Gem Chambers was built on Blackett Street in 1904 for the jewellers Reid & Sons, who installed a formidable two-inch thick steel shutter on the front of the shop to keep their valuables safe. However, this didn’t deter one of the world’s most notorious cat burglars, The Human Fly, who carried out a daring raid on the premises.
George William Enright was born in Tasmania and moved to America to become a movie stuntman where he was tipped for stardom, but instead he turned his daredevil skills to a life of crime. In 1922, he scaled the outside of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and stole jewellery worth $25,000 from the wife of the millionaire hat maker, George Stetson, earning himself the nickname, ‘The Human Fly’.
He was arrested but the case was dropped due to difficulties identifying him, he was living in America under the alias ‘George McCraig’. After making two audacious escapes from police custody following burglaries in San Francisco and Chicago, he moved to London where he kept a luxurious flat in Jermyn Street with the proceeds of similar crimes in this country. In June of 1928 he was in Newcastle with three accomplices, with the intention of robbing several thousand pounds’ worth of jewels from Reid & Sons.
The Human Fly climbed onto the roof of the Newcastle Picture House around the corner on Grey Street, from where he was able to enter an office above Reid’s through a lavatory window. He let his gang into the office and they were attempting to drill their way through the floor into the shop below when two policemen walked past and noticed an open door. They entered the building and three of the men were arrested after a vicious fight in which one of the cops was seriously injured. Enright jumped out of an upstairs window and made his escape.
He was captured in London and brought back to Newcastle in handcuffs by train, but escaped again by jumping through a window while travelling at sixty miles an hour. He was recaptured in a field and stood trial with the rest of his gang at Newcastle Assizes, where he was sentenced to four years in prison.
The leap from the train had almost killed him but he resumed his thieving as soon as he was released. Revered among the criminal fraternity as a ‘gentleman crook’, he was always immaculately dressed when socialising in London’s West End, but was frequently obliged to swap his bowtie and tails for a prison uniform. Jailing him for the final time in 1938, the judge remarked, “It must be a dreary life, this perpetual conflict with the law. You are bound to lose every time – certainly in the long run.”