Johnny Ramensky

Johnny Ramensky spent most of his adult life in prison, yet he became one of the most popular criminals Scotland has ever known. He was a safebreaker of extraordinary skill who never carried a weapon and never used violence, even when cornered by the police. He escaped from Peterhead Prison more than once. And during the Second World War his talent with explosives was put to work for his country, opening enemy safes as a member of an elite commando unit. To many Scots he was a folk hero: Gentle Johnny.

From Glenboig to the Gorbals

He was born Jonas Ramanauskas on 6 April 1906 in Glenboig, a mining village near Coatbridge, the son of Lithuanian immigrants. His father died when he was about eight, and the family moved to the Gorbals, then one of the most crowded districts in Britain.

He was in trouble by the age of eleven and spent time in Polmont Borstal as a teenager. Like his father, he worked in the pits, and it was there that he learned to handle explosives. Combined with great physical strength and the agility of a gymnast, it was a dangerous education.

A "peter man"

Ramensky began as a burglar and graduated to safe-blowing, known in the underworld as being a "peter man". He insisted that he only ever robbed businesses, never people’s homes, and he never resisted arrest with violence. His good manners became legendary. When one of the detectives who had pursued him for years, Robert Colquhoun, fell ill, Ramensky sent him a message wishing him a speedy recovery and suggesting he had been working too hard.

Peterhead

In 1931 Ramensky married Margaret McManus. In 1934 he was sentenced to five years in Peterhead Prison, the grim jail on the north-east coast that held Scotland’s hardest convicts. That year his wife died, and he was refused permission to attend her funeral. On 4 November 1934 he escaped, the first man ever to break out of Peterhead. He was recaptured after about 28 hours.

On his return he was put in solitary confinement in shackles. The Glasgow MP John McGovern raised his treatment in Parliament, and in December 1934 the chains were removed. Ramensky is said to have been the last prisoner shackled in a Scottish prison cell.

Commando

When the Second World War broke out, Ramensky was in Peterhead again. He wrote asking to be allowed to serve, and his skills caught the interest of Robert Laycock, who was looking for men with unusual talents for commando raiding forces. Released in October 1942, he enlisted in 1943 and was posted to No. 30 Commando, a unit that gathered intelligence by seizing documents from enemy headquarters. He trained as a soldier and taught other men to use explosives.

In Italy his skills came into their own. He is said to have opened fourteen safes and strongboxes in a single day. Many of the more colourful stories told about him, including raids on Rommel’s headquarters and Goering’s country house, do not fit the facts: the Rommel raid took place while he was still in prison. But his service was real, and after the war he worked as a translator helping to repatriate thousands of displaced Lithuanians before leaving the army in 1946.

Back to the old life

Peace brought no reform. Ramensky returned to safe-blowing and spent most of the rest of his life in and out of prisons, including Barlinnie and Saughton, escaping from Peterhead again more than once. Among his solicitors was Joseph Beltrami. In 1955 he married again. His last arrest came when he was found on a shop roof in Ayr. He suffered a stroke while serving his sentence in Perth Prison and died in Perth Royal Infirmary on 4 November 1972, aged 66.

The legend

Ramensky’s mixture of crime, courage and courtesy made him a hero of Scottish popular culture. In 1959 Norman Buchan, later a Labour MP, wrote "The Ballad of Johnny Ramensky", recorded by the folk singer Enoch Kent, and the actor Roddy McMillan wrote the song "Ramensky Must Go Free". Stories of hidden wartime loot have attached themselves to his name, though none has ever been proved. He stands apart from the violent gangsters who dominate so much of Glasgow’s criminal history: a thief, certainly, but one whom even the police seem to have liked.

Timeline