The Bank Robbers Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight (Or Do Anything Right, Really)

When the Duffy Brothers were deported from the U.S., they hatched a plan to bring Bonnie-and-Clyde-style armed robbery across the pond. Their plan had more holes than a bullet-riddled safe.

Being based in north-east England can sometimes seem like a hindrance to my writing career. I’m a six-hour drive from London and then a seven-hour flight from New York. I’m a long way from the main hubs of the publishing industry and, it might seem, a long way from the kind of bold, cinematic stories I like to tell. But I’ve come to realize that being off the beaten track can also be an advantage. It’s easier to find untold and forgotten stories in less well-trodden places, as fewer writers are trawling for ideas. I’ve discovered several stories rooted in north-east England that branch out much further afield, often straddling the Atlantic. This story involves the hapless Duffy brothers, self-styled American gangsters who meet their downfall in Newcastle, my hometown. Publishing what has now become a Narratively Classic allowed it to reach a global audience, proving that a compelling narrative can achieve worldwide appeal regardless of its origin.

—Paul Brown

Illustrations by Vaughn Parish | Story edited by Farah Mohammed

The American gangsters entered the British bank at three minutes to closing time on a Friday afternoon. Three men — two brothers and an accomplice — arrived outside, wearing black masks and gloves, horn-rimmed glasses, and narrow-brimmed trilby hats pulled low over their foreheads. They were armed with two revolvers and an automatic pistol. It was 2:57 p.m. on June 2, 1933, and the bank was the Cattle Market branch of Lloyds Bank in the soot-black industrial city of Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England. Outside, at the Friday meat market, butchers and wholesalers closed up their stalls and rinsed blood from their cleavers. Inside, at the end of a busy week, bank clerks tallied up receipts and attended to the last straggle of customers, including apron-wearing market workers and a 15-year-old girl. The masked men pushed through the bank’s double doors and raised their guns: “Everybody stand still and put up your hands.”

The brothers were Joe and Tommy Duffy, a pair of self-proclaimed American gangsters. They described themselves as hardened villains who had run with America’s most notorious criminals and served time in the country’s toughest prisons. They claimed reputations as violent enforcers and armed robbers — and had the broken noses and gunshot wounds to prove it. Now they were bringing the bullet-spraying American bank robbery to sleepy England, where armed robberies were virtually unknown. But their gangster credentials were about to be severely tested. They had chosen the wrong bank, in the wrong city, at the wrong time, and there would be terrible consequences.