Peter Scott (thief)

[2] At the end of his life, Scott drove an old Mercedes-Benz car, a gift from the son of London gangster Billy Hill.

[1] For these early crimes he served six months in Crumlin Road Gaol, later claiming that the police had only charged him with twelve burglaries because of their embarrassment at the scale of his exploits.

[1] When Scott cased Viscount Kemsley's Dropmore House in 1956, he saw guests sitting down to dinner, and likened himself to "a missionary seeing his flock for the first time...

"[1] Disturbed during one burglary by a titled lady who appeared at the top of the stairs, Scott, well-dressed, shouted to her "'Everything's all right, madam,'... and she went off to bed thinking I was the butler."

[1] In 1960 Scott stole a necklace worth £200,000, described as Britain's biggest jewellery theft, from the Italian actress Sophia Loren, who was in the United Kingdom filming The Millionairess.

His imprisonment stemmed from the 1997 theft of Pablo Picasso's painting Tête de Femme from an art gallery in Mayfair.

[1] Scott quoted poet William Ernest Henley to the police who arrested him, declaring that "Under the bludgeonings of chance, my head is bloody but unbowed.

"[1] Scott wrote that he had "an obscene passion for larceny" and described himself as "a man who has made all the mistakes that vanity, envy and greed create".