Gentleman Johnny

I learned about this interesting fellow while researching for some new test content. Thought I'd pass it along. Next time you're at a party and someone says, "You know, I really wish I knew more about Scottish burglars from history," just bust this story out for them.

When Johnny Ramensky was a boy, his coal miner dad died, leaving little Johnny, his two sisters, and a loving wife behind in the slums of Glasgow. At a young age, Johnny was forced to take his father's place, working long hours down in the coal mines.

As Johnny grew up doing hard manual labor, two things happened. One, he grew up incredibly strong and athletic. Two, he grew to despise the life of the working class. He sought to escape poverty any way he could.

"Why not cat burglary?" Johnny said to himself one day, and in a flish-flash, he was scaling buildings by night and making a living in stolen goods. But here's where Johnny was different from your average run-of-the-mill burglar. Johnny had morals you see. He refused to burglarize regular people. Instead, he opted to rob from businesses and government offices.

Johnny was also one of the few burglars who could pull off a job with dynamite. He knew that if he really wanted big paydays, he'd need to be able to get into safes and vaults. He had worked with dynamite, and he knew how to use it to his advantage. So, Johnny carried dynamite along on every job.

Unfortunately, Johnny wasn't very lucky. He got caught. A lot. Always the moral high-roader, however, Johnny refused to put up a fight. The way he saw it, getting caught was as much a part of his job as anything else. When busted, Johnny went cordially. He hated violence, and never wanted anyone to be hurt by his actions. As a result, the police and newspapers of the day called him "Gentleman" John Ramensky.

"Gentleman" John spent most of his life in prison. Forty years in all. But prison was always a fairly temporary place for Johnny. It seemed that just about any time he decided to leave prison, he found a way out. He escaped from Peterhead (har, har, I know) Prison anywhere from 5-10 times during his incarceration. Three times in 1958 alone.

But we're reaching the part of the story where you may be saying, "So what?" Why does history shine on a lifetime criminal like Johnny Ramensky? Because he was a nice guy? Because he had a penchant for dynamite? No. It's because he was a war hero.

In 1942, Allied forces were ready to invade Rome. As part of their plan to invade, they wanted to sweep over as many embassies as possible, but they'd need a safe-cracker. They called on Gentleman Johnny, who was on a several year sentence in Peterhead at the time. In the first day of the invasion, Johnny moved in with the front wave of troops. He blew the safes in 14 embassies in one day, and became a national hero of the Scottish.

He was brought back to Glasgow and decorated as a war hero. He was granted a pardon for all of his crimes, and his sentences were all commuted.

And Johnny went right back to burglary. He was back in prison by the early 1950s, and he bounced in and out of prison for the rest of his life. In 1970, at the age of 65, he fell from the top of a government building during a break-in and suffered injuries from which he never recovered. He died two years later.

During one of his prison stints, Johnny wrote an autobiography, but he couldn't get it published without permission. He submitted it to the Scottish government for permission to get it published. They told him that they would only allow him to publish the sections about his war effort. He decided to pass. He only had a few years left, so he decided to bide his time and publish the book when he got back out into the real world. When he finally made it out, he asked prison officials to return his journals so he could publish his story. Sadly, they had already incinerated the stories. He never bothered to make another attempt at an autobiography.