Perec "Peter" Rachman (16 August 1919 – 29 November 1962) was a Polish-born landlord who operated in Notting Hill, London, England in the 1950s and early 1960s. He became notorious for his exploitation of his tenants, with the word "Rachmanism" entering the Oxford English Dictionary as a synonym for the exploitation and intimidation of tenants. Early life and World War II Rachman was born in Lwów, Poland, in 1919, the son of Jewish parents. His father was a dentist. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Rachman may have joined the Polish resistance. He was first interned by the Germans and, after escaping across the Soviet border, was reinterned in a Soviet labour camp in Siberia and cruelly treated. After the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Rachman and other Polish prisoners joined the II Polish Corps and fought with the Allies in the Middle East and Italy. After the war he stayed with his unit, as an occupation force in Italy until 1946 when it transferred to Britain. Rachman was demobilised in 1948 and became a British resident. Business career Rachman began his career by working for an estate agent in Shepherd's Bush. By 1957, he had built up a property empire in west London, consisting of more than a hundred run-down mansion blocks and several nightclubs. His office was at 91–93 Westbourne Grove, in Bayswater and the first house he purchased and used for multi-occupation was nearby in the run-down, St Stephen's Gardens, W2. In adjacent areas in Notting Hill (W11) and North Kensington (W10), including Powis Square, Powis Gardens, Powis Terrace, Colville Road and Colville Terrace, he also subdivided large properties into flats and let rooms, initially often for prostitution. Much of this area, south of Westbourne Park Road, having become derelict, was compulsorily purchased by Westminster City Council in the late 1960s and was demolished in 1973–74 to make way for the Wessex Gardens estate. According to his biographer, Shirley Green, Rachman moved the protected tenants into a smaller concentration of properties or bought them out to minimise the number of tenancies with statutory rent controls. Houses were also subdivided into a number of flats to increase the number of tenancies without rent controls. Rachman filled the properties with recent migrants from the West Indies. Rachman's initial reputation, which he sought to promote in the media, was as someone who could help to find