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It was one of the stories of Christmas: the audacious theft of more than £10m in jewellery, designer handbags and cash from a mansion in St John’s Wood, north London.
The heist was carried out by a man who climbed in through a second-floor window and “moved like a cat” around the five-storey house, managing to avoid seven people before leaving with his haul.
It was a reminder of a time long before security cameras and sophisticated alarms, when cat burglars were often at work in the richer parts of London, stealing millions in jewels, art works and cash.
Peter Scott, nicknamed King of the Cat Burglars and the Human Fly, who died in 2013, was the most notorious and active in the trade. From a middle-class Belfast family, his teenage apprenticeship involved climbing into houses in the wealthy suburbs with his Belfast Royal Academy scarf and his self-confident manner as cover.
He had carried out more than 150 such thefts by the time he was arrested, in 1952, and jailed for six months. He moved speedily to London and for many years continued his activities. These he would later justify in Gentleman Thief, his 1995 memoir, writing: “I have an inbuilt suspicion that I was sent by God to take back some of the wealth that the outrageously rich had taken from the rest of us.”
His most famous burglary was from Sophia Loren when she was making The Millionairess at Elstree studios in 1960. He had read she would be paid in jewels, and pretended to be a journalist to find out exactly where she was staying, then climbed into the property and removed cash and jewels. At the time, it was listed as the largest jewel theft in the world, worth about £200,000. The 1965 film He Who Rides a Tiger, starring Tom Bell and Judi Dench, was partly based on his life.
“The term ‘cat burglar’ has been romanticised,” he later said. “You’re really only a dishonest window cleaner. I actually watch window cleaners doing much more dangerous things than I’ve ever done.”
His informants included chauffeurs from Knightsbridge, who let him know the addresses of the wealthy, and his burglaries, such as that in Avenue Road, often took place when there were people at home.
During one break-in, he recalled, “a titled lady had come to the top of the stairs and I shouted up: ‘Everything’s all right, madam’ and she went off to bed, assuming I was the butler”.
He spent many years in jail, with a final conviction in 1998, aged 67, for his involvement in the theft of a Picasso from a Mayfair art gallery. He explained afterwards that he had been “poaching excitement”.
When he died in 2013, a friend cleared out his flat and found a battered folder labelled Possible Victims File, which contained numerous cuttings from the Daily Mail and Daily Express gossip columns where mentions of gifts of expensive jewellery or house parties would be noted approvingly.
Scott had learned how to pick his targets and how to climb secretly into mansions from a man he met in prison and who had previously been Britain’s best-known cat burglar – George “Taters” Chatham, who died in 1997.
Chatham did his research in public libraries, examining Burke’s Peerage and magazines such as Tatler and Country Life. But while Scott and Chatham got the information on their intended victims from magazines and gossip columns, it seems now that would-be cat burglars will be scanning Instagram and social media for their targets.
One of Chatham’s most famous thefts, in 1948, was of the Duke of Wellington’s jewel-encrusted sword from the Victoria and Albert Museum. He broke through a window 12 metres (40ft) up by tying two ladders together. He removed the jewels, sold some and gave others to his girlfriend.
He once stole an eternity ring and a fur coat belonging to Lady Rothermere, wife of the chair of Associated Newspapers. Approached by one of the family’s editors and asked to return the items, he duly agreed.
A gambling habit meant most of the money Chatham made from his thefts went on bets. He would absent himself in the midst of a poker game in the West End to steal from neighbouring properties in order to continue playing. He spent much of his life in jail.
At the age of 76, he was still stealing and admitted: “What have I got? A lot of sad memories. And 30 years inside.”
Scott spent 14 years in jail and when described in the media as a “master criminal” would say that “master idiot” was more accurate. Both men suffered serious injuries in rooftop falls.
The vast expansion of the security industry and the increased domestic use of CCTV has certainly had an effect on such high-end break-ins and when a “cat burglar” makes the news now it may be for rather different reasons.
At Guildford crown court last month Carlos Cyrus, 30, admitted taking two cats, Tilly and Maisie, from addresses in Chertsey, Surrey, last July for no apparent reason. He was jailed for 20 weeks for each offence, not least because both cats were still missing.
