Me and My Brothers

by Kray, Charlie

  Reggie and I saw the financial possibilities in spielers and we acquired one across the road from The Double R. Within a couple of months, we opened two more. Money, suddenly, was coming out of our ears.

  To make life even sweeter, a member of The Double R tipped me off about an empty flat in Narrow Street, Wapping. It was a two-bedroomed flat on the second floor of a shabby block called Brightlingsea Buildings, built for dockers and their families nearly a hundred years before. A palace it wasn’t. But it was a place Dolly, Gary and I could call ours at last and I snapped it up the same day. I had the money to move to a posher pad away from the manor, but the thought didn’t occur to me. The East End was in my blood, and anyway, that was where we were making a very good living.

  Dolly adored the new lifestyle. She had always dreamed of being rich, and now that there was a few bob around, she made the most of it with lots of new clothes and regular hair-dos. We went to West End clubs with upper-crust patrons of The Double R who accepted us as friends, cockney accents and all, or we enjoyed ourselves with old friends in the East End. Wherever we went, Dolly always looked lovely and attracted a lot of attention. I was proud of her.

  One bloke at The Double R seemed to be taking more than a passing interest in Dolly but I felt secure in our marriage and didn’t think much of it. She was a stunning looker and it was hardly surprising that other men found her attractive. My life was full to the brim with money and excitement and plans for the future, and I didn’t give George Ince another thought.

  In Wandsworth Prison Ronnie was delighted that business was going well on the outside; he knew he would have a share in it when he was released, and because he’d earned full remission through good behaviour in his first year it seemed he would be home in time for Christmas 1958.

  In one day, however, the whole situation changed. From being more or less a model prisoner without one black mark on his record, Ronnie found himself in a tiny, concrete cell in a strait-jacket. Dreams of freedom vanished. The nightmare from which Ronnie never escaped had begun.

  During the year he’d been in jail, Ronnie had been a loner. He had had his place in the prison hierarchy and made sure everyone understood it, but he had made it plain that he wouldn’t cause trouble if he wasn’t bothered. Ronnie has an overpowering manner, bordering on hypnotic, and often sounds as though he’s demanding when in fact he’s merely asking. Whether this led to the problems in Wandsworth I don’t know, but a prison officer reacted badly to something he said and Ronnie snapped. The officer went down but within seconds other officers were on Ronnie who, strong as a bull, chinned a couple and they went over. An almighty fight broke out with fists flying, boots kicking. More officers, some armed with truncheons, joined in. Ronnie laid into them until they grabbed his arms and pushed them behind his back. Then they forced Ronnie’s head down and rushed him along the cell corridor into a post. Someone came running with a strait-jacket. Somehow they got Ronnie into it. Then they dragged him along to a concrete cell they call the ‘chokey’ block. They held him down while an officer injected him with a drug, then slammed the door. Ronnie was left in that cell for a week.

  Then they transferred him to the psychiatric wing at Winchester Prison in Hampshire.

  And a doctor certified him insane.

  The family all reacted differently. I was very worried and disturbed because I realized the implications: Ronnie could be kept in jail indefinitely. Mum couldn’t believe it, but she tried to keep cool about it and was as optimistic as usual, saying everything would be bound to sort itself out in the end. The old man wouldn’t believe it. Ronnie was being clever, he said; he was getting the authorities at it, working his ticket. No way was Ronnie mad.

  And Reggie? Reggie was beside himself with fury and worry. If his identical twin, the man who shared his innermost thoughts, had been officially declared a nut-case, what on earth did that make him?

  The news from Winchester that spring of 1958 shattered us all and for weeks we tried to change the prison rules that did not allow us to have a second opinion. Mean-while, Ronnie was given massive doses of a tranquillizing drug called Stemetil. We were told this was to stabilize him and curb his violent tendencies. But it dulled his mind and affected his memory, and we were powerless to do anything about it. We watched him deteriorate before us to a point where sometimes he didn’t even recognize us.

  Out of my mind with worry, I decided to find out just what Stemetil was. When I did, I was horrified. A Harley Street specialist confirmed that Ronnie was being treated for schizophrenia with a drug normally used for treating vertigo and vomiting! To make matters even worse he said, ‘The precise mechanisms of the action of this drug are not yet fully understood.’

  It was too much to take. Reggie and I decided that Ronnie was coming out of Winchester even if we had to blow a hole in the prison wall to get him. Happily, this wasn’t necessary. A week or so later, in May 1958, Ronnie was transferred to a mental hospital just fourteen miles from London. It was Long Grove near Epsom, Surrey. And springing him from there was going to be a doddle.

  The Strange Case of the Vanished Twin hit the headlines later the same month. Millions probably thought it was just another piece of Kray skulduggery, another cheeky swipe at authority, but we removed Ronnie from that hospital because we were far from convinced of his unbalanced mind. Also, we were very concerned at the bad effect the drugs were having on him.

  One thing the drugs hadn’t done was change Ronnie’s appearance; he still looked like Reggie. When Reggie put on a blue suit, white shirt and blue tie, similar to those Ronnie wore in hospital, only those who knew them well could spot the difference. When Reggie had his hair cut as short as Ronnie’s and put on a pair of glasses, even I had trouble telling them apart.

  The switch was a simple operation. Leaving some friends in a couple of cars outside the hospital grounds, Reggie went in to see Ronnie as though it was just another routine visit. They sat chatting at a table in the small visiting hall and waited until a patrolling male nurse’s back was turned. Ronnie whipped off his glasses; Reggie slipped his on. Then they quickly but discreetly changed places.

  When they were sure no one had noticed the change-over, Ronnie got up and sauntered over to a door which visitors were allowed to go through to fetch tea and biscuits. The nurse, assuming he was Reggie, opened the door and Ronnie walked out. But he didn’t go for tea; he walked straight out of the hospital into the grounds. One of the hospital staff came towards him on a bike and Ronnie tensed. But the man merely nodded a greeting and rode past. Ronnie walked on and on until he reached the gate, and then he spotted the cars Reggie had told him about and he was gone.

  Reggie waited for about half an hour, then he went up to the nurse on the door and said, ‘Excuse me, Ron’s been a long time getting the tea. I didn’t think they were allowed to get the tea.’

  The nurse looked puzzled. ‘You’re Ronnie,’ he said.

  Reggie shook his head. ‘I’m Reggie. Ronnie went to get the tea. I’m getting worried.’

  The nurse stared at Reggie closely. He must have believed him, because he ran off, a worried look on his face. Then all hell broke loose. An alarm bell went off. Hospital staff started running around. And then the police arrived.

  Someone said to Reggie, ‘This is all down to you.’

  But Reggie pleaded innocence. ‘I just came to see him. He went to get the tea, then everyone got excited.’

  To confirm Reggie’s story, the police took his finger-prints and checked them with the Criminal Records Office at Scotland Yard.

  ‘You are Reg Kray,’ someone commented.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last hour,’ said Reg. Then he added, straight-faced, ‘I’m worried. What’s happened to him?’

  ‘Do us a favour,’ one copper said impatiently. ‘You know what’s happened.’

  But Reggie kept saying he didn’t. And they kept him there for a couple of hours before letting him go.

  By then, Ronnie w
as in a beautiful, expensive flat in St John’s Wood. Not for long, though. When he arrived, he took one look round and said, ‘I don’t like this. You can get me out of here.’ And we did – the next morning. Ronnie was like that. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that we’d gone to a lot of trouble and expense to get him a ‘safe’ house. He just didn’t like the place and that was that.

  That day, the Superintendent of Long Grove got in touch with us and asked us to see him at the hospital. He said we’d made a serious mistake: Ronnie wasn’t well and should have stayed there for treatment. We played dumb, but the Superintendent laughed. He said he admired how it had been done: there had been no trouble, no one had been hurt. But, nevertheless, we had made a mistake. And he warned us that we would find out he was right.

  For the next few months Reggie and I had our work cut out running our businesses while keeping Ronnie ahead of the law. The escape was big news and stories of his whereabouts flooded the East End: he was reliably reported to be in the Bahamas, New York, Malta, the Cote d’Azur, Southern Spain and goodness knows where else. In fact, he never strayed further north than Finchley or further west than Fulham. He took a few chances to visit Mum in Vallance Road, and the first visit proved very traumatic for him. While he was there, he wanted to see Aunt Rose. But she had died while he was in Winchester and Mum had decided not to tell him until he was better. When she did break the news, Ronnie got up and went into the yard. He stood there, looking up at the railway arch. The death of his Aunt Rose was the biggest blow of his life then. He stood out there, looking up, trying to take it in.

  Ronnie didn’t want to be on the trot for the rest of his life. But he didn’t want to go back to a mental hospital either. While he had been in Wandsworth, he had heard about people who had been in and out of mental institutions for years and was terrified of ending up like them. One had actually been certified insane and was being detained without a firm date for release. Ronnie dreaded the same thing happening to him.

  To solve the problem, we had to prove that Ronnie was, in fact, sane. So we booked an appointment with a Harley Street psychiatrist under an assumed name and asked him to give an opinion on Ronnie’s mental state. Ronnie made it sound plausible with a cock-and-bull story about getting married and being worried about insanity way back in the family. The psychiatrist was highly amused and, after asking a few questions, sent Ronnie on his way with a document stating that he was, indeed, in possession of all his marbles.

  The effect on Ronnie was startling, and very worrying. Relieved that the dark shadow of madness was lifted, he started taking even more risks. He would have a few drinks here, a few drinks there, and once he strolled all the way along Bethnal Green Road, cheerfully returning the greetings of people who thought he was Reggie.

  But after five months the strain of being on the trot began to take its toll. He’d put on a lot of weight through heavy drinking, his face was drawn and haggard, and he’d become morose and anti-social, preferring to stay in and read or sleep. None of us knew what to do for the best. I was told Ronnie was suffering from the after-effects of the drugs pumped into him. He needed medical treatment very quickly, but to get it would mean revealing his identity and recent history.

  In the end, the problem was solved for us. Ronnie took one risk too many and was recaptured. He suspected police would be waiting for him to turn up at Vallance Road to celebrate his twenty-fifth birthday, so he waited until the day after and arrived after dark. But the police were still waiting and let themselves in quietly at three in the morning as one of the party guests left.

  A few days before, Ronnie had been acting very strangely; sometimes he didn’t even recognize Reggie or myself. But when those two uniformed policemen and two male nurses walked into the house that night Ronnie was perfectly normal. He said he knew they had to take him back, and went to get his coat. I think he was relieved it was all over.

  The police said they would take Ronnie to Long Grove for a formal discharge, then return him to Wandsworth where he would finish his sentence. But first he would stay overnight in Bethnal Green nick. Alarm bells rang loudly in my mind and Reggie’s: we had not forgotten the PC Baynton affair. And although it was now nearly four in the morning, we rang our solicitor, a doctor and a national newspaper reporter.

  Two hours later, Reggie and I walked into the police station with the lawyer and the doctor. We were not welcome. A high-ranking officer refused to let us see Ronnie and, in spite of the lawyer’s protests, ordered us out of the building.

  If someone had talked to us civilly, assuring us that Ronnie was all right and would get the proper treatment, I’m sure that would have been the end of it. But when Ronnie eventually came out, the police laid on a security pantomime that got everyone’s back up. He was in a taxi – with a police escort – and they roared past us as though Scotland Yard was on fire. Angry now, as well as concerned, Reggie and I gave chase in our car, with the doctor and lawyer behind in theirs and the reporter behind them. It was like something out of those pre-war Keystone Kops silent movies. And it got even crazier near the Oval cricket ground in Kennington, South London, when a second police car, probably called on the radio, cut in front of Reggie, forcing him to swerve on to the pavement. It was all so stupid and irresponsible.

  The security farce continued even when we reached Long Grove. The police escort let the taxi into the hospital grounds, then parked across the drive, blocking the entrance. We simply got out and walked. But then the second police car was allowed through and it crawled behind us as we walked to Reception. What on earth did they think we were going to do? Hurl hand grenades and rush Ronnie to freedom under cover of machine-gun fire?

  At Reception, we asked to see Ronnie. The request was turned down. Instead we were shown into the Superintendent’s office. He was as charming as before, but repeated that we’d done Ronnie no favours by helping him escape: he was very sick. We agreed, but argued very strongly that he wasn’t insane. The Superintendent listened politely, promised to consider Ronnie’s case carefully, then arranged for us to see him there and then.

  That Superintendent didn’t have long to consider the case. Within a couple of days Ronnie was taken back to Wandsworth. He was not re-certified, but he was put on tranquillizers. He hated this, but he finished his sentence without further trouble and walked out a free man about seven months later, in May 1959.

  The release date surprised us. Ronnie, sentenced to three years, had belted a prison officer, caused a certain amount of damage to others, then escaped from captivity for five months. Yet he still earned full remission and served just two years.

  Did someone blunder, I wonder? Was Ronnie diagnosed wrongly? Did a doctor or psychiatrist prescribe the wrong treatment? Was Ronnie allowed out earlier than he should have been just to keep him happy?

  And to keep us quiet?

  Chapter Five

  The weight Ronnie had put on before he went back to prison had dropped by the time he came out. He looked awful: he was very pale and drawn, and his eyes had no life in them. He would spend much of the time staring into space, unaware of what was happening around him. He recognized Mum and the old man, and he trusted them, but he looked blankly at Reggie and me, refusing to believe we were his brothers.

  We’d laid on this big party at The Double R. Dozens of old friends were looking forward to seeing Ronnie again. But he refused to go and I had to apologize to everyone and make up an excuse. All Ronnie wanted to do was sit in the kitchen at Vallance Road and drink tea and smoke. Reggie would sit with him for hours and then ring me to say he couldn’t handle it any more. Then I’d go and sit with him. Poor Mum! She didn’t know what to make of it all. She didn’t understand when Ronnie would suddenly look at me strangely and say, ‘You’re not Charlie. Why do you keep coming here?’ It got worse and worse and he got more and more suspicious, even of Reggie.

  And then, inevitably, Ronnie exploded.

  We had taken him to a pub to try and cheer him up. Throughout the evening
he was very strange, talking funny and making no sense at all. And if he caught Reggie or me looking at him, he’d snap, ‘Who you looking at?’

  Mum or the old man would say gently, ‘Ronnie, that’s Charlie, your brother.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ronnie would scoff. ‘That’s what he tells you.’

  It was frightening for all of us.

  At about ten o’clock, Ronnie slammed his glass on the table and dashed out of the pub. We all looked at each other, not knowing what to do. Then Reggie and I jumped up and ran after him. We found him trying to smash a shop window with his hands.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ we yelled.

  But all Ronnie said was, ‘Go away. I don’t know you.’

  Luckily for us, a chap we knew – Curly King – pulled up in a car. He seemed to sense a problem. He said hello to Ronnie. Ronnie recognized him and stopped bashing the window.

  ‘Come on, Ron, take me down the billiard hall,’ Curly said.

  It saved the situation. Ronnie liked the idea and I went back into the pub for Mum and the old man and we all went to the billiard hall. What happened there was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.

  While the rest of us chatted amiably, Ronnie was restless, prowling up and down all the time like a caged tiger. We all tried to calm him down but it was no good: Ronnie was in a world of his own and no one, it seemed, could get in. None of us could relax. Everyone kept looking at me to do something. But every time I tried to talk to him, he kept telling me he didn’t know who I was. He just kept prowling up and down…up and down…up and down…