Fitted Up

The Mitcham Co-op Murder and the Fight to Prove My Innocence

Fitted Up is the remarkable true story of George Thatcher, who spent two weeks in a death cell awaiting the noose for murder following the Mitcham Co-op robbery in 1962. He was later reprieved, but would still serve 20 years for a crime he did not commit. This is a story of how the corrupt police "fitted him up" for the crime; a story of a life of poverty in the 1930s and 1940s as a child and young man—a life of petty crime in London's bleak 1950s underworld, reminiscent of all those black and white gangster films of the period. Thatcher was a non-violent "peter" man, a safe-blower, famous for blowing the safes of three Surrey cinemas in one night. He was a West End "Jack the Lad," but not a murderer. So when he was sentenced to death following the botched robbery, which he wasn't even a part of, his life was turned upside down. There is a detailed retelling of the farce of the trial. Thatcher's brief was the renowned Christmas Humphreys, who, during the whole trial, spent barely 15 minutes talking to him. The policeman in charge of the case subsequently committed suicide over the guilt of seeing an innocent man imprisoned for life alongside men such as the Krays, Frankie Fraser, and Ronnie Biggs, who would later become Thatcher's friends