Foreign News: Free Enterprisers

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The five sturdy sons of Giuseppe Messina were dependable boys, and each went into the family business: prostitution. At first they were successful in a small way, with a chain of North African brothels. But when they aimed at bigger things, there was trouble: Salvatore Messina was jailed in Egypt for six months, and when the other brothers—Alfredo, Eugene, Attilio, Carmello—tried to set up houses in France, Spain and Italy, they ran afoul of competitors and the law.

Pimps & Panders. In 1934 Eugene Messina, describing himself as a merchant, traveled to London to investigate conditions. On the surface, Britain appeared sternly moralistic, with puritanical drinking laws and a prim observance of the Sabbath. But it was also full of men devoted to pleasure and prepared to pay. The Messinas decided that what London vice needed was organization, and they set out to provide it. To his delight, Eugene Messina discovered that it cost no more in legal fines to obstruct a London street with a tart than with a car.

Within a year, all the Messinas were in London and in the family business. Three of them got arrested as pimps and panders, but beat the rap, making the police hesitant to try again, for fear of being wrongly accused of persecuting innocent men. The war years were golden years for the Messinas. After 1945 they scoured the Continent for likely women-for-sale, spent lavishly to enchant their prey. Of her date with Attilio, one girl says: "For the first time in my life, I felt someone wanted me. His voice was so soft, so ingratiating. I said to myself after our first meeting, 'This is a gentleman.' "

Pavement Patrols. On paper, the Messinas were ostensibly in business as antique dealers, diamond merchants, exporters, and one by one they took on British-sounding names—Raymond Maynard, Charles Maitland, etc. Each brother had three or four addresses. Frequently a girl who paid her earnings to one brother lived in a flat owned by another. As the boys became more polished, they got themselves measured for Savile Row suits, and liked to keep a wary eye on the pavement patrols of their girls by cruising Curzon Street and Shepherd Market in Rolls-Royces. By the 1950s, the police estimated that at least 200 of London's most expensive prostitutes were Messina fillies.

One of the boys, Eugene, did get into trouble in 1947, when he slashed a rival body-trader with a razor, but he celebrated his release—after two years in prison —by buying a $16,000 black-and-cream Rolls. In 1950 Reporter Duncan Webb of the Sunday People ran a well-documented exposé of the Messina brothers. Four of them promptly left the country. Only Alfredo, against whom Reporter Webb found no evidence, stayed on in a London suburb with his so-called "wife," Hermione Hindin, a fulltime prostitute. Arrested and accused of living on Hermione's earnings, Alfredo said he was aghast to learn how Hermione passed her time. Though Hermione, rattling her gold bangles and chain-smoking, refused to testify against him, Alfredo got two years.