Funny the things that you saw these days: women making bombs in factories all day, and drunk Chinamen in the middle of London on a Saturday morning when all God-fearing men and women should be serving King and Country – or taking it easy. Not that anyone seemed to take it easy in the Great Port of London. For mile upon mile, the riverbanks were lined with great cranes and towering warehouses, deep docks and busy wharfs. From Tower Bridge to Greenwich, from Wapping to the Isle of Dogs, the Port of London was a vast throat that swallowed everything that came its way: food, timber, cloth, coal, iron – anything that the capital of the British Empire needed. And now the Empire was at war, and had been for two years, it was incredible what passed through the Port of London. And what opportunities there were for natural crooks like John Stubbs, native of Whitechapel, prize conman and thief. Stubbs looked up and down the street. It was early and not yet busy. A potboy was sweeping the sawdust out of a pub down the road.
