The Last Real Gangster

by Freddie Foreman

  Of course the twins knew him: ‘Yeah, Ginger Marks goes round with that fuckin’ Jimmy Evans, he runs with him.’

  Charlie said, ‘They’re goin’ on a bit of work Saturday night and they want me to handle the tom from it. They’re doin’ the jeweller’s round in Bethnal Green Road.’

  Right away, I’ve put it together: I’ve got names, and it was Evans’s bird that George was getting hold of. He was a face – he used to burn warehouses down for the Jewish mob and things like that. Apart from that, I’d never met him or seen him before. But now Charlie’s talking to them about their bent gear: ‘Don’t take it to no one else, bring it to me and I’ll give you a good deal.’ They said they’d bring it round straight after they’d done Attenborough’s, the jeweller’s.

  I was told that on that Saturday, as luck would have it, a car door opened, Marks and Evans came out two-handed and started walking towards Bethnal Green Road. The people who were on their case and keeping watch on their movements followed them at a distance, tailed them down the back, near a church. The rest of the firm was already in the jeweller’s, two-handed inside. They had already been in there, apparently, and had come out. It was fate, really.

  When they got to where the Repton Club was, just past The Carpenter’s Arms (the Kray twins’ local), one of the street lights was out. That’s where Marks was done. Evans ran round the street and hung underneath a lorry, got his legs up and held on.

  Evans went home to his wife, Pat, and said, ‘You nearly got me fuckin’ killed tonight!’ He was putting his fingers through the bullet holes in his coat because he’d held Marks up as a shield.

  ‘Who was it?’ she asked him.

  ‘I don’t know who the fuck it was! It was too dark there, I couldn’t see!’

  That was as far as it went at the time.

  Years later, when we were interviewed by the police, George had carried on his relationship with Pat for twelve years or so. All she had to do was tell the truth: Evans had come home, put his finger through the bullet holes in his coat and said he didn’t know who had done it. It was too dark and it happened too quickly, he couldn’t identify anybody. Evans didn’t know – he would have said so if he did.

  But would she do it? She wouldn’t make a statement because she was frightened of this fucking Evans (below, pointing to a bullet hole near Attenborough’s jeweller’s). He used to batter her and beat her up, and lock her in. He was a sick, wicked bastard. He’d already cut someone’s thumb off because the guy put his hand down when he went for his bollocks. That was someone else he’d accused of having it off with her.

  She didn’t help one fucking bit. I never spoke to her or had anything much to do with her after that.

  It’s funny because, when Evans was in the nick in the seventies, he had three witnesses who were after a bit of parole. One made a statement to the effect that Alf Gerard, who was on a different wing, was trying to get someone to poison Evans’s food.

  Evans was in for stabbing this Scottish kid, who was down in London with his girlfriend. He chased him round his car over a row with his new French wife and stabbed him to death. He was charged with murder but they reduced it to manslaughter after he said, ‘I’ll tell you who was in the car that night’ on the Ginger Marks case. So he rolled over and they gave him seven years.

  He was up in court to give evidence on two trials that I faced. The judges were the ones who’d just weighed off the Guildford Four for thirty years apiece. The jury just couldn’t agree in Court Two, so we went to Court One in front of John Donaldson, who was made Master of the Rolls afterwards.

  Two coppers gave evidence but put the wrong date at the top of it – they said 6 January instead of the 8th (which it was), but they’d never interviewed anyone then. They’d written down the answers on the questionnaires – ‘Foreman said follow them down this road, don’t get too close.’ I’m supposedly giving instructions from the back of the car, but they didn’t realise they’d dated it on a clean sheet of paper.

  We had a great QC, Louis Hawser: ‘You conducted the interview, you dated it, you timed it, question and answer … Okay, show us your notebook. Please sit down and don’t leave the court.’

  He called the other copper in so the first one couldn’t mark his card. They’d already given this evidence at the magistrates’ court prior to its going to the Old Bailey, so it was previously quoted.

  ‘Just look up into the corner, where you put the date. Can you read it out?’

  As soon as he read the date, he realised: they’d made the statements out days before they ever arrested Ronnie Everett, Alf Gerard or Jerry Callaghan. Mine was, ‘No comment – no comment – no comment,’ but on their statement there was all this ‘verbal’. Then they put the wrong fucking date on it! Of course it had to be thrown out.

  We’re all eating at the Jack of Clubs restaurant here. On the right of this picture (overleaf) is my barmaid from The Prince of Wales, Maggie Furminger. Her husband Terry was my customer, worked in the print.

  When Biggsy (Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs) escaped from Wandsworth in 1965 I looked after him, had him holed up. His wife Charmian was down on the coast. When he was most wanted, I took him down to see her before they split up because they wanted to get out of the country. Maggie got the passport for Charmian and she went out as Maggie Furminger; Biggsy went out as Terry Furminger at a later date.

  I got Biggsy out via a boat at London Bridge. Charmian wasn’t so recognisable as she wasn’t wanted – there weren’t any posters up. But Biggsy had to have his face done. I put him on an old tramper going over to Antwerp. I gave Maggie five hundred quid to get the pictures done and get a passport. Then I got Ronnie King to get Biggsy another passport when he went from Australia.

  I went on holiday to Jamaica with the wife and kids. While I was up in the plane, Ronnie Everett, Alfie Gerard and Jerry Callaghan went round to the lock-up I used to have in Herne Hill – we had vans, Post Office uniforms, cutting gear and shotguns. They went there to tune up a Ford Zephyr and the Old Bill walked in on them. Two coppers wanted to look at the cars, and they had a fucking fight. It finished up in the office using chairs and God knows what.

  They got away; some women were pulling out of a turning and they pulled them out of the car, nicked it and drove off. A gas gun was fired; it wasn’t a real gun, but they were wanted for attempted shooting of the police. The coppers tried to nick me for it, too, but I’d been on my way to Jamaica. My poor old sister-in-law, Nell, was held in the kitchen with an Alsatian dog in her face.

  The firm were holed up and I had to get them out to Australia the same way as Biggsy, who’d already been out there for years. They bought houses, had businesses: a trucking business, hardware shops. So they got established.

  But then the satellite pictures came over of Biggsy and Eric Flower, a pal of ours who used to come to work with us. Suddenly, they’re all on the television and they get nicked out there. Biggsy was the only one who escaped; he got to Brazil. Otherwise he’d have got his thirty years because Paul Seabourn, who helped him escape over the wall into the furniture vehicle, was taken into the nick three times. He knew where he was; he put him in the flat. I said, ‘We’ve got to move him, I don’t like it.’ They got Seabourn a fourth time, so I went up there and moved Biggsy and Eric to another safe house. It was my own fucking flat I put them in, on the Kennington Estate!

  Next thing I know, they’ve kicked the door in of the flat underneath. It’s a bit close to home. I knew Seabourn in Leicester when he was doing a ten-stretch there, so he hadn’t been out that long.

  The lady on the right (overleaf) is Mary Gorbell. Her husband Bill worked for Tommy Wisbey and myself in the Borough. Mary used to work in the champagne bar at the races, where she was known as ‘Marilyn’. Bill Gorbell was a good settler; he settled the bets. Tommy Wisbey was running the front counter. I had other betting shops at Nunhead Lane, Brixton Hill and Croydon Lane. Nosher Powell was minder of this restaurant, the Jack of Clubs, and he did a lot of
film work as an extra.

  Round the corner from my pub was the Marshalsea, which was a dosshouse. A row of houses had been converted into a prison, back in the seventeenth century, and now all the old dossers had their beds there. It still had the old windows and it’s still standing today – you can go and see it. But it had quite a lot of floors in it, so I thought I’d open a gym in there. I had a twenty-three-year lease on it – I took it over and converted the whole building.

  Down in the basement, in the mid-sixties, I had recording studios and rehearsal rooms. I had the Small Faces down there, Cat Stevens, the Spencer Davis Group. My nephew, Eddie Hardin, who went to school with my Gregory, was a natural musician. He wasn’t a streetwise kid, but when it came to music he could play anything.

  When Steve Winwood left in 1967, Spencer Davis wanted someone to take his place; I took Eddie up on audition and he got the job! He could sing and play keyboards exactly like Winwood; you couldn’t tell the difference. I got him to audition for the job down at the old cinema in Barnes, where they did the rehearsals and recording, with Shirley Bassey’s arranger. I paid £1,500 for the session, which was a lot of money then. But, when Spencer took him on, the kid made a shitload of money and I never got a penny back!

  When the Spencer Davis Group split up in 1968, Eddie and Pete York, the drummer, formed their own band. They were having number-one hits in Germany; he bought a house in Sunningdale with great big columns and top-of-the-range motors. He did all right for himself.

  I could have been an impresario. I could spot talent when I saw it, and I could have nurtured it. Crime was only a business. To me, the worst crime was for a man to bring his family up in poverty, but how you get your money is another matter.

  My Maureen used to say, ‘When you gonna stop this? Why don’t you stop now? We’ve got enough.’ But I would say to her, ‘It’s only business.’ I should have listened to her. We had six betting shops and the 211 Club in Balham, which was fucking massive – it’s the Polish Embassy today.It was Lady Hamilton’s house, which Nelson bought for her. It had a ballroom at the side of it, where I put a boxing show on – that’s how big it was. But the police from Tooting stopped it because the twins came over: ‘What’s the twins doin’ on our patch?’

  This is Mark Rowe, a good light middleweight, with Maureen and me at my Chaps gym. Next to him is Phil Lundrigan from the Boxing Board of Control; he was ringside all the time. And of course that’s Dave Charnley (right), ‘the Dartford Destroyer’, who should have been a world champion when he fought Joe Brown for the title.

  This is Tim Riley on the right. He was the editor of Boxing News; next to him is Ron Oliver, who was a boxing writer; Bill Chevalier (in the ring) was Rowe’s trainer; Gordon W. Prange (ringside, second from left) was the author of a book called Tora! Tora! Tora!, which they made into a film about Pearl Harbor and made him a shitload of money.

  The first time Frank Mitchell (overleaf) got a conviction he’d stolen a bike. But his father never took him round the house and said, ‘Give him the bike back’ – he took him to the police station and got him nicked. That was the first time he had a brush with the law, so his father didn’t do him any favours. I suppose that traumatised him a little bit.

  He wasn’t a well boy. They certified him and he went to Rampton, the secure hospital in Nottinghamshire. I don’t know what they sent him there for, but it must have been serious. He was notorious in prison for attacking screws and prisoners: cutting them, breaking ribs with bear hugs. Frank was immensely strong, but with a twelve-year-old’s brain, chucking his toys out the pram.

  He was very vicious and stabbed a friend of mine, Bruce Reynolds, mastermind of the Great Train Robbery, in the bathhouse. Bruce kept a lid on that, never wanted to talk about it. Mitchell was charged, but he went to magistrates’ court and was found not guilty. I suppose there were no other witnesses, but Bruce was badly attacked.

  Ronnie Kray paled Mitchell up when he was doing four years in Wandsworth. Mitchell terrorised the whole nick. The screws were frightened of him; it took a lot to control him. He’d go in the gym and, if someone could lift a certain weight, he’d up it ten times – he had to be the number one at everything.

  He’d escaped with a fella from Rampton nuthouse; they were called ‘the mad axemen’ for terrorising people, breaking into their houses with axes. But they were captured and got the birch for punishment. They couldn’t handle Mitchell there so he went to Broadmoor. Fuck me if he doesn’t escape again!

  He gets himself an axe for the second time and terrorises an old couple – nicks their money, their jewellery, their Ford Fiesta (though I wouldn’t have thought he could drive it). He’s recaptured and the next time he escapes is from Dartmoor. They let him go down to the village there and he was treating everyone in the pub. He’d apparently been fucking a schoolmistress in a barn there and going to buy budgerigars. They never searched him. He had a charmed life there; the governor was very easy on him. No screws were allowed in his cell, though he had a knife he was going around with.

  But in late 1966 the twins told him they’d take him back to London, where they’d campaign for his freedom. Now, he’s regarded as the most dangerous criminal to escape. They’ve got the Army out on the moor with loaded rifles, looking for him – they’re going to shoot him on sight. The press are covering him: ‘Lock up your women and children, your dogs and cats. Lock up your home. Don’t step outside the house.’ They’ve got these cartoons of him under bridges like a fucking big ape or monster.

  And of course he’s still got the knife on him – he showed it to Albert Donoghue, who threw it away with his clothing on the way back from the Moor. They take him into this house with Billy Exley and Scotch Jack Dickson as minders. They were sleeping all over the place since there was only one bedroom: on the floor, on the settee. He was kicking off all the time – he was going over to see the twins’ mother, or his own mother. They sent out for some fish and chips; they never got him a saveloy, so he fucking kicks off again. He’s got to win every game of cards. He’s doing press-ups and chinning the bar; he’s picking them up by their belts above his head.

  And now he wants to go out and get himself a bird. So they get him a hostess and he’s fucking the life out of her. She’s only supposed to be there one night but becomes a prisoner – for twelve days altogether. When she tried to escape out the window, he caught her and pulled her back in.

  He’s cleaning his teeth every five fucking minutes, all this weird behaviour. He’s picking up this iron-framed piano on his own to show how strong he is. Reggie Kray once went to see him and he got him arm wrestling – and of course he won every time. He’s a strong bastard. But now Exley is saying, ‘I’m not looking after this cunt – he’s got a fucking tool!’ He’s got a shooter on him.

  Exley’s woken one morning by being tickled under the chin, and he’s looking down the barrel of his own fucking gun. Mitchell has gone down his pockets and found the shooter – none of which the twins or anybody else mentioned to me. He’s carrying one of the kitchen knives as well and has sworn to take six coppers with him rather than go back to prison, because he’ll never get out after this.

  ‘I want to live out in the country with Ronnie,’ he says, because Ronnie has bullshitted him: ‘No one will know you there.’ Like Of Mice and Men: ‘Tell me about the rabbits, George.’ He’s in this dreamworld and thinks he’s going to get away with it. No way is he going to give himself up – there are six bullets in the gun. So, he’s become a complete liability. They’ve come to me to ask what I can do to help them. Like a fucking idiot, I stood for it.

  When I’ve come to take him down to the country, to see what can be done with him, as he comes out of the door with Albert there’s a fucking copper walking towards him. Mitchell panicked. As Albert said in his book The Enforcer, he had to calm him down: ‘He won’t recognise you – he’ll recognise me.’ The copper just kept on walking, took no notice. He was lucky that he never said, ‘Excuse me, sir …’


  He’d have been a goner.

  Mitchell gets in the back of the van and pulls out the fucking shooter! I’ve got my back to him, talking to Donoghue in the front. He’s saying, ‘We want to go through the tunnel – we go straight down ’ere and turn right …’

  Then all I hear is, ‘Look what I’ve got!’

  Alf Gerard’s gone mad. He’s sitting on the other side and, Mitchell being the nutty bastard that he is, there’s got to be a shootout now.

  Right, then, I’ll stop there and sling him out.

  But he went straight to the back of the fucking van. It wasn’t intended for anything to happen there: it was too close to the house we’d just walked out of. It was ridiculous: there were neighbours either side and if they stood on the pavement they could see him get into the back.

  When I got to Leicester Prison, the governor came to see me in the cell, with the chief warden and the top brass: ‘Foreman, if it’s true what you did regarding the Mitchell case, you need a medal the size of a dustbin lid.’

  That’s the fucking governor of the nick!

  But they were cunning bastards, the twins. They never told me about him having a gun. They wouldn’t go to see him themselves. Ronnie was in hiding because he’d spoken to a copper in the pub and taped it all – who’d wanted twenty-five quid a week for letting him drink in the pub, or some shit. He should never have done that, the silly fella, but he was hiding because he’d never give evidence against anyone, even a copper. Which is right.

  So, that was the situation and they left me to deal with it – but it was after the work they did with the Marks thing, over George. They’d also put one of our people from the Battle of Bow into Dr Blasker’s surgery and cleared him up with an alibi – he might have got a fifteen, you don’t know how much bird he’d have got otherwise. So, that was a big favour I owed them for helping my friend out of trouble. I was truly indebted, and they’d looked after me when I’d had it on my toes from south London; they put me in the Colony Club as well. So there were quite a few reasons why I should help them out.