Me and My Brothers
Robin Mcgibbon
Charlie Kray
An updated edition of the bestselling autobiography of Charlie Kray, elder brother of the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie, who are brought to the screen this autumn in a major motion picture.Charlie Kray was the only person who knew the truth behind the terrifying violence of his notorious twin brothers, Ronnie and Reggie.In his dying days, reflecting on how the Kray name destroyed his life, Charlie reveals what he really thought about the twins - and why they treated him so badly.Today, 40 years after the arrests that ended their so-called reign of terror, the power the Krays wielded is part of criminal folklore - and the fascination with them lives on.Charlie knew them better than anyone - from the extortion racket that provided riches beyond their dreams and the sexual liaison that took them into the corridors of power to the murderous mayhem the twins embarked on as they came to see themselves as beyond the law.In this fully updated edition of his best-selling autobiography, Charlie Kray reveals a side of Ronnie and Reggie that not even their closest henchmen ever saw.
Me and My Brothers
Charlie Kray
with
Robin Mcgibbon
Charlie dedicated this book to his parents, who were forever in his thoughts
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u4594ffce-43ce-51ee-becd-bcc13533f247)
Title Page (#ube07df62-d2ca-5729-bbd3-1c1fe5b8099d)
Author’s Note (#ubd812f08-4907-5c08-926c-6ad3adb427aa)
Prologue (#u760fd87e-2cc5-5950-9737-01f485a617a0)
Chapter One (#u6d027ced-0bd1-583a-8a86-c58b2462062c)
Chapter Two (#u9250e1c7-f6f0-5408-90de-62b203b99387)
Chapter Three (#uf7abfc12-39cd-5d05-8765-94b36d45c21a)
Chapter Four (#u287fe944-8815-5173-814c-9f0c9c98ca77)
Chapter Five (#uade9f3d4-0213-5905-8ec8-fb5acf39bc5b)
Chapter Six (#u704ef870-3d24-587d-a828-03cd630d51df)
Chapter Seven (#u591f072f-07ec-5a5c-90d2-d16721960e4c)
Chapter Eight (#u231c871d-1beb-5fb7-99c1-3ae55a419b02)
Chapter Nine (#ude5645ac-bd8b-5132-b98e-8f036321103b)
Chapter Ten (#uaf9cb84b-a04b-513f-9719-71344aa7a00c)
Chapter Eleven (#u550f5463-dd8b-5c49-a741-e726820eeec7)
Chapter Twelve (#u017cf8f3-f666-5cf7-8aef-2d52156b666d)
Chapter Thirteen (#u34dd4b43-d085-557d-bb39-b7bb80c45880)
Chapter Fourteen (#ubbd9f473-a462-573e-b21f-dda10268ed1f)
Chapter Fifteen (#u0e2de9ff-2eeb-5372-97ae-2c9dc0dd9d39)
Chapter Sixteen (#u38645402-524a-502d-94e4-63d456373b17)
Chapter Seventeen (#u3fefadf2-7388-546d-b1ea-902267f00e1e)
Chapter Eighteen (#u436f254a-7d88-5758-85e4-80f3aeb74b4b)
Chapter Nineteen (#u065a4430-e29e-5b5b-8376-da153a39728d)
Chapter Twenty (#ua21bef06-231f-5c16-8f77-c67c850915e6)
Chapter Twenty-one (#uf339528f-f49f-5178-b720-e5c0f2a4a09d)
Chapter Twenty-two (#u33eb52f7-b14a-5ac3-877e-3adda3853b55)
Chapter Twenty-three (#u8ae69b65-dd48-58b7-b14d-618e43c66a30)
Chapter Twenty-four (#ua59ca46f-459f-57be-bc00-f6653faade64)
Chapter Twenty-five (#u5f5ac865-59f2-5ec2-aec5-1f872f95d607)
Chapter Twenty-six (#u97ca55bf-b83e-5c73-b166-adf697fb8b00)
Chapter Twenty-seven (#ue46a8cb9-6b58-5dbc-b4ff-3449582cbee4)
Chapter Twenty-eight (#u262290d5-12c8-5b27-9ac5-9709b2d24e4c)
Chapter Twenty-nine (#u08f59cba-96c2-5633-a98e-025a2e299b61)
Chapter Thirty (#ucd2e8a83-7e8d-555d-a260-347bc04943f2)
A Personal View (#uaa815181-f07d-581e-8334-d27918045a10)
About the Author (#u122275d7-3bc4-5b68-9afe-c45aa164e49c)
Copyright (#u30c6854b-6789-5393-bb41-977838f283ec)
About the Publisher (#u85fff132-8451-56c4-9dc3-21e2ea13298b)
Author’s Note (#ulink_37e5024e-23d1-564b-b907-fc5f187a0624)
The first edition of Me and My Brothers, which my company Everest Books published in 1975, made little impact. Charlie knew he had an interesting story to tell but was broke, and more eager to cash in on the notoriety of the Kray name than to write a no-holds-barred blockbuster.
Ronnie and Reggie hated the book. So did Charlie. Like many things done for the wrong reasons, it lacked emotion, conviction – and honesty. The murder of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie had destroyed Charlie’s life, but, in 1975, neither twin had admitted their roles in the killing, so family loyalty prevented him disclosing how or why.
In 1988, HarperCollins gave Charlie a second bite at the cherry – a chance to reveal what he didn’t, or couldn’t, say before. Then, when he was convicted on a drugs charge nine years later, Charlie was given an opportunity to further update his story.
For the 1997 edition, I would like to thank Melvyn Howe, courts’ correspondent of The Press Association, for offering help with the trial copy, and his then boss, Mike Parry, for supplying it.
For their help in ensuring that this final edition of Charlie’s life story is accurate, I must thank Charlie’s best friend Wilf Pine and his wife, Ros, Maureen Flanagan, Les Martin, Steve Wraith, Albert Chapman, Trish Ellis, of the Sunday Telegraph, Jonathan Goldberg QC, David Martin-Sperry and Ronnie Field.
I would also like to thank my dear friend Mike Harris for all the fact-checking research at the British Library – and, of course, my wife, Sue, for all the donkey work that goes into writing a book.
But special thanks must go to Dave Courtney, who was always there when I needed him. Thanks, Poppet.
Robin McGibbon
Bickley, Kent
March 2008
Prologue (#ulink_0e9066ef-1f6d-5bbd-b0f8-53360471f833)
My name is Kray. But I’m not a gangster; never was, never wanted to be.
And I don’t want a gangster’s funeral.
I don’t want to be remembered as a gangster, just because I had twin brothers, Ronnie and Reggie, who got a kick out of violence and a thrill out of murder.
I was never like the twins. And I don’t want people thinking I was. Even when I’m dead.
I could throw a punch, too, and have boxing trophies to prove it.
But I’d rather throw a party. That’s why people called me Champagne Charlie. And that’s how I’d like to be remembered.
I spent my life trying to distance myself from the twins’ way of life, and a gangster’s funeral would associate me with all they stood for. And that wouldn’t be right.
When my time comes, I want to be carried to the flat I shared with the woman I adored, then be buried the next day, with the minimum of fuss – and certainly no TV cameras – next to my lovely son who died tragically young.
Reggie will want to stage a showy spectacular, like the one he laid on for Ronnie that brought the East End to a standstill.
But I don’t want that and I’m sure that, despite the differences we’ve had all our lives, Reggie will respect my wishes.
Chapter One (#ulink_d38b4c9b-9581-5357-b350-4c8036516579)
The ringing of the phone brought me out of a deep sleep. Through half-closed eyes I squinted at my watch on the bedside table: 5.15 A.M. I took the phone from its cradle. ‘Hello,’ I muttered, husky from tiredness. An unfamiliar woman’s voice apologized for waking me, then spoke quietly in an abrupt, businesslike manner. I heard what she said, but I couldn’t take it in. Didn’t want to. I thought I must be still asleep. Numb with shock, I passed the phone to Diana, lying next to me. She listened for a few moments, thanked the caller, then stretched past me to put the phone down. She looked at me and shook her head, sadly. ‘I’m afraid it’s true, Charlie.’
In a daze, I got out of bed and shuffled, zombie-like, downstairs into the lounge. I took a bottle of Remy Martin from the cocktail cabinet and filled a long tumbler, then I gulped the brandy fast, again and again, until it was gone. Diana came into the room in her dressing gown. We stared at each other in shock. I went to say something but no words came out. And then she moved towards me and put her arms round me and I started to sob.
That morning at my home in South-East London was the worst moment of my life. Worse than the day I was jailed for ten years for a crime I didn’t commit. Worse than being charged with a murder I knew nothing about. But my tears that morning of 5 August 1982 were not only for myself; they were for my twin brothers, Ronnie and Reggie, too. And for our old man.
How on earth were they going to take it when I told them that the woman we all worshipped, the lovely lady we thought would live for ever, was dead?
She had gone into hospital just three days earlier. We all thought it was just a check-up for pneumonia: a week or two and she’d be out as fit as ever. I’d gone in to see her that day. She was the same old Mum, bright and cheerful, full of life. She wasn’t in two minutes and the nurses loved her. It was coming up to her birthday and she had all her cards by her bedside. She looked as good as gold.
Then she had the test she had gone in for and when I went in the next day she was hot and flustered. I’d never seen her like that before. She said she could never have anything like that again. I think the test embarrassed her, apart from the pain.
The next day she was lying there, her eyes closed. She wouldn’t open them; perhaps she couldn’t. Softly, I told her I was there. She didn’t answer. One of the old ladies in another bed, who had made friends with Mum, called me over and said there was something wrong: Mum hadn’t been at all well. I went back to Mum and spoke to her again and she answered me. She was hot. I put a damp cloth on her forehead. But she began to get delirious. I called a nurse who said Mum had pneumonia. I didn’t believe her; she had been all right the day before. But the nurse shook her head. Then she said the doctor wanted to see me.
He broke the news as gently as he could. Mum did have pneumonia. But she had cancer, too. Bad. He wanted to operate, but he needed to clear the pneumonia first.
Hearing the dreaded word ‘cancer’ knocked me bandy. I’d thought we’d get over the pneumonia, then take her away somewhere nice to get well again. She had many years to live yet. All her family lived on: she had a brother of 88, an aunt of 102. My mum was one of the fittest. She was going to live for ever.
I gave the doctor my phone number ‘in case of an emergency’. I didn’t expect it to come to anything. Then Diana and I left the hospital. I was in a daze.
Early the next morning, that phone call came. The cancer had taken my mum on her seventy-third birthday.
The brandy must have done me good. I didn’t feel it at the time, but it must have helped me pull myself together, helped me to be strong. I had no choice. There would be a lot to do, and with my brothers in prison and our father ill I was the only one to do it. To begin with, they each had to be told. But who first? As usual, I found myself in the middle. From the moment the twins were born, they had dominated the household and, eventually, my whole life. But on that August morning they came second. It would break him, I knew, but my old man had to be the first to know.
An hour or so later, at about seven o’clock, Diana and I arrived at Braithwaite House, my parents’ council flat in Bunhill Row, in the City of London.
‘What’s going on at this time in the morning?’ the old man wanted to know.
I’d decided there was no point in mucking about. I told him to sit down, then I took a deep breath and said, ‘Unfortunately, she’s just died.’
Almost before I’d got the words out he began to scream. I’d never seen him show so much emotion. It just knocked him over. He was very ill and after those first shock waves, he found it difficult to breathe. He kept panting, saying, ‘I can’t believe it. How can she die before me? I won’t be long. It’s just a matter of time. I’m waiting for it now.’
My old man, bless him, didn’t have to wait long to join his beloved Violet. That morning he lost the will to live and was dead eight months later.
I decided to tell Ronnie next. Wednesday was not a normal visiting day at Broadmoor, but I could be there in little over an hour if I was allowed to see him; the train –boat – taxi journey to Reggie on the Isle of Wight would take about five. Broadmoor’s director told me to come immediately and agreed to say nothing to Ron. But I wasn’t thinking straight when I asked Parkhurst to keep the news from Reggie until I got there the next day.
‘That’s not going to be easy, Charlie,’ said a prison officer I knew from previous visits. ‘He’s got his radio in his cell. We can’t take that away. Anyway, someone else will hear.’
I didn’t say anything. The thought hadn’t occurred to me.
‘Charlie,’ the welfare officer said, ‘if you can trust me…I’ve been with Reggie for years. I’ll take him somewhere quietly and tell him myself.’
I thought hard. I knew the officer quite well; I felt I could trust him. He was right. If Reggie heard on the radio…
‘Would you do that for me, please?’ I said.
Diana and I got to Broadmoor at about eleven o’clock. The authorities were very kind: they took us into the hospital wing, where visitors aren’t usually allowed. They had got a little room for us. A few moments later Ronnie came in, looking concerned. He said later he thought it was odd, us being in that room. When he sat down I looked at him and said gently, ‘Ron, our mother’s passed away.’
He just broke down, as I knew he would. He leaned forward, put his head in his hands and burst out crying. I’d had a bit of time to get over the shock, but Ronnie started me off again.
Finally he said in his quiet voice, ‘I thought you were going to say our father had died.’ Then a few moments later: ‘We expected that. But never in a million years, Mum. Why did it happen to her?’
The three of us sat there for about an hour, remembering how lovely she had been, and then I said I had to go; I had a lot to do. As we got up Ronnie said, ‘Could you ask them if I can stay here a bit? I want to be on my own.’
The nurses were very kind. ‘Don’t worry, Charlie,’ they said. ‘He won’t be disturbed. We’ll leave him.’
Ronnie stayed in that little room for four hours.
That afternoon the welfare officer at Parkhurst rang me to say he’d broken the news to Reggie.
‘How is he?’ I asked.
‘Better now,’ the officer said. ‘He broke down. But I told him you’ll be here tomorrow and he’s waiting to see you. He’ll feel better when you’re here.’
Someone else telling him was not the same as me, though. When Diana and I met him in a private room at the prison, Reggie broke his heart. And, of course, it started Di and me off again.
Tragedy always brings people closer together and I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to my brothers than those two days when we shared the same grief.
We didn’t want a circus. We wanted a funeral our Mum would have been proud of, a funeral people would remember. George English, an undertaker from Hoxton, had buried my grandparents and I knew he would do things the way we wanted. Ronnie and Reggie were given permission to attend the funeral at Chingford Mount in Essex. It would be the first time they had seen the outside world in fourteen years.
Crowds packed the streets from my mother’s flat through the East End. The media brought out many out of curiosity, I suppose, but hundreds came out of respect; not only for my mother, but for the family as a whole. The number of wreaths amazed us: they filled eight cars. So many friends were there: from people my mum had known all her life, to some she had met through her sons in recent years. Diana Dors was there with her husband, dear Alan Lake, and Andrew Ray, the actor.
And so, of course, were the police. I don’t know what they thought was going to happen, but for a couple of hours that afternoon of 24 August the village of Chingford looked like a setting for a war movie. Police on foot and on motorbikes lined the main street. A helicopter circled noisily overhead. There were even two officers in trees with walkie-talkies.
When we were all assembled in the tiny church of St John’s, Ronnie was brought in, then Reggie, each handcuffed to a giant policeman. The one escorting Reggie was no less than six feet seven! I had reserved the front row to the right of the nave for the twins, just in front of my old man, Diana, myself and Gary. But Ronnie was led to the front row on the left. He listened to the service for his dead mother out of sight and touch of his family. Reggie sat in front of us.
After the service, the twins were led out swiftly and taken to Chingford Mount police station. While their mother was being lowered into her grave, the twins sat in a room, surrounded by fifty coppers.
The old man was marvellous that day. He was desperately ill, but he managed to stand up in the church and at the graveside. He was very proud; if anyone tried to help him, he’d pull his arm away. He wanted to do things by himself, even though he wasn’t strong enough. How he managed to get through it all, I don’t know.
He was terribly upset by all the police fuss; he knew it was all unnecessary. I tried to convince him everything had gone well, that Mum would have been pleased, but he felt it was too much like a circus. As we left the graveside he said firmly, ‘If anything happens to me, I don’t want all this.’
The twins made sure that request was granted. When the old man went the following April each one decided independently not to go to the funeral. They wanted to, of course, but they didn’t want a repeat performance. At the time, officials at Broadmoor and Parkhurst rang me to say that permission would be given. I told them the twins wouldn’t be going and it threw them back a bit. They didn’t expect that.
But then they didn’t understand the twins. They still don’t. If anyone in authority had the slightest clue what my brothers are about, our mother’s funeral would have been handled differently and given the dignity and respect that she deserved and we all wanted.
How daft and unnecessary to separate the twins from each other and their family, and to handcuff them to strangers throughout the most harrowing ordeal of their lives. How irresponsible and wasteful to employ enough men to control a football match. And how crazy and insensitive to banish the twins from the graveside and guard them with fifty men in a police station while their mother was being buried.
The government and its servants were more concerned that August day with a massive, well-orchestrated propaganda exercise; a show of strength to the nation for reasons known only to themselves. I don’t know how much the whole business cost the taxpayer: £30,000 has been mentioned. But what I do know – and what the authorities themselves should have known if they truly believe in penal reform – is that Messrs Ronald and Reginald Kray could have been trusted to go to that funeral on their own. And to return afterwards.
They respected and adored their mother too much even to consider doing anything else.
Chapter Two (#ulink_c33b9569-cfc5-5c36-8592-91bf8da5b0a1)
Respect was something Mum had always commanded. She had a wonderfully sunny attitude to life, always laughing, always happy. I never once heard her criticize anybody or complain. As a woman she was immensely popular: always upbeat and chatty, but never gossipy. As a mother she was unbeatable, simply the tops. And I have her to thank for giving me a wonderful, happy and secure childhood in an East End that suffered as much as anywhere from the Depression that bit in to Britain in the late twenties and thirties. Hungry children roamed around Hackney in rags, stealing food from barrows and shops. But I was always well fed and dressed in smart, clean clothes; one vivid memory is of being taken for a walk in a strikingly fashionable sailor suit and noticing other children with holes in their trousers.
Millions throughout the country were penniless, but my old man made sure there was always money in our home in Gorsuch Street, off Hackney Road. He was a dealer who called on houses buying up gold and silver – anything of value, in fact. ‘On the knocker’ it was called. And he was good at it. The job meant he was away from home a lot; when he wasn’t ‘on the knocker’ he was selling the goods on the street stalls that had been in his family for fifty years. And even when he was at home he went down the pub nearly every night, like most men at that time. It didn’t bother Mum; she seemed happy to stay at home looking after me and go out with him just once or twice a month.
The old man was sport-mad and was chuffed when I was picked to play football for Laburnum Street School. He always made sure I had the right gear, and when he came to watch I’m sure he took an extra pride in seeing that his kid was one of the best-dressed players on the pitch. Boxing was his passion, though, and when he wasn’t in the pub he would go to professional contests at nearby Hoxton Baths, or other venues. Sometimes, he would take me. I can remember sitting in the crowd in my sailor suit, entranced by the sight of giants thumping hell out of each other.
The old man’s father, who ran a stall in Hoxton, could handle himself. He was known as ‘Big’ Jimmy Kray and was afraid of nobody. I used to sit on his knee at home as he told me thrilling stories of famous boxers he had known, including Hoxton’s own hero, Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis, who became world lightweight champion. Often I’d go to bed, my six-year-old head filled both with these stories and with the real thing I’d seen with Dad, and I would dream of standing in a ring, the treasured Lonsdale belt round my middle, as the cheering crowd hailed me Champion of the World.
The brutality of East End life, where most disputes were settled with fists, rubbed off on the children: it was not uncommon for two tiny tearaways to slug it out with the venom of the fighters I’d seen in the ring. I was one of them. I didn’t get involved too often but I quickly learned how to handle myself. Mum didn’t approve of fighting, however, and wasn’t too impressed that I’d inherited Grandad’s natural boxing ability. Whenever I had a scrap at school I made sure I tidied myself up before going home.
In 1932, we moved to Stean Street, the other side of Kingsland Street. Just along from our new home was a stable yard, and the old man who looked after it let us kids play there. It was an exciting place and I spent a lot of time sitting on a wall, watching the man mucking out and grooming the horses when they came in after hauling the delivery carts. I would go home smelling of manure and with muddy shoes. Mum would tell me off, but in a nice way. She never screamed and yelled like other women in that street…
One day a year later, when I was seven, I was encouraged to go out and play and not come back until called. Curious, and not a little put out, I watched the house from my wall for most of the day. There was a lot of coming and going and then, in the early evening, I was told I could go in. I went up to my mum’s bedroom and there they were.
‘Where did they come from?’ I asked.
‘I bought them,’ my mum replied.
‘But, Mum,’ I said. ‘Why did you buy two?’
She laughed.
It was a little after eight o’clock on 24 October 1933. My twin brothers had arrived.
Suddenly my aunts May and Rose started coming round to the house more than usual. They adored the twins and begged Mum to let them take them for walks in their brand-new pram. Mum usually agreed and May and Rose would fuss over them like mother hens with their chicks. When Mum was busy I would take them out too, and, like my aunts, I would feel a surge of pride when neighbours stopped to lean over the pram, enthusing about how gorgeous they were. The twins, of course, lapped it up. It did not take long for them to expect to be the centre of attention all the time. And to show their displeasure when they weren’t.
The Kray family was already well known. Big Jimmy Kray, and Mum’s dad, Jimmy Lee, worked for themselves, and their independence was envied by less ambitious people who were forced to do what they were told.
Jimmy Lee was a legend in his own time. He had been a bare-knuckle fighter with the nickname ‘Cannonball’ and he later became a showman and entrepreneur. In an area where competition was tough he was an outstanding personality. He was teetotal, which meant he didn’t hit it off with the old man, but he was very fond of me and the twins. He loved entertaining us: his favourite trick involved a white-hot poker which he would lick without burning his tongue. He gave us a scientific explanation –something about the saliva making contact with the hot metal – but it went over our heads. To us it was just pure magic.
He’d always been an amazing athlete. Once, one of his sons – my Uncle Johnnie – drove a coach party forty-two miles to Southend for the day. As he was preparing to bring them back again, Grandfather Lee turned up – on his bike. He’d cycled there just for the fun of it and was eager to do the return journey, until Uncle Johnnie insisted he took the coach. Grandfather Lee was seventy-five years young at the time.
In those early thirties, the Kray family had a sort of local fame. And in their own way the beautifully dressed, scrubbed-clean twins, sitting up in their big double pram, beaming into the faces of all their admirers, were just as famous as their grandfathers.
I was thrust into the background but I didn’t resent my brothers. If anything I was pleased, because Mum was obviously overjoyed at having them. At night I shared the same upstairs room with them, because Mum’s brother and his family were living downstairs. But neither twin cried much at night and they never disturbed my sleep. When they were put in their cots I would stare at them, trying in vain to tell which was which. Sometimes they looked up at me in a strange, adult sort of way, and I’d have this weird feeling that they knew all about me and what was going on around them. Their dark eyes seemed to lack that childlike innocence. It was as if each boy knew more than he ought to.
The mental and physical relationship between them was intense. Nobody was more aware of it than Mum – the only person who could tell them apart – and she demonstrated this when Reggie became ill at the age of two. Whenever he got excited his face would turn blue and sometimes he would fall down, screaming in pain. The doctor diagnosed a double hernia and sent Reggie into hospital for an operation. It wasn’t long before Ronnie started to get ill himself at being separated from his twin. And when Reggie failed to improve after the operation, Mum took matters into her own hands. One day she marched into the hospital and announced she was taking Reggie home. Shocked doctors and nurses told her he was not ready to be discharged and insisted he would be better off in trained care. But Mum was adamant; she said quietly but firmly that the child needed to be with his mother and twin brother and that was that. She was proved right. Within days of being reunited, both boys were back to normal.
While my brothers were toddling about that house in Stean Street I spent most of my spare time running. Like Grandfather Lee I was sport-crazy and as well as soccer I was involved in athletics then boxing. At my senior school in Scawfell Street, off Hackney Road, I was a tiddler in a big pond, but a marvellous all-rounder called Gregory helped me achieve a sporting triumph I’ll never forget. He was the school goalkeeper and wicketkeeper, and it was largely due to him that I got in the school football team that won the district finals. Gregory boxed well, too, and gave me tips on how to improve my ring-craft.
In the East End in those days, violence was never far below the surface; settling a disagreement with fists was the accepted thing. I forget the name of the boy I swapped punches with in my first serious street fight, but I do remember a crowd of adults loved every bruising minute of it. They formed a circle and watched us slug it out for nearly an hour. Afterwards they made us shake hands, as though we’d been fighting purely for their entertainment.
There was a wood yard in Hackney Wick where local villains settled disputes between rival gangs. Sometimes the punch-ups would not take place and the gangs would drift off to a pub together. Often, though, a chance remark would upset somebody and fighting would break out. Razors and broken glasses would be used as weapons and blood would flow.
That was the way of East End life in 1938 as we began to hear stories of a little thin-faced German madman with a moustache who wanted to conquer the world.
The old man’s business boomed at that time. The factories and docks took thousands off the dole queues and there was more money about. Cash registers sang in the pubs as people talked over their pints about the prospect of war. And householders eagerly chucked out their old gear to make way for the new.
Oswald Mosley’s fanatical Blackshirt mob marched noisily through Mile End and Whitechapel, striking terror into the Jews. But for me football, as usual, was far more important. One day the old man came home with a new pair of football boots for me; they were the latest style and very expensive. We had a game at the local recreation ground that afternoon and I couldn’t wait to try them out. I trotted off excitedly, the boots dangling by the laces over one shoulder. Suddenly, as I walked under a railway arch, three kids grabbed the boots and ran off. I sprinted after them, shouting as loudly as I could. They dodged round corners, clambered over walls, crossed roads, but I kept after them. It was worth it: first, they dropped my socks, which had been inside the boots, then the boots themselves. I picked them up then dashed back to the park, making it in time for the game.
When I got home, I told the old man what had happened. He listened intently, then patted me affectionately on the shoulder. ‘You’re a real trier, son,’ he said. ‘A real trier.’ At that moment, I’d never felt closer to him.
Don’t get me wrong. Although the old man was away a lot, he was a good father. He loved the booze, but he never put that before his wife and kids. Unlike many East End wives Mum never had to go out to work, which meant that the twins and I were never left to roam the streets like other children.
I can remember only one time when she had the hump with me. I came running along the courtyard where we lived and crashed through the front swing door frightening the life out of her. I was twelve at the time and thought it was a funny practical joke. But Mum was angrier than I’d ever seen her. Her blue eyes hardened and she shouted, ‘I’m going to whack you for that, Charlie!’
This terrified me because Mum always spoke in a soft, calm voice. But she didn’t hit me; she would not have known how to. The old man handed out a few whacks, but I was a bit of a mummy’s boy and she would always step in and put it right for me.
Mum had great will-power. Once she had set her heart on getting something she would persevere until she got it. She had no ambition in life but to bring up her children as well as possible, and she placed a lot of importance on having her own house, with a back garden and a front door that wasn’t shared. One day, Aunt Rose came round excitedly, saying her next-door neighbours were leaving. Something in Mum’s reaction told me we would soon be on the move ourselves – to that house. I was not mistaken.
Vallance Road runs between Whitechapel Road and Bethnal Green Road for about half a mile and is roughly parallel to Commercial Street, which lies to the west. Number 178 was a terraced house with two rooms, a kitchen and a scullery downstairs, and an outside loo. Upstairs there were three rooms and out of two of them we could see the trains thundering along a raised track between Liverpool Street and Bethnal Green stations. When we moved in late that summer of 1939 it was just a humble East End house. But it was not long before Mum made it into a warm, happy and secure home.
With the excitement of moving, the outbreak of war meant little to the twins and me. We’d been told that enemy planes would be dropping bombs on to our home, but all we could see around us were sandbags being packed around public buildings, gas masks being handed out, and men in makeshift uniforms dashing about. When I wasn’t at school, I was playing football, running or boxing. The twins, coming up to their sixth birthday, spent their time either with Aunts May and Rose, Grandpa and Grandma Lee, nearby, or in Uncle Johnnie’s cafe across the street. If it was time to eat, they would be at home. They loved Mum’s cooking.
The twins were fascinated by Grandfather Lee’s stories of when he fought bare-knuckle in Victoria Park for a few shillings on Sunday mornings and whenever I knelt down to spar with them they shaped up like miniature prize-fighters. Even at six, they were tough and incredibly fearless, and sometimes they would catch me with a punch that surprised me with its speed, accuracy and power.
When the bombs began to fall and the anti-aircraft guns opened up, the twins showed no fear. They had always been content in each other’s company and in the Blitz that contentment deepened into security. While other kids cried in terror as the shells dropped, the twins just clung on to each other’s clothes and shut their eyes. And when Mum said she was taking us to the shelter under the railway arches they would toddle along unconcernedly, hand in hand, more excited than afraid.
But the East End in the Blitz was no place for kids, and soon someone somewhere decided women and children should go away until it was all over. Mum didn’t fancy the idea much; she had only just moved into her long-sought-after house. But as usual the twins and I came first, and she prepared for our evacuation. The old man wasn’t coming. His business was still booming and he needed to stay in London. He would be recruited into the Army, of course. But he had other plans for when his call-up papers arrived.
We had no idea where we were going. All we were told was that we would be living in a house in a country village, fifty miles further east of London. To many, the massive exodus from Liverpool Street Station that January in 1940, was The Evacuation. But to the twins and I, who had seldom left the narrow, crowded streets of Bethnal Green, it was An Adventure.
The village was Hadleigh, in Suffolk, and the house was a huge Victorian building belonging to a widow called Mrs Styles. After the cramped terraced house in Vallance Road it was a palace, and Mrs Styles went out of her way to help us adapt to the traumatic change in our lives.
I quickly got a job in the local fish-and-chip shop and later worked full-time as a tea boy in a factory making mattresses. The people there were friendly, but we didn’t have much in common and I missed the East End, particularly my football and boxing. The twins, though, were happier than ever. In fine weather they would spend hours scouring the fields and woods for miles around, revelling in the fresh air and boundless freedom of country life. When the snow came, Mrs Styles’s nephew lent me his sledge and I’d take the twins to the nearest hill. I’d lay full-length on the sledge with the twins on my back and push off. We nearly always ended up in a heap of tangled arms and legs, laughing. It was great fun.
Mum, however, was not enjoying being away from her family and friends. She never complained, but I sensed her unhappiness, especially when the old man visited us. He was popular in the local pub, with his news of what was going on in London, but he was always keen to get back after a day or two.
We’d been in Hadleigh for about a year when rumours of a German invasion on the east coast started sweeping the village. Mum got more and more worried until one day she announced that she was taking us back to London.
Mrs Styles tried to dissuade her, but Mum said she had given it a lot of thought and her mind was made up. Later, it was found that the rumours were unfounded, but by then it was too late: Mum and I and the twins were back in Vallance Road. I was pleased; I couldn’t wait to see my mates and take up boxing again. But the twins were not. They had fallen in love with the countryside and preferred green fields and animals to teeming streets and noisy traffic.
The old man’s call-up papers finally arrived. He’d made up his mind that he wasn’t going to serve, and promptly went on what was called the ‘trot’. He reasoned that he didn’t start the war, so why should he help finish it? The police called at the house from time to time looking for him, but the twins and I had been told to say nothing. Lying for the old man didn’t bother me; he was my dad and he’d done his best for all of us all his life. Now I was in a position to do my best for him, and I lied without so much as a blush.
It did affect the twins, though. Soon they started seeing the coppers’ uniform as The Enemy. Aunt Rose didn’t help: if she was around, she’d have a right go at the officers, four-letter words and all. If the twins were there, they would stand side by side, gravely taking it all in. Whatever they thought, they kept to themselves, but I had a feeling then, even though they were just eight, that they were beginning to distrust uniformed authority.
With so many men in the Army there were plenty of jobs, and I became a messenger boy at Lloyd’s in the City, within walking distance of Vallance Road. For five and a half days a week, I was general dogsbody for eighteen bob. In the old man’s absence, I wanted to do my bit as the man of the house, so every Friday night I proudly gave Mum my wages. She didn’t need the money, but she took it to make me feel good. Needless to say, I got most of it back during the week, one way and another.
Boxing now dominated my spare time. I went to the local institute for training three nights a week and Grandfather Lee fixed up a punchbag in the top back room of our house. The twins would watch me hammering away, and now and then I’d stand them on a chair so they could have a go. Mum wasn’t that keen on the preoccupation with boxing; she probably remembered her dad coming home from Victoria Park, looking the worse for wear after his bare-knuckle scraps. But when I told her amateur boxing was safe and the gloves were like feather pillows, she seemed satisfied. Anyway, she didn’t put up much of a fight. I suppose she thought boxing was the lesser of two evils: if I wasn’t down the institute, I’d more than likely get into bad company – or worse, start showing an interest in girls. Both had their dangers: if boys of my age weren’t breaking into shops or factories, they were going too far with girls and walking down the aisle almost before they’d drawn their first pay packet. I think Mum was secretly pleased that my only passion at that time was not for kissing the opposite sex but for belting the daylights out of the boy in the opposite corner.
I had not touched alcohol or smoked a cigarette. I was as fit as a fifteen-year-old can be. And then suddenly I was whipped into hospital with a mystery illness that was to terrify me so much I thought of killing myself.
It started with a sore throat. Gargling with salt water did no good, so Mum took me to hospital where doctors wasted no time taking me in. I was put in a bed and told to do nothing but lie still; I wasn’t even allowed to get up to go to the toilet. The illness was diagnosed as rheumatic fever and it kept me in that hospital for four weeks. The enforced idleness was maddening and I counted the minutes and hours between the visits of Mum, my aunts and my friends. Lying on my back helpless for a few weeks was one thing, but then I learned that I might become a permanent invalid with a heart condition. I was terrified. For someone so energetic the thought was too much to bear and it was then that I seriously thought about doing myself in.
In the end, the Germans saved my life. They scored a direct hit on the hospital and in the pandemonium I walked, unsteadily and unnoticed, out of the ward and down the stairs. In view of the things I’d heard, I expected to drop dead any minute, but nothing happened and the next day Mum took me home. For the next week or so the old man – still ‘on the trot’ – took a risk and stayed with me day and night. And then, one morning, I felt well enough to get up. Touch wood, I’ve been as right as ninepence ever since – a walking miracle, according to the doctors.
Before I was taken ill, I’d graduated from the Coronet junior club to Crown and Manor youth club in Hoxton, and as soon as I’d recovered from the rheumatic fever I took up boxing again. I also joined the naval cadets at Hackney Wick, where the training facilities were good, and it wasn’t long before I started taking the sport very seriously. I’d been a very useful welterweight, and the idea of turning pro appealed to me: a good crowd-pleaser could earn as much as ten quid for four three-minute rounds. There was also the handy bonus of ‘nobbins’ – coins thrown into the ring by satisfied customers – although boxers often came off second best to their helpers. Try picking up a handful of coins wearing boxing gloves and you’ll see what I mean.
When the twins saw some of the cutlery, glassware and trophies I won as an amateur they felt boxing might be for them, too, and they joined me in my early-morning road running, copying my side-stepping and shadow-boxing in the streets around Vallance Road. They were so enthusiastic that I turned an upstairs room into a sort of gym, with a speedball, punchbag, skipping ropes and weights. I found some boxing gloves to fit the twins and started to teach them. We were at it every day. It used to drive them mad, I suppose: keep that guard up, shoot out that left, duck, weave, watch that guard now, keep the left going…Ronnie was a southpaw; he led with his right. I corrected this by tying his right arm down, so that he couldn’t move it.
The twins loved that little gym and it wasn’t long before they started inviting their mates round for some sparring. I’d come home in the evenings to find the room full of kids, all waiting for me to get them organized. After a while, I started arranging contests and bought books and things to give the winners as prizes. The kids adored it. That gym was like their own little club.
Mum made sure all our gear was the cleanest by washing it every day, and the old man even cleaned and ironed the laces on our boxing boots. Mum didn’t come upstairs much, except to bring the boys tea and sandwiches. But as long as no one was getting hurt she didn’t mind all the noise and running around. She loved having kids in the house and the Kray home got a reputation for always being full up.
A year later the twins showed so much promise that I took them to the Robert Browning Institute in Walworth, near the Elephant and Castle in South London. One of the resident trainers watched them in the ring, a look of amazement on his face. ‘How old did you say they were, Charlie?’ he asked.
‘Ten,’ I said.
‘Are you sure they haven’t been in the ring before?’
‘Absolutely,’ I replied proudly.
‘They’re amazing,’ the trainer said. ‘Bloody amazing.’
‘So you want them in the club?’
‘Definitely.’
And so the short-lived but sensational career of the young Kray twins was born.
My own career in the ring was about to take off, too –courtesy of the Royal Navy. I decided to volunteer for the Navy before being called up and sent into the Army, which I didn’t fancy. I joined towards the end of the war, but my boxing reputation preceded me, and I spent most of my active service representing the Navy as a welterweight against the Army and Air Force.
After the war, contests were arranged to keep the men entertained while they waited to be demobbed. I found myself boxing roughly twice a week in various parts of the country. Whether it was the pressure of these fights or the legacy of my rheumatic fever I don’t know, but I suddenly developed chronic migraine and was discharged from the Navy on health grounds.
I was thrilled to return home to find that my little twin brothers had become quite famous locally with their spectacular triumphs in the ring. They had fought locally and nationally with outstanding success. In the prestigious London Schools competition they got to the final three years running and had to fight each other.
I shall never forget the third encounter at York Hall in Bethnal Green; it was a classic. I went in the dressing room beforehand and told them to take it easy and put on a good show. Ronnie was as calm as ever, but Reggie was extra keyed up. He had lost the previous two fights and I sensed he’d made up his mind he was going to win this one.
The announcements ended. The bell rang. And to the deafening roar of a thousand or so school kids the tenacious thirteen-year-old twins came out of their corners to do battle: Reggie the skilful boxer, Ronnie the fighter, who never knew when he was beaten. For three two-minute rounds they were totally absorbed, both committed to winning. They were belting each other so hard and so often that Mum and the old man wanted to get in the ring and stop it and it was all I could do to restrain them, although the battle got so bloody in the final round that I nearly shouted ‘Stop!’ myself.
The judges found it difficult telling the twins apart in the first part of the fight but they had no trouble towards the end: Ronnie’s face was a mess and Reggie got a unanimous verdict.
Afterwards, in the dressing room, Mum laid into them. She was horrified at the sight of her two babies knocking the daylights out of each other and told them in no uncertain terms that they would never appear together in a ring again as long as she was alive.
The twins burst into tears. But they never did fight each other again.
Back in civvy street again, I teamed up with the old man on the knocker, and dedicated myself to boxing. The Kray fame began to spread. Three brothers – two of them identical twins – chalking up one victory after another was hot local news, and suddenly our photographs were all over the East London Advertiser, with reports of our fights.
Mum hated boxing, but she always came to our fights with her sisters; she felt she had a duty to be there. We used to laugh at her because she admitted that half the time she didn’t look. She tried to talk us out of it, saying, ‘Do you really want to end up disfigured?’ And if one of us got hurt, she’d say, ‘You’ve got to stop – it’s no good for you.’ But in the end she gave up because she realized we loved the sport.
As boxers, the twins were quite different from each other: Reggie was the cool, cautious one, with all the skills of a potential champion and, importantly, he always listened to advice. Ronnie was a good boxer too, and very brave. But he never listened to advice. He was a very determined boy with a mind of his own. If he made up his mind to do something, he’d do it, no matter what, and unlike Reggie he would never hold back. He would go on and on until he dropped.
A trainer told me, ‘I know Ronnie doesn’t listen half the time. But he’s got so much determination that he’d knock a wall down if I told him to.’
Once, at Lime Grove Baths in West London, Ronnie was fighting a boy Reggie had knocked out a few months before. In the dressing room, I warned Ronnie, ‘This lad can punch. If he catches you, you’ll be over, I promise.’
Ronnie nodded. But I sensed he wasn’t listening.
In the first round, his opponent threw a huge overhead punch. Everyone round the ring saw it, but not Ronnie. He almost somersaulted backwards on to the canvas. It seemed all over, but Ronnie rolled over and crawled to his knees, then slowly to his feet. He didn’t know where he was, but he survived the round. He was still in another world when he came out for the second and he took a hammering. But when the bell went for the third, his head suddenly cleared and he tore into his opponent, knocking him out after a series of crushing blows to the head.
In the dressing room afterwards, I said, ‘That was very clever.’
Ronnie barely looked at me. ‘What did you want me to do?’
‘I told you to keep your chin down otherwise you’d get knocked over.’
Ronnie looked pained. ‘Oh, stop nagging. I won, didn’t I?’
Another time, at a dinner-jacket affair at the Sporting Club in London’s West End, I took a look at Ronnie’s opponent – a tough-looking gypsy type. I knew what to expect and I said to Ronnie, ‘He’ll be a strong two-handed puncher and he’ll come at you from the first bell trying to put you away. So take it easy. Keep out of trouble for a bit.’
But, as usual, Ronnie wasn’t too interested in what I had to say. In sport, it’s good to have some nerves, it gets you keyed up, helps you perform well. But Ronnie didn’t have any nerves. He didn’t care.
When the bell sounded the gypsy almost ran from his corner and then started swinging at Ronnie with both hands. Ronnie looked totally shocked. He was battered about the head and forced back against the ropes taking massive lefts and rights to the head.
The gypsy’s brothers, sitting near me, grinned. ‘That’s it. It’s all over,’ they said triumphantly.
Suddenly Ronnie found his breath. He started ducking out of the way of the gypsy’s punches, then got in a few of his own. The gypsy’s onslaught stopped. It was all Ronnie needed; he was in, smashing rights and lefts into the face and body as though he was possessed. It was quite devastating.
I knew the signs, and turned to the brothers. ‘Yeah. You’re right. It is all over.’
Less than a minute later the gyspy was being counted out.
I think Ronnie was secretly annoyed with himself for being caught cold because in the communal dressing room afterwards, he acted out of character. He overheard the gypsy moaning to his brothers about being caught unawares. It would never happen again, he said.
Before I could stop him, Ronnie had walked over to them. ‘Stop making excuses,’ he told the gypsy quietly. ‘If you want, I’ll do it again. I’ll catch you unawares again.’
I stepped in and took Ronnie away. But that was him all over: he always believed that what was done was done and there was no point whingeing or trying to change it. Reggie would always be prepared to discuss matters, but Ronnie was withdrawn and would say, ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’ And he was always right: there would be no argument, no discussion, no possible compromise.
Once, as boys, the twins were due to box at Leyton Baths, and Ronnie did not turn up. Reggie and I waited for him at home, but in the end had to leave without him. We were worried about his safety, naturally, and about the inquiry that would be launched by the boxing board: it was bad news not to turn up for a bout.
A few minutes after we got back home, Ronnie walked in with a school pal, Pat Butler.
‘Where the hell were you?’ I wanted to know.
‘I had to go somewhere with Pat,’ was all Ronnie replied.
‘You know you could lose your licence.’ I was livid.
‘I don’t care,’ Ronnie said. ‘Pat was in trouble with some people.’
‘You’re out of order, Ronnie. You should never not turn up for a fight.’
But Ronnie just shrugged. ‘I don’t care about not turning up. This was more important to me.’
Then Reggie chimed in. ‘You could have helped Pat out tomorrow.’
‘No,’ Ronnie said, quietly but forcibly. ‘It had to be done tonight.’
Reggie and I continued to argue with him, but Ronnie just said, ‘Anyway I had to do it and it’s done now. I’m not apologizing.’
We pointed out that Mum had stayed at home because she was worried about him. Ronnie was sorry he’d caused her to miss the fight, but otherwise he couldn’t care less.
The twins seemed unaffected by their local Press coverage and the local fame that went with it. They still went to school regularly, didn’t throw their weight around and were never loud-mouthed, like some kids in the neighbourhood. If anything, they were quiet and modest and always respectful. Someone who saw this side of their character was the Reverend Hetherington, vicar of St James the Great, in Bethnal Green Road. The church youth club, which the twins belonged to, ran jumble sales and other fund-raising functions, and they were always keen to help set up stalls and so on. The twins admired the vicar and went out of their way to oblige him whenever he wanted a favour. He liked them too, and always spoke well of them. That friendship was to last a lifetime.
One night, the vicar was standing in the doorway of the vestry when the twins walked up.
‘Can we do anything for you, Father?’ Ronnie asked.
Mr Hetherington was a heavy smoker and had a cigarette going at the time. He drew on it. ‘No, I don’t think so, Ronald.’ he said. ‘But it’s very kind of you to ask. Thank you.’
He asked them one or two questions about what they were doing with themselves and was generally as pleasant and friendly as usual. Then he said good-night and went into his vestry.
Half an hour later he felt in his cassock for his cigarettes and was amazed to find an extra packet. The twins had bought the cigarettes for him. But they knew he would not have accepted them had they offered. So they slipped the packet into one of his pockets without him knowing.
Later, I learned that Mr Hetherington said no when the twins asked if he wanted anything because he always wondered: ‘What on earth are they going to do to get it!’
That immediate post-war period in the East End was a happy time. Life was getting back to normal after the horrors of the Blitz, and the family atmosphere Mum created at Vallance Road was warm and cosy and very secure.
As boys, the twins were very disciplined about their boxing. They went to bed early, ate well and regularly, and were almost fanatical about their fitness; they were always pounding the streets early in the morning.
Just after their fourteenth birthdays, however, the twins started to change. For the worse. Suddenly they started staying out late and neglecting their morning roadwork. They became very secretive about where they were going, what they were doing, who they were seeing. Mum was very concerned but she bit her tongue. She put it down to their age: they were probably going through that ‘growing up’ stage and she didn’t want to appear a moaner. But then I discovered the twins were calling in at Aunt Rose’s house late at night to clean themselves up before coming home.
The reason for their secrecy was suddenly very clear. They had been fighting in the street and knew that Mum would give them hell if she found out.
The East End had been relatively free of violence during the war and the couple of years after it. But now that the wartime controls were being relaxed, teenagers roamed the streets looking for excitement. It was, perhaps, inevitable that the twins, tough, utterly fearless and locally famous, would be involved, and with their flair for leadership it was hardly surprising that they were out in front when the battles began.
An incident that stands out involved a Jewish shopowner, aged about seventy who made a point of coming round to our house to say how wonderful the twins were. Apparently they were walking home one night when they saw some boys smash the old man’s shop window and help themselves to some of his goods. As they ran off, the twins chased them – not to have them arrested, but to give them a good hiding and to get back what they had stolen. They didn’t catch them, but the thieves never came back. The shopowner was very grateful to the twins, but it was nothing to them; they were always eager to help someone in trouble. Once Ronnie pawned a gold ring for a couple of quid to help a kid out. Another time he came home with no shoes. When Mum asked where they were, he said, ‘I’ve just given them to a poor kid who didn’t have any.’
They could not stand bullies, especially if our family was involved. When they were fifteen they heard that the old man had been slagged off by a crowd of young blokes in a pub. The old man and some friends were having a singsong when the crowd started taking the mickey out of them.
‘Leave us alone,’ the old man said. ‘We’re enjoying ourselves.’
‘Who are you, you old bastard?’ one of the youths replied, and he went to give him a smack.
One of the old man’s friends warned, ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ and the trouble was stopped.
But a few of the bullying crowd said, ‘We’re not finished here.’
The next day the old man told Ronnie and Reggie what had happened. ‘Who were they?’ the twins wanted to know. The old man thought they worked for a chap called Jack Barclay, who owned a big East End store. The twins were round there like a shot.
‘Hello, Mr Barclay,’ Ronnie said respectfully. He asked for two people by name.
‘They’re out the back,’ replied Mr Barclay.
‘Thank you,’ said Ronnie. And he walked straight through with Reggie and confronted the two bullies.
‘You had a go at our old man last night. And we don’t like it.’
With that, Ronnie floored one of the guys and Reggie did the other. Then they went out, saying goodbye to Mr Barclay on the way.
Several times in that long hot summer of 1948, I talked to the twins. I tried to tell them what fools they were; that the only place they should be fighting was in the ring, where they could made a good name for themselves. I should have saved my breath. My twin brothers were not interested in what I had to say or what I felt. They were not fifteen yet, but almost overnight they had become men and nobody, not even their elder brother, was going to tell them what to do.
Adolescence, tragically, had passed the Kray twins by.
Chapter Three (#ulink_d53d5e52-b5a6-5548-b179-8c81ec12b920)
My own life as I entered my twenties was going along nicely. I was earning a few quid with the old man. My boxing was fine; I was winning most of my fights and thinking seriously of turning pro.
And then I fell in love.
I was dedicated to fighting. I trained hard and nearly always went to bed early. But every sportsman needs a break some time, a chance to unwind, and one of the favourite places to do that in the East End was the Bow Civic dance hall. It was there that I met a stunning blonde who lived in nearby Poplar, the youngest of four sisters and a very talented dressmaker. She was two years younger than me and we hit it off immediately. We soon started going out seriously together.
Her name was Dorothy Moore and we felt we were destined to get married.
Mum and the old man approved of Dolly, and wedding bells rang out for us on Christmas Day 1948. Mum solved our housing problem by dismantling the gym in Vallance Road and redecorating and furnishing the room for us. We spent our honeymoon there. A week later I was in the ring at Leyton Baths, cruising to a points win in my first professional fight.
After that, I was much in demand and picked up between five and ten quid a fight. I trained hard and took everything that came my way, hoping to catch the eye of a leading promoter. The twins came to watch me fight at Hoxton, Stepney, West Ham and the famous Mile End arena, eager to pick up tips that might help them in the ring. I gained a reputation as a useful and reliable fighter, and although I didn’t have that extra touch of class that makes a champion, I was proud of my skills and my considerable local fame.
Certain necessities were still rationed, but life had more or less got back to normal after the horrors of war. We ate and slept well, and the family atmosphere Mum created for us all at Vallance Road was warm and cosy and very happy.
It seemed too good to last. And it was.
One evening in March, the old man and I came home after working in Bristol and found Mum dreadfully upset. There had been a nasty fight outside a dance hall in Mare Street, Hackney, and a boy had been badly beaten with a length of bicycle chain. The twins had been arrested. Mum couldn’t believe it; neither could the old man and I, because the twins had never once needed to use anything other than their fists to settle an argument.
The case went to the Old Bailey. The twins were innocent of the offences with which they were charged and they were rightly acquitted. But they had come face to face with that uniformed authority which they neither respected nor trusted. Just seven months later there was to be a more far-reaching and damaging confrontation.
It was a Saturday evening in October. There had been a fight near a youth club in Mansford Street, off Old Bethnal Green Road, and Police Constable Donald Bayn-ton wanted to know about it. He went up to a group of youths on a corner outside a restaurant. Picking one out, he asked if he had been involved in the fight. The boy shook his head. ‘Nothing to do with me.’
PC Baynton went up to the boy and pushed him in the stomach. The boy told him to leave him alone; he said again the fight had had nothing to do with him. The officer poked him in the stomach again.
It was a mistake. The boy was Ronnie. He didn’t like the PC’s manner one bit.
And he lashed out with a right hook to the jaw.
It wasn’t a hard blow; PC Baynton didn’t even go down. Ronnie ran off, but not very fast, and Baynton caught him. There was a brief struggle and Ronnie went quietly to Bethnal Green police station.
What happened inside that station during the next few minutes almost certainly changed Ronnie’s life for ever.
Reggie heard about the incident from one of Ronnie’s friends. Immediately, he went to the police station and waited outside. After a while, PC Baynton came out. Spotting Reggie, he grinned mockingly. ‘Oh, the other one now,’ he said. ‘I’ve just put your brother in there and given him a good hiding. He ain’t so clever now.’
Reggie sneered. ‘You won’t give me one,’ he said. Then he darted into a side street, but not too quickly.
Thinking Reggie was running away, Baynton chased after him. It was his second mistake of the evening. When he turned the corner, Reggie was waiting, and he slammed into the surprised officer’s face with a few right-and left-handers then walked away.
I was at home with Mum when someone knocked at the door and told us what had happened. When I got to the police station I couldn’t believe it. Ronnie was in a terrible state: blood all over him, his shirt ripped to pieces.
‘What the hell happened?’ I asked.
Ronnie was still defiant. His eyes hardened. ‘They got flash. A load of them came in the cell and gave me a hiding.’ He glanced over to some of them watching. ‘They all think they’re big men. If they want a row it’s ten-handed.’
I turned round on them angrily. ‘Aren’t you lot clever?’ I said sarcastically. ‘Not one of you is man enough to fight him on your own.’
‘Look, Charlie,’ one of them said in a friendly tone. ‘We don’t want any trouble – any problems.’
‘No problems!’ I yelled. ‘I’m going to cause you plenty of problems. This is diabolical, what’s happened here. You’re not getting away with beating up a sixteen-year-old kid!’
I started ranting and accused them again of being cowards. They threatened to arrest me and suggested I left. Finally I agreed but I warned them I was taking Ronnie to a doctor.
Later that evening it was bedlam at Vallance Road. Mum was crying her eyes out at the sight of Ronnie’s smashed face; Ronnie was trying to console her, saying he was all right and he hadn’t hurt the policeman anyway; the old man and I were wondering if we could take legal action. Then there was a knock at the front door. It was an inspector the old man knew from the local nick. PC Baynton was with him, looking the worse for wear. The Inspector wanted to speak to Reggie.
When I said he wasn’t in, the Inspector motioned towards Baynton. ‘Look what he’s done to him,’ he said.
‘Oh, yeah,’ I replied scornfully. ‘Come in and have a look at what your officers have done to Ronnie.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ the Inspector said.
I made them come in and see Ronnie anyway. ‘You’re dead worried because one of your men copped a right-hander,’ I said. ‘Ronnie got more than that – from half a dozen of them.’
The Inspector didn’t want to know. All he wanted was to arrest Reggie and charge him with assault. A few minutes later Reggie walked in. After a brief chat I advised him it was best for everyone if he gave himself up, and he did. But I warned the Inspector that if Reggie was so much as touched, I’d blow the whole thing wide open to the papers.
A day or so later, the old man was told the police didn’t want to make a song and dance about it unless they were forced to. The twins had to be charged because they had unquestionably assaulted a policeman, but they would be treated leniently – probably just put on probation – if I kept quiet about Ronnie’s beating. If I didn’t, the police would make it unpleasant for the whole family – starting with nicking the old man for dodging the call-up. I decided to swallow it.
A few days after their seventeenth birthday the twins appeared at Old Street in North London, accused of assault. For some reason, the magistrate, Mr Harold Sturge, praised PC Baynton’s courage in a ‘cowardly attack’. No mention, however, was made of the cowardly attack behind closed doors at Bethnal Green police station.
Not long afterwards Baynton was moved to a different area. But the PC had fuelled the twins’ resentment and distrust of uniformed authority and the legacy of his arrogance that autumn evening was to last a lifetime.
The Baynton episode did nothing to destroy the myth that was growing up around the twins. They were tough and fearless and, in the tradition of the Wild West where the ‘fastest guns’ were always the target of other sharpshooters, they became marked young men in the East End. Hard nuts from neighbouring districts came looking for them in search of fame and glory as The Kids Who Toppled The Krays. Like the police, they came mob-handed. But they never came back.
One evening Reggie walked into the house at just after ten at night. I told him Ronnie had left a message saying he was in the Coach and Horses with his friend, Pat Butler. It was nearly closing time and I said it was a bit late to go, but Reggie had a strange feeling he ought to. He left quickly. What happened when he got there became the talk of the East End for months.
Ronnie was in the saloon bar with Pat. As Reggie walked in, Ronnie said, ‘Just in time.’ He nodded to nine youths at the other end of the bar. ‘That little firm are looking for us.’
A few minutes later, the twins told Pat to make sure he stayed out of the way, then dashed out of the door, as though they were scared. But it was only a ploy to reduce the odds a little. As four of the rival gang followed them into the street, the twins doubled back into the saloon, through the public bar, taking the remaining five by surprise.
It was an almighty battle. Fists flew, chairs were thrown, tables overturned. Although the twins were outnumbered by more than two to one, they floored the whole lot. And when the other four ran back in, they knocked them out too. Amazingly, the twins came out of that scrap virtually unscathed. But one of the kids, Bill Donovan, who Ronnie had hit with a chair, was taken to hospital with a badly damaged eye.
The twins were very concerned about Bill and asked me to ring the hospital. I pretended to be a relation and asked how he was. A nurse said he was stable, but nobody knew if the eye was going to be permanently damaged. It was a worrying few days. The twins kept telling me to ring and eventually, to the twins’ relief, we learned Donovan was going to be all right.
Pat Butler told me later that he was in the street after the fight had ended and an old man had asked him who the twins were. He’d never seen anything like it; it was like a scene from a Western.
One night a few weeks later the twins were spotted going into a cafe in Commercial Road. When they came out, they found themselves facing ten members of the so-called Watney Street Gang who, it seemed, were intent on teaching them to stay in Bethnal Green. The twins did not want to risk waiting for the usual preliminaries to a punch-up; they waded into the mob, laying six of them out on the pavement. The rest, not fancying the new odds, ran off.
Incidents like this built up the legend that the twins were tough guys who went around the East End looking for people to punch. That is far-fetched and unfair. What is true is that they were tasting power for the first time. They had been accustomed to victory in the ring against one opponent but now they knew they were hard and tough and skilful enough to take on, and beat, eight or nine between them.
And they enjoyed the feeling.
The Albert Hall was packed that night, 11 December 1951. Tommy McGovern, one of my contemporaries at the Robert Browning Institute, was defending his British light-heavyweight championship. And five of the other seven bouts involved Bethnal Green fighters – including the three Kray brothers. It was the first time we had appeared on the same bill together, and it was to be the last.
In those days, a boxer had really arrived when he appeared at the Albert Hall or Harringay Arena; it had taken me eighteen victories in twenty contests. But the twins, who had turned pro in July, had made it there after just six fights – and six wins. That’s still a British boxing record.
My appearance almost never happened. I had decided to quit boxing and hadn’t been in the ring for several months. But I wanted an extra bit of money for Christmas and agreed to take on an unbeaten Aldgate welterweight called Lew Lazar for twenty-five quid.
We were the first three fights on. First, Ronnie lost to a clever boxer from King’s Cross named Bill Sliney, whom Reggie had outpointed two months before. Sliney was not too keen to continue after a first-round mauling by Ronnie, but he was persuaded to, and won a points verdict. Reggie’s cool, scientific style earned him an easy points win over Bob Manito, of Clapham, and then it was my turn.
Unfortunately, it was a night when the deafening cheers of the Bethnal Green faithful could not help me. I’d been out of action too long and my timing was haywire. My pride got me to my feet after two counts of nine in the first two rounds, but a left hook in the guts finished me in the third.
I spent some of the twenty-five quid on a white fur coat for my baby son, Gary, who had been born two days after the twins turned pro. But it was my last boxing pay-day. I never put the gloves on in public again. Neither did the twins. For the next two years they were to pit their strength against a very different opponent.
The Army.
The twins filled in their time between call-up and reporting by joining the old man and me on the knocker. But they didn’t show much enthusiasm, and it was a relief to them when they were ordered to report at the Tower of London for service with the Royal Fusiliers. They left Vallance Road early one March morning in 1952.
And were back in time for tea.
Mum asked what on earth had happened, but the twins were in a foul temper and refused to tell her. They went out and didn’t come back until the early hours when we’d all gone to bed. Later that morning, they were arrested for deserting.
They had, it transpired, reacted badly to uniformed authority once again. An NCO had shouted some orders to them. The twins didn’t like his attitude, his lack of respect, and one of them had thumped him. Then they had walked out, deciding Army life wasn’t for them.
And after an uncomfortable week’s punishment in the guardroom, they walked out again.
To me, it all seemed a terrible waste. Just four months before, they had been promising young boxers with just one minor blot on their record, for which they had been treated leniently. Now they were wanted men facing serious disciplinary action and, almost certainly, jail. I went to see them in hiding in various parts of London, and tried to persuade them to give themselves up. I told them the Forces favoured sportsmen; they could do well with their boxing talent. But it was a waste of breath, as usual. The twins were not going to serve in the Army and that was that.
They stayed on the run until early November, two weeks after their nineteenth birthday. Then one cold, snowy night Reggie suddenly turned up at Vallance Road. Mum was desperately worried for him but Reggie assured her he was all right. He stayed with her for about an hour then left. As he walked into the street, a voice called out, ‘Hello, Reg. I’m going to take you in.’ It was PC John Fisher, who knew the twins by sight.
Reggie asked him calmly to do him a favour and go away; he didn’t want a row. But PC Fisher said he couldn’t do that and lunged forward to grab him. Reggie ducked and threw a right hand. PC Fisher fell to the ground and Reggie hurried away in the snow.
It was only a matter of time. The police knew both twins were in the area and they were picked up a few hours later.
At Thames Street Court that morning the magistrate, Colonel W. E. Batt, jailed them for a month. It was the first time they had seen the inside of a prison as convicted persons.
After their sentence, a military escort took the twins to Wemyss Barracks at Canterbury, Kent, where they were court-martialled for desertion. They escaped yet again, but it was a short-lived freedom and on 12 May 1953 the twins found themselves serving nine months’ detention in the notorious military prison of Shepton Mallet in Somerset.
It was to be a tough nine months…for the Army! The prison staff at Shepton Mallet had never seen anyone like the twins before, and several sergeants were replaced because they couldn’t handle them. The twins were so uncontrollable that the Commanding Officer sought my help. He wondered why it was impossible to get through to the twins with words, why they resolved everything with violence. I tried to explain that life was like that in the East End; if anyone tried to threaten you, you hit them first. It was a world which that polite, charming CO would never understand, and he asked me to have a quiet word with the twins. I agreed to try.
The twins were unimpressed that I’d been having a cosy chat over a cup of tea with the CO; all the guards understood was a punch in the face, they said, and that was what they’d get. Nothing I tried to say cut any ice with them. They simply would not tolerate being ordered around. Tell them to do something and they’d rebel. Ask them, in a civil tone, and they would be fine. Ronnie, particularly, would rebel against a strong person, unless he had reason to respect him. There was one sergeant there they did like: he was firm but courteous, and they did what he told them.
The twins didn’t always use violence to make their point. One day a military policeman who had been giving Ronnie a hard time was standing outside the cobbler’s shop where Ronnie was working. Suddenly Ronnie rushed out, blood all over his face, screaming, ‘That’s it! I’ve done it now! It’s all over! Better get in there!’
The guard, convinced there had been a murder, dashed off to get reinforcements, but by the time they arrived everything was calm. Ronnie, who had smeared the blood over his face after cutting his hand slightly while working, was back at his bench.
‘What the hell happened here?’ demanded a senior officer.
Ronnie looked at him blankly. ‘Nothing,’ he replied. Then he looked at the embarrassed MP. ‘He must be going round the bend. Been working too hard or something.’
It is a pity that the NCO at the Tower of London rubbed the twins up the wrong way that March morning in 1952, because I’m sure they could have made something of themselves in the Army. They were fit and strong, and they would have loved the physical side; I’m sure they would have become physical training instructors in no time. They both had a lot of guts, too: once, on an assault course, Ronnie jumped from something and landed awkwardly, crashing his knee sickeningly into his chin. But he forced himself to carry on; he had unbelievable determination and hated quitting anything. They both had a gift for leadership, too, and had it been wartime I feel it would have been a very different story. They were the type who could so easily have distinguished themselves with courage in the face of extreme danger.
As it was, the twins spent what should have been the rest of their National Service giving the Shepton Mallet staff a very hard time. And when they were thrown out on to Civvy Street towards the end of 1953 each of their records bore that ugly scar: Dishonorable Discharge.
What, I wondered, were they going to do with the rest of their lives?
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