Ruby.

The 1940 Sunday Pictorial story by Joyce Powys-Wilson [Mirrorpix]

The pair did time in Strangeways but escaped over a wall using ropes made from mail bags. Lily waited outside in a stolen Bentley to take “Wilson” and her brother home.

In 1933, she again came to the attention of the authorities, caught in a New Bond Street milliners with £104 worth of lingerie secreted under her clothes. The police said she was “strongly suspected of being the Bobbed-Hair Bandit”.

Ruby, with Lily by his side, was successful: he once landed a haul worth the equivalent of £15million today when he robbed the Piccadilly-based Wernher family jewels collection. But Lily did not like Ruby’s dangerous climbs up drainpipes and over roofs. Instead, she suggested they take advantage of two growing trends in the post-war decade: fast cars, and shop windows lit up and displaying riches. Ruby smashed the windows, Lily drove the cars, and became a media darling “often dressed in a red beret and a motoring coat of the same colour, or in an all-green motoring outfit, and she is believed to be the brains behind the recent country house raids,” The Times declared.

Ruby and Lily made a fortune before Ruby was caught in 1930 and sent to Dartmoor. He didn’t do his time quietly – he led the infamous 1934 riot that was finally quashed by the army, and in January 1940 escaped. Sparkes filed through bars and made a series of skeleton keys to open gates.

It was while he was on the run in 1940 that the Bobbed-Hair Bandit story took a bizarre twist. It was then Joyce Powys-Wilson approached the Sunday Pictorial.

Years later, historian Alyson Brown suggested it may have been Lily behind the articles as a smoke­screen – echoed in the autobiography of gangster “Mad” Frankie Fraser, who was a friend.

Lily helped Sparkes while he was on the run, and the police knew it. They tailed her and Sparkes was arrested at a cinema in Neasden.

Lily, who was convicted of harbouring an escaped criminal, told the court she had “had enough of this bandit lark” and disappeared from public view.

Ruby stayed inside until 1944. He then ran clubs for underworld friends until the early 1950s, and then went straight.

The best-known smash-and-grab artist in London, a man so tough he carried bulldog clips to clamp together wounds he expected to receive, settled down to sell newspapers and sweets and put his crimes behind him.

• Look out for this story coming soon to our new YouTube channel Untold London – Dan Carrier’s guide through the capital’s lost history. www.youtube.com/@UntoldLDN/videos
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