Essex expertise premieres at the East End Film Festival

Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Richard Hobbs, is to feature in a film about the East End gangster, Freddie Foreman.

Professor Hobbs has been interviewed by the film makers, Salon Pictures, who have drawn on his research and expertise in organised and professional crime, and London’s East End.

The film, FRED, looks at the life of Freddie Foreman, the man behind the notorious nick name ‘Brown Bread Fred’ and once regarded as the godfather of the sixties’ criminal scene. He is one of the last living gangsters of that era, with convictions for armed robbery and disposal of a body. He was also tried for murder on two separate occasions.

The film’s writer, director and producer, Paul Van Carter, said Professor Hobbs was a “.. pivotal and important expert voice in the film and on the history.”

An urban ethnographer specialising in the sociology of London, organised and professional crime, the night time economy and violence, Professor Hobbs taught in our Department of Sociology from 2011 to 2014. He was also Director of our Centre for Criminology.

FRED premieres at the East End Film Festival on Friday 13 April at 6.30pm.