Me and My Brothers

by Kray, Charlie

  When George Ince had been released from prison, Dolly had decided it was not convenient for Gary to live with her. She did not discuss it with him but waited until he went out one day, then packed all his belongings in a suitcase and left it on the doorstep for Gary to find when he came home that night. He went to live with Mum and the old man in Bunhill Row. But I always made sure he kept in touch with Dolly.

  I had always got on well with Dolly’s mother and was very upset one day to hear she was ill. She was staying at the home of Dolly’s elder sister, so Gary and I went round there with some flowers. She was a lovely woman of about seventy and thought the world of her grandson. We had a nice chat and before we left she whispered, ‘Just because I’m getting old, they think I’m senile. But don’t worry, I know exactly what’s going on.’

  I smiled and took her hand. ‘Well, you know what we think of you,’ I said. ‘I’ll be running around, but I’ll be back to see you in a couple of weeks.’

  Early one morning, about ten days later, I was going on a visit to Parkhurst and left a note for Gary reminding him not to forget to ring his mother.

  When I came back from Parkhurst around 7 P.M., an awful atmosphere hit me as soon as I walked in the door at Bunhill Row. Mum and the old man were in tears. I wondered what the hell had happened, then Mum said, Charlie, I’ve never said anything about Dolly, but I think this is terrible. After you left this morning, Gary phoned her.’

  I nodded. ‘I told him to.’

  ‘He asked how she was, and said can I come and see you today? She didn’t want him to. Then…’ Mum was finding it hard to speak through her tears. I put my arm round her. ‘…then Gary asked how Nana was.’ Mum couldn’t speak for a few seconds, then she said, ‘Dolly just told him, “Dead and buried,” and put the phone down.’

  I went numb. Then cold fury swept through me. How could Dolly not tell us her mum had died? How could she not give us the chance to pay our respects at the funeral? It was almost unbelievable.

  ‘That’s it,’ I snapped. ‘That’s the end.’

  Seething, I got on the phone and rang one of Dolly’s brothers, Raymond. ‘Dolly’s taken a right liberty,’ I said, and told him what had happened.

  ‘Charlie,’ he said sympathetically. ‘We never thought our sister was that bad. We thought she’d let you know.’

  ‘Somebody should have rung, Ray,’ I told him.

  ‘We thought you were away.’

  That didn’t cut any ice. ‘I respected your mum, Ray. If I’d been in China, I would have come home. It’s bad enough me not being there, but Gary…’ I was so angry I couldn’t speak, then finally I said, ‘Anyway, that’s the end for me. It’s the most terrible thing to do to anyone.’

  After that I told Gary I didn’t want to have anything to do with the family.

  Dolly felt guilty about Gary. For the next few months, she would ring him a couple of times a week, but it was purely because she felt she had to, not because she wanted to. She is incapable of feeling much for anyone other than herself. I would have expected Dolly to take Gary home to her flat, but she never did. I would have thought she could have taken him to see Nancy; after all they grew up as brother and sister. But she never did. Perhaps I should not have been too surprised. Dolly was jealous of Mum’s popularity and stopped Nancy from visiting because she knew the child loved her. Every one of Dolly’s relations said it was a bitchy, hurtful thing to do but Dolly didn’t care. She was the only person who didn’t like my mother. And the reason? She knew she couldn’t compare with her in any respect as long as she lived.

  At one time both Gary and I missed Nancy terribly, so when a young bloke I knew said he often saw her, I asked him to set up a meeting with her for us. I told him to let us know if he wouldn’t be seeing her so we wouldn’t be waiting unnecessarily. Well, we waited. Nancy didn’t turn up, and neither did the bloke who was due to see her. That was the end for me and I decided not to bother any more. It was painful because I’d thought the world of her. Even though she was another man’s child.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I started visiting the twins while they were together in Parkhurst. I didn’t moan to them about my ten years because they were sentenced to three times that. We did discuss the events that had put us away but neither Ronnie nor Reggie wanted to know about the problems I had faced because of the Kray notoriety. I was out and they were still inside, they said; they would love to have my worries.

  I did mention that I’d warned them not to trust those idiots, the so-called Firm, particularly Hart and Donahue, but the twins, as usual, took the view that it wasn’t worth talking about: it was a thing of the past, finished; nothing could be done to change what had happened so best forget it.

  For two criminally minded people, the twins are strange in that they do not like talking about crime, or violence. As young men they never discussed it and in prison all the talk of villainy and boasting drove them round the bend. Because of their name and reputation other inmates used to seek them out to try to impress them, and it bothered the twins so much that they would ask to be put in cells on their own. For years they were marked men, as they had been on the outside. And sometimes the pressure got to such a pitch that they exploded.

  During the first few months of my freedom Mum phoned me, saying that there had been an upset in Parkhurst: Ronnie, it seemed, had gone into one and belted a couple of prison officers. They had injected him to sedate him, and chucked him in the chokey block. Mum and I were on our way to Parkhurst at once.

  They told us we would have to see Ronnie in his cell, because he wasn’t well enough to go to the visitors’ room. That surprised us, but it was nothing to the surprise we got when we saw the state of Ronnie – and the cell, which was filthy and stank to high heaven. Even I, who had spent years inside, was shocked, and it knocked Mum bandy. I couldn’t believe the authorities had allowed us to see the state of it; I suppose they felt it better to let us see Ronnie in those conditions than stop the visit altogether, in case we thought something was wrong.

  There was just an iron bed in the cell and Ronnie was sitting on it. He looked awful: his eyes were lifeless, with bags under them, his skin sallow, and his normally neatly combed hair was dirty and straggly.

  The twins and I were never demonstrative towards Mum, despite our deep love and respect, but that day, as Mum leaned towards him, Ronnie grabbed her by the arms and kissed her warmly on the cheek. He was ashamed of the cell and upset that we had been brought there. Mum said that it was terrible to see him looking so dreadful in a place like that, but Ronnie just said, ‘Mum, I had a fight. I hit a couple of screws. What do you think they’re going to do? Give me a medal?’ He always took what they dished out without moaning or complaining.

  We sat at the foot of the bed talking to Ronnie for nearly two hours and at the end of the visit Mum said that, despite everything, she felt better for having seen him. Ronnie replied quietly that he was pleased we’d come; he had needed to see us. It was an emotional and highly personal visit, and a prison officer sat behind us all the time listening to every word.

  Mum’s stamina was amazing. She hardly missed a visit, every week, winter or summer, from the moment we were arrested and on remand in Brixton, to the time when we were sent to far-flung prisons in Durham, Leicester and Chelmsford, then Albany, Parkhurst and Maidstone. It was a feat that only a deeply caring, loving mother could have achieved. Remember, she was getting up at 4 A.M. for her office cleaning job then working in the pub at Bishopsgate.

  Thankfully, in 1979, Ronnie was transferred to Broadmoor, the hospital for the criminally insane, in Crow-thorne, Berkshire, and, later, Reggie was moved to Long Lartin prison, in Evesham, Worcestershire.

  For Mum, not having to catch a train to Portsmouth, a ferry to the Isle of Wight, then a taxi to the prison, made a huge difference and she continued to visit the twins regularly, with never a word of complaint.

  There was one visit I insisted she didn’t make, however – to Long Lartin,
after she received a distressing phone call from the prison. I told her the visit would be awful and would make her ill.

  For Reggie had tried to kill himself.

  Early one morning in February Mum had rung me in tears at my home in Crystal Palace. ‘Reggie’s tried to commit suicide,’ she sobbed.

  ‘What!’ I couldn’t believe it. Ronnie had told me he had a feeling all was not well with Reggie, but I put it down to the change of jail; he would get used to Long Lartin after a few weeks.

  ‘He tried to slash his wrists,’ Mum said. She was in a dreadful state.

  ‘I’ll be right over,’ I said. ‘I’ll ring the prison from your place.’

  I covered the fifteen miles in less than half an hour and rang the prison. It was true, they told me: Reggie had tried to slash his wrists. It was a nasty incident, but he was recovering and everything was under control.

  I was not convinced. I asked if I could visit him that day and they agreed. Mum wanted to come with me, but 1 felt it better if I saw Reggie’s condition first. Obviously things were bad and I didn’t want her upset more. Also, I sensed trouble and I wanted someone other than family with me, someone honest and trustworthy with no criminal record who would be a reliable witness. I chose an East End mate, Laurie O’Leary, and we arrived at Long Lartin that afternoon.

  Reggie was in the hospital wing. He had been feeling depressed and wanted to be on his own, we were told. Ah, I thought, so they knew he wasn’t well. What else did they know about my brother that had led him to try to take his own life? As we followed a prison officer to Reggie’s cell I wondered what state he was going to be in. Nothing could have prepared me for what we were about to see.

  Like our father, Reggie had always been fussy about cleanliness. As a young man he kept himself spotless: you rarely saw Reggie unshaven or with untidy hair, and he was always dressed in clean, neatly-pressed shirts and suits. So the sight that greeted me when I looked through the flap on Reggie’s cell door jolted me. He was sitting on his bed, his clothes creased as though he’d slept in them, his uncombed hair standing on end, and with two or three days’ growth of beard. He looked like a raving lunatic who had been locked up for twenty years.

  Laurie and I went in and, after the usual pleasantries, I motioned towards one of his arms, which was heavily bandaged. ‘Why did you do it, Reg?’ I asked. There was no point in beating about the bush.

  Reggie shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘There must be a reason,’ I persisted.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me,’ he said. ‘People keep saying strange things to me. They keep taking a pop at me.’

  I looked at Laurie. It did not sound like the Reggie we knew and I didn’t know what to do for the best. I looked at his arm again. ‘How on earth did you do all that?’

  ‘With my glasses,’ he replied.

  Apparently he broke his glasses in half and used a piece of a lens to saw into his wrist. Listening to him describe it made me go cold. He had been alone in his cell and no one had seen him until an officer had spotted him covered in blood. I stared at Reggie as he talked. I could not get over the state he was in. I’d never seen him like that in my life and all I could think was that no one in their right mind breaks their glasses and saws into their wrist. I had to ask him, again. ‘But why, Reg?’

  It’s strange with people who have gone over the edge: when we had arrived, he was reasonably okay, although not like the Reggie of old, of course. Then suddenly when I asked him that question he seemed to break up in front of our eyes, and finally cracked. Close to tears he told us that he’d been depressed because he was causing everyone so many problems, and had decided that if he was out of the way it would make life easier for everyone, particularly Mum and me, what with the visiting and everything. ‘It seems it will never end,’ he said quietly.

  I told him not to be so stupid, not to think like that. No, the visiting was not much fun for Mum, who wasn’t getting any younger. But she wasn’t complaining; she could cope. Hadn’t she always? ‘She loves you and wants to see you,’ I insisted. ‘And Ronnie. You’d break her heart if you did yourself in.’

  Reggie listened, but I could see he was not convinced. There was a dullness in his eyes, a look of defeat. I asked him if he had been taken out of the cell. He nodded. ‘They’ve just brought me back up.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘The chokey block,’ he said.

  I stared at him disbelievingly. He’d sawn his wrist, lost a lot of blood and they had put him in the chokey! I knew that people were stripped naked and left on their own in there with just a blanket. Sometimes there wasn’t even a bed, just a mattress or a sheet of canvas.

  I knew Reggie was not himself, so I asked him if he was sure. Then I left the cell and demanded to speak to the Chief Prison Officer, who confirmed that Reggie had spent the maximum twenty-four hours in the chokey block. I went spare. The block was meant for normal prisoners who went off the rails and needed time on their own to quieten down. Why, I wanted to know, had Reggie been taken there and kept there all day and all night in his condition?

  ‘He was put in the chokey for his own protection,’ the P.O. said, ‘so he couldn’t do anything else.’

  But that didn’t wash with me.

  ‘You didn’t have to put him in the strong box for that,’ I protested. ‘Someone could easily have watched him in his own cell.’

  But the P.O. did not want to know, saying the prison was not to blame for Reggie’s condition. He felt Reggie was in a perfectly balanced frame of mind and had probably cut his wrist deliberately to cause trouble. He even suggested Reggie was trying to ‘nut himself off’ so that he would be certified insane and sent to Broadmoor where Ronnie had been transferred three years before. I lost my cool and told the P.O. that he was out of order. Reggie did not want to go to Broadmoor; he had always said that once you go there, you’re in for ever. After a heated exchange I went back to the cell, seething. The whole thing was a disgrace but what could one do?

  When I told Reggie what had happened he didn’t take much notice and didn’t seem with it at all. Then he said something that convinced me I had to take the matter further.

  ‘That bloke who found me in my cell,’ Reggie said. ‘He asked why I’d cut my wrist. He said people usually hanged themselves with a piece of sheet or something.’

  Dora Hamylton is a Leicester magistrate who has taken an interest in the twins’ cases. After meeting them several times and starting work on a biography of our mother she had become a friend of the family, and I rang asking her to come to Long Lartin with me to see Reggie and the prison authorities.

  She could not believe what she saw. Reggie had been cleaned up but he was still in a terrible state, nothing like the person she had seen when she had last visited him. The chief male nurse asked to speak to Dora alone, which made me suspicious, but there was nothing I could do about it. I learned later that he told her he thought Reggie was putting on an act. She said he could not be serious: she had visited Reggie many times and knew him well enough to know that he certainly wasn’t acting; he had gone over the edge. Whether the nurse was convinced I don’t know, but some good came out of the talk, because he promised Reggie would not be put in the chokey block again.

  We then went to see the assistant governor. I demanded to know why Reggie had been driven to cut his wrist and why he had been treated the way he had. The assistant governor went round and round the houses before saying that he wasn’t sure whether Reggie knew what he was doing. I cut him short by telling him I knew what was on his mind: he felt Reggie was trying to work his ticket to Broadmoor to be with Ronnie. He admitted that I was right.

  ‘Well, you can forget it,’ I said. ‘Ronnie or no Ronnie, that’s the last place Reggie wants to go. He’s always said so.’

  The assistant governor simply looked at Dora and me with a total lack of concern.

  ‘You don’t seem at all bothered that one of your inmates has tried to commit suici
de,’ I went on. ‘Have you seen what Reggie did to himself?’

  He said he hadn’t.

  ‘He broke his glasses and actually sawed into his veins with the lens,’ I told him. ‘Do you think anyone could do that as an act?’

  The assistant governor did not have an answer to that.

  ‘Would you have been happy if he’d managed to kill himself?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he replied casually.

  Getting angrier by the second at the man’s offhand attitude, I told him that the prison staff should have known what was happening to Reggie to make him so depressed and should have been aware of the pitch he was reaching. The assistant governor mumbled some stock reply but I knew from my own experience what had gone on. Prison officers are not aware of such things because they think there’s a hidden ploy behind everything. They write reports on people every minute of the day but they don’t seem to notice the things that matter.

  Then Dora put her bit in. Reggie was not at all well, she said. She had not liked what she had seen, nor what she had heard, and she trusted something would be done about it.

  I let a couple of weeks go by before I took Mum to the prison. Reggie was a little better but still not right, and the sight of him really upset her. I’m glad I didn’t take her with me on that first visit or she would have collapsed from the shock.

  Reggie continued to progress. And then one day I got a phone call from the prison authorities, saying they wanted to see me because he had got out of control and attacked four officers. I went the next day and asked Reggie what it was all about.

  ‘They’re driving me mad,’ he said. ‘I ran into them and they all jumped on me.’

  It didn’t make sense to me. He had had no problems in Parkhurst but Long Lartin was bringing out the worst in him. I’d been dubious at first, but now I believed Reggie when he said that the officers there provoked him. In the end it all worked out well for him because Long Lartin said they couldn’t handle him and he was sent back to the Isle of Wight. Reggie was delighted and relieved.