Britain's Most Accomplished Cat Burglar Gets An Awesome Obituary

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Peter Scott

Peter Scott, who has died aged 82, was a highly accomplished cat burglar, and as Britain’s most prolific plunderer of the great and good took particular pains to select his victims from the ranks of aristocrats, film stars and even royalty.

According to a list of 100 names he supplied to The Daily Telegraph, he targeted figures such as Soraya Khashoggi, Shirley MacLaine, the Shah of Iran, Judy Garland and even Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother — although he added apologetically that, in her case, the authorities had covered up by issuing a “D-notice ”.

In 1994 Scott wrote to the newspaper to say that he would consider it “a massive disappointment if I were not to get a mention in [its] illustrious obituary column”. He explained that he derived much pleasure from reading accounts of the exploits of war heroes, adding: “I would like to think I would have fronted the Hun with the same enthusiasm as I did the fleshpots in Mayfair.” He added that he had been a Telegraph reader since 1957, when newspapers were first allowed in prisons, “on account of its broad coverage on crime”.

In the course of thieving jewellery and artworks from Mayfair mansions, Bond Street shops and stately homes, Scott also served Fleet Street as handy headline fodder, being variously hailed the “King of the Cat Burglars”, “Burglar to the Stars” or the “Human Fly”. He identified a Robin Hood streak in himself, too, asserting in his memoirs that he had been “sent by God to take back some of the wealth that the outrageously rich had taken from the rest of us”.

“I felt like a missionary seeing his flock for the first time,” he explained when he recalled casing Dropmore House, the country house of the press baron Viscount Kemsley, on a rainy night in 1956 and squinting through the window at the well-heeled guests sitting down to dinner. “I decided these people were my life’s work.”

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9949054/Peter-Scott.html

[Cleita]

1. Too bad that Robin Hood comparison didn't extend to giving money to

the poor, instead of waiters and tarts. But RIP anyhow. I suppose he qualifies for a rakish, gentleman burglar.

[Zax2me]

2. Oh, God. He's a crook.

Sounds like a typical narcissistic sociopath that is embellishing his activities and motives.
Even in death still succeeding at it.
For THAT, I tip my hat.

[cherokeeprogressive]

3. "I gave all my money to head waiters and tarts". "Gentleman Thief"? Nope: Simple criminal.

Fuck him and all other thieves. He's a piece of shit not fit for a headline other than "Simple Thief Dies Penniless".

In the end he lived on the Dole and owed over £440,000. A pauper's grave is more than he deserves.

[1monster]

6. Ya, a thief, but at least he wasn't stealing the bread from the mouths of children as

our very legal criminal thieves do today. And compared to what they take, Scott's thefts were negligible...

While I don't condone what he did, I guess it is just hard to feel much sympathy for rich people who lose trinkets that could have fed ten familes for ten years.

[cherokeeprogressive]

7. A rose by any other name...

that walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck.

[1monster]

8. And did I not just call him a theif? You replied before I extended my post.

[Katashi_itto]

22. Still a cool duck.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. I like him

Whatever. Steal from the rich? Good on him. Oh boo hoo. He's a thief. So what? So is Jamie Dimon. So is Lloyd Blankfein.

[NYC Liberal]

5. So if you earn money, you're okay with someone just taking it from you?

I assume since you're equating them, you like Jamie Dimon and what he's done.

[JDPriestly]

10. Not excusing the cat burglar, but isn't that what the banks have done over

the past ten years. Maybe longer.

[NYC Liberal]

15. So either he's as bad as the banks are,

or the banks are as "noble" as he is.

[JDPriestly]

19. He's as bad as the banks are.

[NYC Liberal]

20. I agree. Well, maybe the scales are different but

I don't support stealing and theft.

If people support wealth redistribution then it should be done through democratic process with due process. If that's what people want. (I don't think it's a good idea)

[JDPriestly]

21. Wealth redistribution is done all the time.

When the rich do it, they tell us they earned it.

But, in fact, the 2008 economic crisis was wealth distribution to the top. Although some banks "failed" at least on paper, that was a direct transfer of wealth from certain homeowners, especially those who had equity in their homes until the homes fell below market value due to the crash and those who had equity but lost their jobs or became ill and temporarily could not pay their mortgages. The banks really made out on that one. They resold the houses and sold new mortgages that will pay them handsomely what they really want which is not repayment of the cost of the house but the ongoing payments of interest on the loan. Redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the rich bankers (and I agree that not all bankers are rich).

The importation of goods made with cheap labor overseas that allows the very rich to skim profits of the sales before the products enter the US and deposit those profits in low-tax banking havens around the world is also wealth distribution to the top. (Avoiding paying a fair share of the infrastructure costs of the production and sale of the products from the profits made on those products.)

Exploiting the desperate laborers who are left unemployed by your (not you personally, NYC Liberal) outsourcing and importing and harboring of profits in tax havens overseas to work for cheap in your pizza joint and sell food with no nutritional value and maybe even containing synthetic junk is also wealth distribution to the top and the poisoning of everyone.

Exploiting the precious, limited resources of the earth as quickly and as carelessly as you can, pocketing the profits and hiding it in tax havens around the world -- also redistribution of the wealth of the earth to the rich.

And now, the rich are trying to redistribute even the pennies it costs to educate children to themselves.

Making an honest living, living better than your neighbors because you created something that makes the lives of your neighbors better? No one resents that. That is not unfair wealth redistribution.

Fast-trading on the stock or commodities market and getting yourself plugged in to that market so that you can trade the stock or commodity that someone on a farm in the Midwest has just indicated an interest in so that you make pennies off that and other similar farmers is like playing an old swindlers' game " Under which cup is the bean." That is wealth redistribution to the rich.

Oh! And profiting from the sale of addictive substances? Beer, wine, whiskey, cigarettes, cocaine, heroine -- that is wealth distribution. And laundering the money from those sales when the products are illegal -- very definitely wealth redistribution.

So wealth redistribution happens all the time. And we do not hear the rich complain about it.

Only if the wealth is being distributed to the hungry, the unemployed and the sick, only then do we hear complaints about wealth redistribution.

[alcibiades_mystery]

12. If I had 20 mil, I probably wouldn't get all sniffy if

Somebody managed to take a couple hundred thou of that, especially if I was spending that much on trivial shit like jewelry. The difference with Dimin is that that vultures robs all of us, not just the rich fuckers who don't need it, so no, I hate that fuck. You're not really likely to move me with the capitalist class's morality. It's straight bullshit.

[Barack_America]

14. Not to mention the insurance.

While I do not condone what he did, I can appreciate his talent. I figure there exist in this world far worse people with far less talent.

[NYC Liberal]

17. Can insurance replace a priceless belonging that has more than monetary value to it?

[NYC Liberal]

16. "rich fuckers who don't need it" -- so some burglar is the judge of what's needed and what isn't?

Maybe the money he took is a drop in the bucket for his victims, but that doesn't mean he deserves praise. At best he's just your average crook.

And do you think that because someone is rich that means that everything they own is worthless to them? How do you know the sentimental value behind everyone's belongings? "It's just jewelry"...unless, of course, it was given to you by your mom before she died and it has a lifetime of memories behind it. But perhaps only poor people's belongings can have sentimental value; if you have money then you must be a soulless, evil ghoul. Just like the ultra-wealthy FDR and Ted Kennedy were, right?

[DollarBillHines]

11. It's all a game.

The type of people on this thread who are condemning him are, usually, quite comfortable when visiting museums where virtually everything has been stolen at some point.

As to your Dimon/Blanfein comparison, those bastards have stolen from some people who couldn't afford the theft. The Cat Burglar's victims didn't feel much pain, I would wager.

[Generation_Why]

9. I love reading about fascinating people like this.

A folk hero deserving of a classy send off.

Rest in peace, Peter Scott.

[whistler162]

13. OH NO Raffles is dead!

[stevenleser]

18. Everytime I hear the term "Cat Burglar" I think of this...