Stop press

A little while ago, the church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great in West Smithfield, first noticed here at reference 1 and one of the few old churches left in London, hosted the funeral of a gangster called Bruce Reynolds, organised by his entirely respectable sounding son.

While yesterday, the rather grand Italian church in Clerkenwell, first noticed here at reference 2, hosted the funeral of a man described as the last of the big gangsters of the 1950s. People who were into cut throat razors and cudgels rather than guns.

It seems that funerals of criminals are almost as exciting as the funerals of royalty and film stars. I can only suppose that the priests in charge of such places console themselves with the thought that we are all (barring suicides and such like riff-raff) entitled to a proper send off, as they trouser the unusually large donation to the church funds. I wonder if it has always been so.

You can read all about it in various articles in the Guardian archive, one of which is to be found at reference 3 below.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Bartholomew+%C5%A0vejk.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=italianchurch.

Reference 3: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/apr/26/criminal-funerals-big-small.