Margaret “The Jeweller” McGraw is one of the names forever associated with Glasgow‘s notorious Ice Cream Wars. For decades, she was the righthand woman to one Scotland’s most feared gangsters – Tam “The Licensee” McGraw.
Sources said she was McGraw’s confidant, the person he would turn to for advice before making the big decisions throughout his criminal career. Over the decades, she earned a reputation as a shrewd operator and was well respected by McGraw’s associates.
He relied on her nous to run their “legitimate” businesses and counted on her silence when police came asking difficult questions. The pair were married for more than 30 years following their wedding in 1971 when McGraw was a petty criminal.
At the time, he earned his cash as a key member of Glasgow’s Barlanark Team which carried out armed robberies and broke into warehouses. According to insiders, Margaret, keen to ensure there was never a shred of evidence inside their home, would often make sure McGraw never entered the house wearing clothes he’d worn during the raids.
View 4 ImagesTam McGraw and his wife Margaret McGraw
A source once said: “There were plenty of times McGraw would turn up late at night wearing only his pants.” From those small beginnings, the pair rose through the ranks and they put their cash to use by bringing ice cream vans to Glasgow‘s East End in the 1980s.
Margaret was responsible for running one of the units as the pair became embroiled in the city’s notorious Ice Cream Wars. How much ice cream they actually sold is anyone’s guess as the vans were used as a front for selling drugs and stolen goods on their routes.
The McGraws weren’t the only family which had a fleet of ice cream vans and a turf war soon erupted between vendors which resulted in a series of assaults and vehicles being vandalised. Six members of the Doyle family were murdered as the Ice Cream Wars turned ever more violent when their home in the Ruchazie housing estate when their home was deliberately set on fire.
Andrew “Fat Boy” Doyle refused to let McGraw use his van to sell drugs. Over the years, rivals poked fun at Margaret for her love of gold trinkets and nicknamed her The Jeweller – a moniker insiders claim most people were too scared to utter in her presence.
View 4 ImagesMargaret McGraw outside the Bothwell Bridge Hotel
The moll believed she could see the future by reading Tarot cards. McGraw and his cronies regularly got her to make predictions.
A source previously said: “Margaret was no one’s fool and McGraw heavily relied on her. He wouldn’t have been able to do half of what he did without her.
“Some may think reading cards is mumbo jumbo but Margaret took it very seriously and McGraw often asked her to give a reading.”
According to paper work, Margaret also ran and owned The Caravel pub – the venue which McGraw based his crime empire and saw him amass a fortune thought to be in the region of £30 million.
A source had said: “They say that ‘behind every successful man, there is a woman’, and in Tam’s case, it was a woman who was even shrewder than he was.
“She was both feared and respected and helped Tam build up his fortune, having a laser-like focus on how much money they were making, where it was coming from, where it was and where it should go.“
The dirty money was laundered through a maze of bank accounts and front companies the couple set up. Exactly how much was laundered is a mystery as the couple also had links to a string of legitimate business interests including security companies and taxi firms.
Margaret, for her part, helped oversee rackets ranging from drugs and violence to robbery and extortion as many of their friends and enemies were killed and murdered. Claims McGraw was backed by corrupt police officers came from rival Paul Ferris who alleged drugs confiscated from other dealers were passed to McGraw which he was then able to sell on the streets.
McGraw was questioned in connection with a number of murders, including the double hit on Joe Hanlon and Bobby Glover. Hours before detectives investigating the double murder arrived, The Caravel was also suddenly demolished after underworld sources identified the boozer as the crime scene.
View 4 ImagesDaily Record frontpage July 31 2007
It’s believed Margaret’s shrewd business brain allowed them to turn their crime profits into assets, successfully avoiding prosecution and allowing them to keep their fortune. Tam had just £621 in his bank account when he died in 2007, with his millions hidden in offshore accounts and property.
The money was tied up in business deals across Europe, from Ireland to Poland, and in a small number of Scottish firms. The authorities and his enemies tried to bring him down – on and off the streets.
In 1978, McGraw walked free from the High Court after facing trial accused of the attempted murder of a policeman. He was cleared on the controversial not proven verdict, and would walk free on the same ruling two decades later after being charged with drug trafficking.
In 1998, a jury cleared him of funding a multi-million pound drug-running operation. But his brother-in-law John Healy was jailed for 10 years for his part in the scheme.
The gang smuggled cannabis consignments worth £260,000 into Scotland by hiding it in a secret compartment of an adapted minibus being used to transport a boys football team. In 2002, McGraw was stabbed in broad daylight not far from his house.
Tensions were so high between him and rivals at the time he was wearing a bullet-proof vest when he was attacked. And the vest saved his life, thwarting his attackers’ attempts to kill him and leaving him only suffering minor injuries.
Despite their home being well known to enemies, they continued to live in the property, in Glasgow’s Mount Vernon. McGraw collapsed and died, aged 55, after he suffered a heart attack at the property in 2007.
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His widow continued to live there, and in 2017 offloaded £1.4million worth of shares she had in controversial taxi firm Glasgow Private Hire. The shares in the firm, which is one of the biggest and most successful in Scotland, were sold to multimillionaire business tycoon Steven Malcolm before Margaret died after battling throat cancer in 2018.
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