ACCRINGTON son Tommy ‘Two-Gun’ admitted he had been a gun fighting bootlegger in the days of prohibition in America.

For Tommy, real name Chatburn, of Paradise Street, gang warfare and death were never far away from his door in the 1920s and early 30s and his constant companions were a revolver and the risk of death by a bullet.

Tommy Two-Gun – “I don’t know how I got the name, but everyone called me that,” – was 71 when he spoke to the Telegraph, back in 1964, but he clearly recalled the glory-gory memories of his young life among the gangsters of Chicago and Detroit.

During the Roaring 20s in America, he shook hands with the famous gangster John Dillinger and met the top killers and racketeers – such as Al Capone, Diamond Black Jack and Italian Scarface.

He also witnessed the gunning down of Dillinger outside a cinema, recalling: “ I was outside the cinema and a woman in red came out and stood to one side.

“Her companion, Dillinger, came next alone and suddenly police machine guns from each side of the pavement gunned him down where he stood.”

Tommy, who was born in Accrington in 1893, went to Canada in 1926 during the Depression and made his way across the border into the States, but was deported two years later, for illicit whisky making.

But he went back, to set up a ‘blind pig’ in Detroit – this was the slang name for a secret drinking den.

Said Tommy: “I was fortunate that I had been a crack shot with a gun from the age of 22 thanks to Army training and although I was involved in many skirmishes, I was never wounded during a gun fight.”

During his years in America one of the toughest gang bosses on the streets was a man known as Whitey, who Tommy discovered came from... Brierfield.

“Whitey once saved my life. He ran a gang known as the Purple Gang and was a real hard nut.

“One gang had threatened to rub me out, but Whitey’s boys came in when they realised I was a Lancastrian and gunned them down instead.”

During the prohibition years Tommy found that the police would often work hand in glove with the racketeers: “When I used to take my holidays, it was not other racketeers who looked after my establishment, but the police.”

Tommy, who spent 12 years in the States and travelled from coast to coast, had one final memory for the Telegraph of his racketeering days.

“Generally speaking, the molls who hung around the gangsters were 10 times more evil than the men themselves.”

n John Herbert Dillinger's gang is said to have robbed 24 banks. Dillinger escaped from jail twice.

He was charged with, but never convicted of, the murder of an East Chicago, Indiana, police officer who shot Dillinger in his bullet-proof vest, prompting him to return fire. It was Dillinger’s only homicide charge. He was killed after evading police in four states.

In the heyday of the Depression-era outlaw (1933–1934) Dillinger was the most notorious of all, standing out even among more violent criminals such as Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Bonnie and Clyde. (Decades later, the first major book about ‘30s gangsters was titled The Dillinger Days.)

Media reports in his time were spiced with exaggerated accounts of Dillinger’s bravado and daringly colorful personality.

The government demanded federal action, and J. Edgar Hoover developed a more sophisticated Federal Bureau of Investigation as a weapon against organized crime and used Dillinger and his gang as his campaign platform to launch the FBI.[1] After evading police in four states for almost a year, Dillinger was wounded and returned to his father’s home to recover.

He returned to Chicago in July 1934 and met his end at the hands of police and federal agents who were informed of his whereabouts by Ana Cumpănaş (the owner of the brothel where Dillinger sought refuge at the time).

On July 22, the police and Division of Investigation[2] closed in on the Biograph Theater.

Federal agents, led by Melvin Purvis and Samuel P. Cowley, moved to arrest Dillinger as he left the theater. He pulled a weapon and attempted to flee but was shot four times and killed.[3]