Gangland UK

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  Clearly, he had made his point – the twins meant business. But no one wanted to do business with them. Even Spot tired of their antics and retired to run a furniture business.

  Ignoring the twins, however, would not make them go away. Despite their failure to win acceptance, they were no longer East End hoodlums, and it was only a matter of time before a major opening into the London underworld turned up. In the summer of 1956, the owner of a West End drinking club called The Stragglers approached the Krays to help stamp out the fighting that plagued his bar.

  The next few years were to be ones of increasing prosperity. Ironically, one of the major reasons for this success was the fact that, on 5 November 1956, Ronnie started a three-year prison sentence for grievous bodily harm. Having installed themselves in The Stragglers, the twins became involved in a dispute between the club’s proprietors and a rival Irish gang. Ronnie thought the gang should be taught a lesson and, after raiding the pub where the Irishmen met, participated in beating a man called Terence Martin to near-death.

  Although the separation from Ronnie was a great emotional blow to Reggie, it gave him free rein to manage the twins’ business interests. Without his brother’s continual demands for violent retribution at the faintest hint of an insult or competition, they flourished. One of his first moves was to open a legitimate club of his own – The Double R on the Bow Road – which soon became the East End’s premier night spot. At the same time, he moved into minding and protecting the illegal gambling parties held at smart addresses in Mayfair and Belgravia.

  Meanwhile, Ronnie appeared to accept his sentence at Wandsworth Prison with equanimity. Armed with his reputation and copious supplies of tobacco from his brother, he had little difficulty ensuring he was treated with due respect by his fellow inmates, many of whom he already knew. But, unexpectedly, because of his good behaviour he was transferred to Camp Hill Prison on the Isle of Wight.

  Isolated from both his friends in Wandsworth and his family, Ronnie’s mind began to collapse with amazing speed. He began to hear voices, to imagine that he was surrounded by informers and spies, and he injured several prisoners before being moved to the psychiatric wing of Winchester Prison.

  Just after Christmas 1957, now aged 24, his mental breakdown reached a climax following the news that his favourite aunt had died. This may seem ridiculous to some, for the Krays, who spared no feelings for the victims they maimed, retained all the sentimentality of a close-knit Cockney family. After spending the night in a strait-jacket, Ronnie was certified insane the following morning. Two days later, Violet Kray received a prison telegram announcing: ‘YOUR SON, RONALD, CERTIFIED INSANE.’

  From Winchester, Ronnie was transferred to Long Grove, a psychiatric hospital close to Epsom in Surrey, where his condition rapidly improved. Its former patients included Josef Hassid (a Polish violin prodigy) and former shoemaker George Pelham (a man who survived the sinking of two ships, including the RMS Titanic). Understandably, Pelham suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the asylum on 22 January 1935, and died four years later.

  For his part, Hassid was first placed in a psychiatric hospital in 1941 after suffering from a nervous breakdown at the age of 18. He was admitted again in 1943 and was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. He was lobotomised in late 1950 and died at the age of 26.

  History tells us that little attention was paid to strict security at Long Grove, and every Sunday visitors could come and see their friends or relatives. Reggie, naturally, was a regular visitor. But while he could see that his brother was on the road to recovery, he knew that if the hospital continued to regard his twin as insane, they could postpone his release date indefinitely. Ronnie had to escape.

  The plan was simplicity itself. Reggie entered the hospital wearing a light-coloured overcoat and, while the ward attendant looked elsewhere, Ronnie put on the overcoat and walked through the door to freedom. By the time it was realised that the remaining twin was Reggie, Ronnie was on his way to a caravan in Suffolk.

  Although his mind again deteriorated rapidly in the isolation of the countryside, the scheme worked. He remained free long enough for his certification of insanity to expire. Reggie then handed him back to the police, and he completed his sentence in Wandsworth Prison.

  Released in the spring of 1958, Ronnie could finally start to enjoy the riches his brother had been accumulating for the previous two years, and he was soon back to his old ways, planning gangland battles and expanding the twins’ operations through threats and violence. Then the Krays undertook their biggest and most profitable venture to date – Esmeralda’s Barn.

  Esmeralda’s Barn was a successful casino at 50, Wilton Place, in wealthy Belgravia. One of the most exclusive areas in London, boasting Harrods and Harvey Nichols, two of the premier department stores in the world; just down the road is Buckingham Palace. Tipped off that it was effectively owned by just one man, Stefan de Faye, the twins, accompanied by Ronnie’s financial adviser Leslie Payne, paid him a visit in the autumn of 1960. Payne outlined the twins’ proposition that de Faye should sell his controlling share in the casino for £1,000. The prospect of falling foul of the Krays was enough to persuade de Faye to accept the offer; thus, overnight, the twins were set up for the Sixties with one of the most lucrative gaming houses in the West End.

  With Esmeralda’s Barn, the twins gained far more than a West End foothold, with the muscle to back it up. Its gaming tables alone earned them around £1,600 a week, and Reggie was soon busy at work adding protection money from the other clubs and casinos that had proliferated with the legalisation of gambling in 1960. At least ten of them were handing over £150 to the Krays weekly.

  At the same time, the twins continued to open their own clubs. In March 1962, the doors were opened to The Kentucky, a larger version of The Double R, in Stepney. Two years later, they bought into another club, The Cambridge Rooms on the Kingston by-pass, and invited the then world heavyweight boxing champion, Sonny Liston, to the opening night party.

  Increasingly, Reggie and Ronnie were meeting on social occasions with the rich and famous, who were mostly unaware of their illegal activities. They all seemed to enjoy being photographed with the Krays.

  Ronnie and Reggie surrounded themselves with the Sixties glitterati, with showbusiness stars such as Judy Garland, gangster-role actor George Raft, Diana Dors, and her husband, talented and much-loved Alan Lake, and Barbara Windsor, posing with the twins.

  Sports personalities, including football manager Malcolm Allison, and the welterweight world boxing champ, Gershon Mendeloff – aka Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis – were patrons, as were Henry Cooper, Rocky Marciano, and Victor Spinetti, the Welsh-born comedy actor, comic eccentric, gifted raconteur and close friend of the Beatles. Up-market call-girl Christine Keeler and even soon-to-be disgraced Government minister John Profumo enjoyed VIP status at any of the Kray’s clubs, as did numerous minor celebrities and high-ranking police officers, solicitors, barristers and judges.

  The Krays has made it to the ‘big time’, and it seemed that nothing could ever go wrong. But the wheels did indeed come off, and that was mostly down to their failure, during the first half of the decade, an era of expansion, to capitalise fully from either their legitimate or illegal business interests. Largely responsible was the twins’ inability to give up the habits that got them where they were, but which also proved a liability.

  As fast as the Krays added a new concern to their empire, an old one crumbled away. The Double R had its licence revoked after Reggie refused to give the police information on the whereabouts of one Ronnie Marwood, wanted for the stabbing of a policeman. Marwood was completely innocent of the crime and the Krays believed him, and they certainly were not going to ‘grass’ him up to the Old Bill.

  Esmeralda’s Barn, which should have maintained the twins’ regular source of legitimate income for years, soon began to run at a loss once Ronnie started handing out credit to gamblers who could not repay their debts. In 1964, the Krays received a t
ax demand from the Inland Revenue that they were unable to meet. The Barn went out of business.

  Strangely, the twins’ criminal activities never appeared to be driven by a desire for money – they saw it as a mark of success, naturally, but once they had secured a reasonable return for their efforts, they became bored. Ronnie stated, ‘Ron and I never really liked the protection business. It wasn’t glamorous enough for us.’

  Novelty began to grow more and more important to them. Ronnie, in particular, continually produced one extraordinary scheme after another. Later, in 1964, he plunged into one of the twins’ most bizarre ventures.

  Ernest Shinwell, homosexual son of the veteran Labour peer, Manny Shinwell, proposed they invest in a project to build a new town and major factory development at Enugu in eastern Nigeria. The twins immediately put in £25,000, later followed by a lot more. The prime motivator was Ronnie, who told me during my visit to Broadmoor that the project was designed to push them further into the international spotlight. The investment yielded no return whatsoever, although the twins did get one or two trips to Nigeria, where they were driven around in a Rolls-Royce, with Ronnie being ‘stylishly entertained’ by a number of very young Nigerian boys.

  One might say that the Kray twins could be taken out of their formative environment, the East End, but one could never take the East End out of the Krays. Born and bred in such an impoverished environment, they would always have reverted back to the socio-mentality, and the living conditions, that their early years had imprinted upon their personalities. They were at home in the East End, and had they stayed there, they might have thrived. Moving into West End business ventures, although successful for a short period, proved to be way above their heads. When they started involving themselves with the son of a peer of the realm, and a half-baked scheme to better the lives of Nigerians, the twins were well out of their depth.

  The ‘Nigerian Project’ had been touted around for quite a while by Ernest Shinwell with no takers. When ‘Ernie’ visited Esmeralda’s, he fell in with the eagle-eyed Leslie Payne – the Krays’ business manager – who took up the project and who convinced Ronnie and Reggie that it would be a good investment. Little did the twins know that Payne was on a fat back-hander, by way of a commission, if the Krays put up cash for a consortium deal.

  During the negotiations with Shinwell, Ronnie was wined and dined at the Houses of Parliament. And it was here that he was first introduced to Lord Boothby, a bisexual who had declared that he wasn’t quite sure if he preferred young boys or young girls.

  The twins and their esteemed business associates made several visits to the Nigerian development site. In the beginning, they were treated like royalty and met all the local dignitaries and ministers of the region. On one occasion, Ronnie was given a tour of the local jail and even had his photograph taken with a warder. However, things soon started to go wrong. On another trip to Enugu, Leslie Payne and colleague Freddie Gore were arrested and an associate, Gordon Anderson, and Charlie Kray had their passports confiscated until they could come up with £5,000, said to be the amount of money owed to one of the building contractors involved in the project.

  The Krays had met their match with their Nigerian counterparts, who were similarly motivated as the twins as far as underhand dealings went, but were far more streetwise when on their home soil. It was a shakedown in a country where the Krays muscle was worthless. As Ronnie explained to me, ‘They had us by the balls.’ Charlie had to contact his brothers, who stumped up the £5,000.

  As time passed, the project and its funds were slowly disappearing. More investors were needed to keep the project afloat.

  If the Krays spent money easily, there appeared to be no shortage of sources of new funds. In 1965, the twins spread their net wider as they began to develop a working relationship with the American Mafia, in an effort to earn big bucks.

  Their first chance to prove themselves in the field of international crime came with the theft of $55,000 worth of bonds from a bank in Canada. Too hot to be laundered through North America, some of the bonds were offered to the Krays for sale in Europe. Soon the trade was flourishing.

  However, in the same year, the Krays suffered a setback. Hew McCowan, the son of a baronet and owner of a Soho nightclub called Hideaway, told police the Krays were demanding half his profits. Reggie and Ronnie were arrested and, after 56 days in custody, appeared at the Old Bailey charged with demanding money with menaces.

  By the time the trial took place, however, they had dug up enough information about McCowan’s history as a police informer to throw doubt on the reliability of his evidence. The trial was halted before the summing-up speeches and the twins were released. The very same day, they celebrated their acquittal by buying the Hide-a-Way, renaming it El Morocco and throwing a victory party.

  For Reggie, the good times looked set to continue. On 20 April, he married the woman he had courted for three years, 21-year-old Frances Shea. The wedding was celebrated in typical Kray style, with Rolls-Royces, David Bailey as the official photographer, celebrities such as boxer Terry Spinks in attendance and congratulatory telegrams from Judy Garland, Barbara Windsor and many others.

  Alas, the marriage didn’t last. Frances killed herself in June 1967, at the age of 23, after less than two years of unhappy marriage. The depressing aura the twins had created around themselves was too much for her.

  But beneath the veneer of upward mobility, the violence which had been the twins’ main asset in getting them to the top began to turn sour on them. Instead of settling down to enjoy the proceeds of their protection rackets, clubs and casinos, Ronnie in particular became obsessed with proving himself to be the unchallenged boss of London’s underworld.

  Over the years, his suits became slicker, he began to wear ostentatious jewellery, and more and more he regarded himself as a Godfather figure. But while he adopted the appearance of a smart crook, moving with the times and mingling with the jet-set, his mind was slowly disintegrating.

  Ronnie’s bouts of depression worsened, and he started to regard almost everyone around him with suspicion. His fears would give way to sudden bouts of pathological violence. It didn’t take much to set him off. One old friend who tried to borrow £5 was slashed in the face. Another had his cheeks branded after starting a brawl in Esmeralda’s Barn.

  Ronnie, however, wanted more than random attacks and knifings. Ever since the days of the Regal billiard hall, he took a great pride in his organisational abilities, assembling gangs to beat up rival gangs, and building up an armoury of weapons that included machine-guns. Time after time, however, his dream of releasing his forces on competition worth attacking had been thwarted.

  It was only at the emergence of the Richardson brothers and their gang did the Krays look as if they finally had an enemy powerful enough to demand their full attention. The fact that the Mafia was now dealing with the twins added an extra piquancy.

  Ronnie found himself in his element. After the meeting when Cornell called him a ‘fat poof’, he had a double grudge to bear and, when a car ran down a man who resembled Ronnie in Vallance Road, it looked like a gang war was starting. Later, Ronnie recalled, ‘I was loving it. Fighting, scrapping, battling… that’s what I’d come into it for in the first place.’

  Unhappily for Ronnie, the excitement was short-lived. When the two Richardson brothers became involved in a shoot-out with another gang at a pub in Catford, it looked as though they had destroyed themselves without any help from the Krays. Ronnie once again felt he had been cheated of the opportunity to prove himself through violence. And instead of revelling in this stroke of luck that left the twins as the undisputed rulers of London gangland, Ronnie’s pathological urge for revenge overpowered him. Within 24 hours, he had murdered George Cornell.

  George Cornell

  Ronnie Kray famously stated, ‘In front of a table full of villains, George Cornell called me a “fat poof”. He virtually signed his own death warrant.’

  Born George Myers o
n 9 March 1928, 38-year-old George Cornell was a lifelong criminal who dabbled in pornography and blackmail before moving south of the River Thames to become one of the chief torturers of the Richardson gang. His prison sentences included three years for attacking a woman with a knife.

  Business was quiet in the bars of The Blind Beggar pub in the East End of London’s Whitechapel Road on the evening of Tuesday, 8 March 1966. It was close to 8.30pm and there was an hour to go before trade was likely to build up. An off-duty police inspector had just finished a snack and left, so, almost as a gesture of confidence, the barmaid put a record on the jukebox – ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More’ by the Walker Brothers – and its brassy notes created the illusion that the pub was about to come to life. But the pounding beat was no distraction to a dark, pouting customer, George Cornell, absorbed in conversation with his pal Albie Woods in the lounge bar.

  Occasionally, the talk between the two was interrupted by short bursts of coarse, tough laughter but, unknown to Cornell, a few hundred yards to the north in The Lion in Tapp Street, Ronnie, Reggie and some members of ‘the Firm’ were drinking. Someone called them, and told Ronnie that Cornell was just down the road. Taking one of his men, John ‘Scotch’ Dickson, and with Ian Barrie driving, they made their way down Brady Street, turning into the Whitechapel Road and pulling up outside The Blind Beggar.

  Unaware that one of his arch enemies had just arrived outside, Cornell, perched on a bar stool, supped slowly at a glass of light ale. He was relaxed, enjoying his hour or so away from his ‘work’ as one of London’s most vicious gangsters. His glass was almost empty, and ready for a refill that was never to come, when the door to the bar opened and two men stalked in.

  Cornell half-turned on his stool and his dark eyes lit with a falsely welcoming smile as he recognised one of the two newcomers, a brooding, boxer-type man with thick eyebrows that almost met on the bridge of his long, flared nose. It was Ronnie Kray.