by John Pearson
But from now on neither toughness nor kindness seemed to make the faintest difference to the Twins and no sooner were they out of the guardroom than they were on the run again, which was how their two-year war with the military started. And the truth was that there was nothing that the army could do to them that faintly troubled them. Neither the disgusting food nor the discomfort of the guardroom bothered them, and when the seven days were up they once again went missing. The Twins’ one great advantage was that, unlike the army, they had nothing in the world to lose and were simply treating what was happening as one great adventure. Extreme discomfort didn’t worry them. They were so tough that they treated the punishment cells, with bare boards to sleep on and a bread-and-water diet, simply as a challenge. Their powers of endurance were remarkable and, having once set out to call the bluff of the military establishment, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
Of course, their pugilistic skills were a great advantage. No ordinary recruit would have got away with the sort of liberties the Twins were taking with their NCOs. And anybody in authority who felt tough enough to teach the Twins a lesson invariably ended up wishing that he hadn’t – like the big corporal who entered their cell ‘to have a little word with them’. A few minutes later he was standing tied up by his braces to a pillar in the centre of the room, with the Twins doing an Indian war dance round him.
While they were obviously enjoying themselves, the Twins were learning other lessons. One of them was the art of surviving on nothing but a little thieving. Previously teetotal, they started drinking, and when they were bored there was usually somebody around who needed to be taught a lesson. For a time the pattern of recapture and escape continued, and just occasionally it looked as if the twins would settle down and soldier. Once they even got as far as the army rifle range at Purfleet where they proved to be appalling shots. Then after this Ron was in trouble for beating up another NCO who had tried to teach the Twins another lesson. And so it continued.
At one point the Twins refused to shave or wear a uniform, and the army retaliated with a month’s sentence in the Colchester detention centre. After Colchester it was back to the Tower of London, and soon they were on the run again. This time they gave themselves an extended holiday in London’s West End, living rather as their father had when he was on the run, helped by the members of the underworld they had befriended. Even now there was something about the Twins that always seemed to get them treated with the respect that they demanded, and all the time they were learning about other criminals and other forms of crime and how to live the life they wanted. It was now that they saw themselves as outlaws from society, for as Reg liked to say, ‘What has society ever done for us?’
Whatever the answer, the fact was that society was becoming seriously concerned about them, particularly when they knocked down a policeman who was trying to arrest them and had to spend a month in Wormwood Scrubs together. After this they had their picture in the East London Advertiser, together with the headline ‘Kray Brothers beat up PC’. The picture and the accompanying press cuttings were duly pasted into Violet’s monster cuttings book, beside their boxing photographs and press reports of earlier misdemeanours.
Boxing or crime, crime or boxing, it scarcely seemed to matter any more. The Twins were on their way. Their name was getting known. From nobodies they were rapidly becoming somebodies. Their month in Wormwood Scrubs, far from being wasted, was seen as a further step up the criminal ladder.
After their time in the Scrubs they spent three months in the guardroom at Howe Barracks, Canterbury waiting to be court-martialled. According to Army regulations, before anyone could be dishonourably discharged he first had to be tried and punished. While this was going on, the Twins decided they would make the most of this boring period while the army got its act together. To pass the time they now decided to ‘go the limit’.
One of them remembered their father’s advice about acting barmy. For the Twins, particularly for Ronnie, nothing could have been easier. ‘It was funny, but I felt that there was nothing that we couldn’t do if we wanted to. So to start with I stopped shaving, then I shaved just half my face. Then we really did get going.’ Both the Twins were natural actors, and Ron found no problem in appearing mentally unbalanced. It was as if he was rehearsing for the moment three years later when he would actually be certified insane, but at the time it was treated as a joke. In retrospect it all appeared distinctly creepy – particularly when the Twins began to stage a return to childhood with tantrums, screams and uncontrolled behaviour. Food was thrown against the walls and dishes smashed, followed by shouts and screams and hammering on the cell door. Both of them stripped off and cut their uniforms to pieces.
It now seems unbelievable that nobody could stop them, but when the sergeant of the guard decided to intervene and teach these hooligans a lesson the latrine bucket was promptly emptied over him. Next day when they burned their bedding and their uniforms the fire hose was turned on them but once again they didn’t seem to worry. Finally they put the Twins in a cage. Reg asked a corporal for a glass of water. As he handed it to him through the bars, Reg produced a pair of handcuffs that he had kept hidden and handcuffed the NCO to the bars. As Reg put it, ‘If you are weak and start worrying about others they’ve got you where they want you. If you can show you’re tough and just don’t care you become invulnerable.’
This was another lesson for the future, and the learning process went on unabated while the Twins awaited their court martial. Nobody in authority had had to deal with anyone like this before. The Twins could have escaped again whenever they wanted but they knew this would only delay their trial, and hence their ultimate release date from the army. So they waited. The truth was that by now the army was sick and tired of the Twins, the Twins were sick and tired of the army, and their court martial, when it came, was something of a farce. The list of their offences was so long that they could have been kept inside for twenty years. But as all the army really wanted now was to be rid of them – for good – they were given the smallest punishment that the court could reasonably accept – six months apiece in the military prison at Shepton Mallet in Somerset, after which they would be ignominiously dismissed from the service.
For the Twins, those next six months seemed like the opposite of punishment. As for the dreaded military prison at Shepton Mallet, when they arrived there it was for them like two freshmen entering an Oxbridge College and finding themselves among a group of slightly older students of the higher criminality, selected by the army from all over Britain. The young Charlie Richardson was there, together with an equally young Freddy Foreman and one of the Adams brothers, together with other serious young offenders from all over Britain. This made those six months which the Twins spent at ‘The Mallet’ an invaluable experience. It broadened their minds, it started up a number of important friendships for the future, and it taught them something of the possibilities of organised crime, not just in Bethnal Green but throughout the country. As Reg often used to say, ‘God bless the Royal Fusiliers.’
8
The Billiard Hall:
1954–59
IT’S UNLIKELY THAT the Twins’ ‘ignominious dismissal’ from the Royal Fusiliers ever troubled them, and once they had shaken off the army and were safely back in Bethnal Green it was obvious where their latest ambitions would soon take them. Until they joined the army they were little more than youthful tearaways, engaging in their brawls and battles for the excitement and to keep a check on their discordant-twin relationship. Since then they had learned a lot from their battles with the Fusiliers, and two years in khaki had convinced them of the sort of life they wanted. Had they had any doubts before, they now knew for certain that they were going to be gangsters. But to be gangsters they first had to have a gang, and to have a proper gang they needed a place where it could meet. Someone remembered the old billiard hall in Eric Street, off the Mile End Road.
It had started life in the 1920s as the Regal Cinema, and in the dep
ression of the 1930s, some optimistic property developer turned it into a billiard hall complete with fourteen snooker tables. Somehow it survived the war, but although there was now a demolition order on the place, no one had had the heart or the energy to demolish it. From the moment they saw it the Twins knew that it was what they needed. The only trouble was the rent, which they thought excessive, but that was something they could deal with.
What was strange was that no sooner had they set their hearts on having it than the billiard hall became the scene of unexpected aggravation. Fireworks were thrown inside, tables were mysteriously damaged, and senseless acts of petty vandalism occurred for which it would have been tactless but not inaccurate to blame the Twins. The police told the manager that there was nothing they could do about it and after several weeks of mayhem the owners were relieved when the Twins said they’d take it off their hands for a weekly fiver.
No sooner had they taken over than the trouble stopped as quickly as it had started – and one of the liveliest chapters in the story of the Twins began.
To start with, Reg was very much in charge. Unlike Ron, who could be described as ham-fisted, Reg could use his hands for many things besides punching people. Soon he had the hall cleaned up, the bar repainted, the snooker tables put in order, and within a few days it was as if the Twins had been in charge for ever. They kept it open night and day, and as word got round about the change of management it began to make a profit. But from the start the real attraction of the hall was not so much the snooker as the Twins, and since they rarely left the place, a lot of people caught the habit of dropping in to see them. These included former inmates from various detention centres in the army, old friends and friends of friends who had just got out of prison, hopeful villains with a sure-fire proposition, and a lot of bored teenagers who had heard about the Twins and were on the lookout for a good night’s entertainment or adventure.
One of many unexpected things about the Twins was that they were naturally convivial. For obvious reasons, most criminals remain suspicious of the outside world and have a tendency to act as loners. But whilst I’m not convinced that the Twins ever really liked their fellow human beings they nonetheless loved to be the centre of activity and attention. They enjoyed having company around them and had little difficulty finding it.
One sees this clearly from the earliest days of the billiard hall. Whatever else they were, the Twins were rarely boring. They were what the locals used to call ‘live wires’ and had a knack of making something happen. It might be something funny. It was likely to be something dangerous and it would probably be unlawful, which ensured that evenings at the billiard hall were usually eventful. As one old regular put it, ‘If you didn’t turn up one night you’d find yourself worrying about what you were missing, and next morning someone would be sure to say, ‘You should have been around last night. The things those Twins get up to. You should’ve seen ’em.’
Sometimes they would stage a full-scale battle, as on the night when members of a local Maltese gang arrived demanding money from the new management without previously having checked out who they were. The Twins were quick to disabuse them and a task force from the billiard hall pursued them down the road armed with cutlasses, after which no more was seen of the Maltese and no one else ever came demanding money. There were sometimes fights among the clientele to add to the excitement, but unless the Twins themselves joined in they disapproved of violence in the hall in case it undermined their authority.
One important feature of the lives of the Twins which started in the early days at the billiard hall was the emergence of a definite division of labour between them. Reg clearly was the worker. It was he who earned the money and he who paid – or, when he could get away with it, refused to pay – the bills and kept the whole place going. Reg had a straight side, which Ron lacked completely. Reg was sharper and more practical, with something of old Charlie’s canniness and oily charm. Just as he’d been a classic boxer and Ron a bruiser, so Reg knew how to use his brain. He was keen on making money and on any wheezes that happened to be going.
Ron, on the other hand, remained the centre of attention and was increasingly the showman of the two. It was Ronnie whom people talked about, just as it was he who always needed people round him. I remember Dr Cline, a psychiatrist from the London Hospital who treated Ron for schizophrenia, saying he believed that ‘a great deal of Ronnie’s sociability and the need he seems to have for people who are dependent on him is almost certainly a compensation for the paranoiac’s feelings of isolation and loneliness.’
If this was true, as I think it was, it goes some way to explain one of the enduring mysteries of the Twins and how they ended up as such iconic figures of the Sixties. But along with this there was another even more important feature of Ron’s tortured personality, which was almost certainly related to his schizophrenia: his passionate involvement with a world of fantasy.
This seems to have begun with both the Twins during their childhood and early adolescence when they picked up all those stories of the criminals and villains of the old East End.
What was interesting was that although Ron had always been the damaged twin, and that emotionally he was increasingly at risk, it was he, not Reg who was always the centre of attention. He was the leader, he was the one who was really feared, and the billiard hall was the perfect stage for Ronnie to act out his favourite fantasies.
There were often evenings when for much of the time he’d sit there, sunk in silence. Then he could suddenly recover and when Ron was on a high he could usually be relied on to produce something crazy or outrageous. One night he brought along a donkey, placed a straw hat on its head and organised donkey rides around the hall. For some reason he had always loved dwarfs, and when he felt that things at the billiard hall needed livening up he would hire one from a theatrical agency for the evening to come and entertain them. Then one night for a change he hired a giant, and everyone had a great time trying to get him drunk. In the end he did become inebriated and when he fell asleep no one quite knew what to do with him. But beneath everything there always lurked an underlying threat of violence, and behind the fun and games the paranoid dreamworld of ‘The Firm’ was taking shape.
This could have been another of Ronnie’s strategies to offset the earlier damage to his nervous system when it brought him terrible depressions. The criminologist Dick Hebdidge was the first to call the Twins ‘actor gangsters’ and during their time at the billiard hall one can see this tendency developing as Ron began escaping from acute depression into one or other of his favourite fantasies.
One can also understand how the billiard hall, having been originally built as a cinema, became a perfect stage for Ron’s own criminal theatre. Every night it offered him a captive audience. Various members of what they were beginning to call ‘The Firm’, had walk-on parts, and lesser characters filled in as extras. Dickie Morgan played the part of resident comedian, and whatever happened Ron would always have to be the star, acting out whatever role the state of his emotions or the current situation called for.
His favourite role of all was to pretend to be his greatest hero, Al Capone. He had read a lot about him and began to copy the minutest details of his life. After reading how Capone, like the good Sicilian he was, used to have a barber come to shave him every morning, he got Violet to telephone the Italian barber from opposite Pellici’s cafe to come and do the same for him at ten a.m. each day at Vallance Road. He also had a tailor measure him for a dark blue double-breasted suit, copied from an old photograph of his hero. But it was not until evening at the billiard hall that Ron came into his own, pretending to be Al Capone surrounded the members of his gang in some downtown pool room.
This would begin with Ronnie seated in the big armchair that was specially reserved for him, facing the door and watching as the regulars arrived. Then, as play began, the lights would flicker on above the tables, leaving the rest of the hall in shadow. ‘Ron always wanted it to look like a den of th
ieves. He liked a lot of noise and lots of people and the air thick with cigarette smoke. He used to hand out cigarettes and shout, “Smoke up, you useless lot! There ain’t enough smoke in ’ere.” Then, when the hall was packed with people and play was going on at all the tables and the atmosphere was as thick as a Limehouse fog, Ronnie would be satisfied and would do something that you hardly ever saw. He would lean back in his chair and smile like an old tomcat.’
During nights like this, the drinks would always be on him and his favoured friends would play up to him, imitating characters in American gangster movies.
As well as Al Capone, Ron had other imaginary heroes, depending on his mood or whatever film he’d seen or what book he was reading. It was typical of him that, after all the trouble that he and Reg had endured to get thrown out of the army, he started calling himself ‘The Colonel’ and even dreamed about the sort of military hero he wished he’d been. Ever since reading Seven Pillars of Wisdom in Shepton Mallet he had been obsessed with Lawrence of Arabia. He also identified strongly with Gordon of Khartoum after reading Anthony Nutting’s biography. When I asked him why, he said, ‘Gordon was like me, ’omosexual, and he met his death like a man. When it’s time for me to go, I hope I do the same.’ For a time another hero was the daring leader of the SAS, Colonel Roy Farran. With Ron in full military mode, 178 Vallance Road became ‘Fort Vallance,’ just as he became ‘The Colonel’. In a way the title rather suited him.
Reg, who would usually do anything to keep Ron happy, would go along with this. He always liked to see himself as the practical member of the duo, as in fact he was – and as long as Ron was occupied, Reg got on with the practical side of running the Firm. It was he who generally ‘did the business’ which more or less financed Ron’s fun and games. It was he, for instance, who tried to put some order into the protection rackets instead of relying, as Ron did, on the casual ‘nipping’ (the law called it ‘demanding with menaces’) of any sum you needed from anyone you thought you could frighten into giving it to you.