by Rita Smith
The first work I can remember them doing was helping their other Grandad on the clothes stall he had. This was only at the weekends because we were all at Dane Street School by then. I was still following them about wherever they went and when my mum said it was OK, which was most of the time, I’d go with them. The twins must have been sensible in my mother’s eyes because she never worried about me when she knew I was with them. Not when I was a little girl or when I was an adult. Yet with her granddaughter, my Kimmy, she worried every time she went out of the door because she didn’t have the same protection.
Reg and Ron would call for me early on a Sunday morning and we’d walk up to Jimmy Kray’s house in Gorsuch Street to sort out whatever he wanted taking to his stall. I thought the boys looked ever so much grown up in their working clothes, though looking back they must have looked like extras from the film The Magic Box – which I think everyone knows that Ron had a small part in when he was about eleven. Long trousers, cloth caps and scarves round their necks. They were trying to look like their grandfather and every other man in the market.
Up in the bedroom there’d be piles of clothes and shoes, and I loved the smell that hit us as we walked in – all musty, mothballs and lavender. I don’t think I was much help because all I wanted to do was try on old skirts and high-heeled shoes, or wrap fox furs round my shoulders. It’s a wonder I didn’t catch something because who knows where all this stuff came from. The boys though would carry armfuls of clothes downstairs and heap them on a barrow. When it was full I’d climb in the middle and we’d set off for Brick Lane, which was only across Hackney Road and through a few back streets.
Other than Uncle Charlie I never really got to know the Kray family because with one thing or another the Lees had fallen out with them years before – or the other way round. But speak as you find, I thought that Jimmy Kray was quite a nice man. If he came across a fancy hat while he was sorting out his stock he’d stick it on my head saying, “Cor, don’t you look a smasher”. Or if a colourful child’s dress or coat came out of the pile he’d give it to me (though whatever it was would mysteriously disappear five minutes after showing it to my mum).
Late in the afternoon when most of the clothes were sold old Jimmy would pay the boys from a biscuit tin of loose change. I don’t know what he gave them but every time without fail he’d walk away then say, “’Ere, nearly forgot little blondie,” and he’d come back and give me sixpence. Then it was a ride back to Gorsuch Street without any clothes under me to soften the bumps. Ron would be pulling the barrow at top speed and I’d be hanging on for dear life until Reg, who was always the more thoughtful, would shout “Oi, Ronnie, hang about, you’ll have her in the road”.
While then, and for a lot of years after, you could hardly tell them apart, their personalities were quite different. It is difficult not to colour the past with everything that’s happened since, because as I’ve said, those boys were as normal as any of the others we mixed with. No worse, and often better behaved than most of our playmates. But when I think about it Ron was withdrawn some of the time, which makes me think that perhaps he was more affected by what went on behind closed doors than anyone realized. He wasn’t in Reggie’s pocket, nor Reg in his, and he liked to spend time on his own; though when he wanted company it was Rose he went to because I think she understood him. I know he liked me and he often said so, but he was never as close as he might have been, and I don’t put that down to what he’d say later in life about girls being no good and a waste of time. If he did have something inside him then that would eventually turn him gay, I doubt if he was even aware of it, and none of the rest of the family were either.
Reg, on the other hand, spent a lot of time in my company as children and as teenagers. If I was in our yard he might call over the fence, “Is your mum and dad in tonight?” If I said no, he’d say, “I’ve bought a new record. I’ll bring it round later.” So round he’d come and we’d play records and dance to the big band sound that was all the rage, or we’d just sit and talk. He always spoke quietly and while he did he’d look straight into your eyes, and I’ve always thought that a sign of someone you can trust.
Something else: he was a good listener and showed interest in whatever it was. I mean a lot of the time I must have talked about fashion and about this boy or that boy, and he never seemed to get bored or try to cut me off. In a lot of ways I think he was a bit insecure – which sounds strange when I think of how many people only see him and Ron as tough men – but people who are confident in themselves don’t need to prove anything. They just get on with their lives and are quite content.
Reg talked all the time about what he would do once he became a world champion boxer. He’d buy us all new houses. Fur coats for all the women, cars for all the men. He’d move into the country and keep animals, and so on. I know it was just a young man dreaming, but from what the family said and what was printed in the sports pages of the Gazette and Advertiser, I really do think he could have done it.
He loved me and he trusted me, but he never said anything about what he thought of his dad. He knew that I knew what Uncle Charlie got up to, and I always thought that one day he’d tell me how he felt – but he never did, which was a shame because sharing something like that with someone other than Ron, who was in the same boat, might have got a lot of anger out of his system while he was young. As it was he kept it all inside and I think it came out in a bad way when he was a man.
When Reg left school and started work with a local builder, he bought me a present out of his first week’s wages. He came round on the Friday night before he even got changed because he was covered in this black tarry stuff, and stuck a bag in my hand, a little embarrassed. When I opened it there were four sets of doll’s clothes. I was ever so pleased but I couldn’t help laughing and said to him, “You never went in the shop and got these on your own?” He said, “Course I did, but I didn’t know what ones to get so I got all they had”. After that he was always buying me little things. So did Ron, but not so often.
Later on Reg used to wait outside where I worked to walk me home, and he’d always have some gift or other. One of these was a beautiful powder compact with a tiny watch set into the centre. Not expensive, but at that age you didn’t consider price. I might still have had it forty-eight years on except when I was married to Ritchie Smith he thought nothing of selling my bits of jewellery when he needed money for drink.
Reg often met me when I came out of work and seeing him waiting for me those girls that didn’t know he was my cousin would be saying, “Ooo, isn”t he lovely,” or “I’ll have him when you’re finished with him”. And sometimes worse things because I’m talking about East End girls now. He was handsome though, and I felt quite proud, even though he was just family.
When I went anywhere between the two of them I felt the same and I knew people, especially girls, were looking and thinking, “Look at her – lucky cow”. They did look impressive even before they started wearing all those flash suits. Mind you, I think they both knew what impression they gave. One on his own was enough, but put two mirror images together and who could help but look.
With hindsight it’s always easier to look back and put a finger on various reasons as to why the twins started to go wrong. Was it because of how their father acted? Or Grandad’s endless stories of villains and fighters. There was a stream of these people in and out of the houses in Vallance Road, and to two young boys what these got up to must have seemed very glamorous and exciting. They were all big tough men who didn’t care about anything – people like Wassle Newman and Dodger Mullins – but what they didn’t tell those kids was that they had hardly spent one Christmas with their families until they were old men. No one made any allowances for a young girl who might be listening (pretending as usual not to), and their conversations would be peppered with “Effing cozzers” and “I upped this effing copper”. And the twins must have thought that this sort of talk from grown-ups made going against the law almost acce
ptable.
Then there was Auntie Rose, who hated the police because of the way they treated her when they were raiding the houses looking for Uncle Charlie or cousin Joe when they were deserters. I’ve seen her in an upstairs room, with the twins giggling behind her, waiting for a policeman to walk by so that she could shake a dirty rug over him. I mean it was funny at the time, like a harmless joke, but it was only in later life that I thought this wasn’t a message to give to impressionable boys.
So when they got into trouble at about twelve years of age, they must have thought their aunt and all the other men must have been right all along, especially when they didn’t feel as though they’d done anything wrong. Reg and Ron and another boy named Ronnie had been camping out near Epping Forest, which was only a few stops on the train. On the way back, messing about like boys do, Reg fired an air pistol out of the window as they went through a station. Somebody saw him do it and when the train came to the next stop the railway police were waiting for them.
It was something and nothing. I’d seen this gun they had and it was just a cheap little toy that couldn’t put a slug through a piece of paper. I know because they used to shoot things that were hanging on the washing line in the back yard. Anyway, the ones that caught them handed them over to the real police, and after taking them to the station brought them home. Then they had to wait weeks for it to come up in the juvenile court. Never mind sticking their noses up to the law in later years, right then the two of them were really frightened. Not outside with their friends, I don’t suppose, but indoors they’d be saying “What if we go to prison?”
Auntie Rose had a right go at the coppers, telling them they should be out catching real criminals and not upsetting little kids; though she put it a lot stronger than that.
In the end our school priest spoke up for them and nothing came of it. Might have been a fine or something, I can’t remember.
Another time the police gave them a really rough time over somebody they were supposed to have had a fight with. They swore they had nothing to do with it but still these two policemen took them down Leman Street and kept them there for hours before letting them out. I’m not just saying this in defence of my cousins, but I know they wasn’t involved because I was with them in the café in Wentworth Street when it was supposed to have happened. As it turned out Reg and Ron knew the two boys who had done the beating up, but they never said a word – even to get themselves out of trouble. I think at that time they were more bothered by that sort of treatment than they let on because often they used to say, “Why do you think the police pick on us, Rita. Is it because we’re twins?”
Somebody with a bit of respect for the law would’ve changed their minds very quickly after being pushed around for nothing, but the twins had very little to start with so you can imagine things could only get worse.
5. “They wouldn’t do
anything like that”
Rita Smith
I was always clever with a needle – most women were when I was a girl – so when I left school I applied for and got a job as a trainee to become a royal seamstress. I couldn’t believe my luck because it sounded so posh and couldn’t I hold my head up when I mentioned that “royal” bit. My dream of making something really special of myself only lasted until the week before I was supposed to start. The job was up west and having given it some thought my mother said, “No. I’m not having you travelling up there.” I cried, I sulked and stamped about. I went to Nanny and my aunties and pleaded with them to put a word in for me but Mum still said, “No. It’s not right a young girl rubbing shoulders, and whatever else, with all those men on the train every day. Tell them you can’t do it.”
I told some story about ill health and on the Monday, instead of sewing buttons on Queen Mary’s best frock, I was pedalling like mad on an old sewing machine in Mr Gold’s factory in Underwood Road.
After I got over my disappointment I was happy enough and well thought of, but after a while I moved on to work for another Jewish man, Mr Stirling and his wife, who had turned their big house into a sort of factory. They must have liked me as well because Mrs Stirling came up to me one day and gave me a lovely gold brooch, but told me not to tell the other girls. Somehow this escaped being sold off or pawned by Ritchie and I still have it somewhere around my flat.
We knew it was coming because all boys grew up either dreading the thought of being separated from their families, or looked forward to the experience as a bit of an adventure, yet when Reg and Ron’s call-up papers arrived for National Service I can remember feeling quite upset. They had mixed feelings. On the one hand they didn’t want to leave the comfortable security of Vallance Road, but at the same time, as they were at an age when they spent a lot of time out and about getting up to whatever young lads do, they didn’t want this to end either. On the other hand they knew that everyone said that while you might go in as a boy, two years later you’d come out the other side as a man – and that was something they’d always aimed for.
Ronnie’s only thought was that he’d be able to get his hands on the guns he’d always been fascinated with.
I didn’t want them to go at all because we were close and they’d been a part of my life since day one. I looked on them as big brothers and I knew I’d miss them. I know I cried the night before they left, but they both kept saying two years was nothing and they’d get lots of leave and would be able to take me up west every time they came home. That helped a bit and we said our goodbyes that night because they had to be at the Tower of London for six in the morning. A lot of the girls at work had boyfriends in the army, with being the age they were, and they told me that after the first six weeks they came home almost every weekend, so that cheered me up as well.
I got home latish that night and Mum asked me to pop round Auntie Violet’s before I took my coat off because she’d run out of sugar. I said we had a full bag that morning but when she said she’d been baking I didn’t give it another thought and went out of the door. Imagine my face when I walked into Auntie’s and there were the twins sitting at the table with big grins on their faces –Mum had set me up. I didn’t know what to say first – what; where; why, and they couldn’t stop laughing. When they eventually told me that they’d got fed up and walked out I said, “I thought you had to wait six weeks. Didn’t they mind?” and that made them laugh even more. Auntie Violet looked like she’d just won a prize and kept looking at them as much as to say, “Aren’t they lovely, my boys”.
I started to get worried when they told me the police would be looking for them because I knew what it was like when cousin Joe hid out in Auntie Rosie’s house, so when a neighbour from down the road knocked on the door my heart nearly stopped. I couldn’t believe how those two treated the whole thing like a joke, and it was a long time before I realized that as far as they were concerned that’s exactly what it was.
From the moment they both walked out of the Tower they knew they would be back in a very short time. They knew it wouldn’t be long before the police or MPs arrived, and that’s why they were sitting with their mother instead of hiding out somewhere. It was showing the authorities that these two East End boys couldn’t be pushed around, and it was like I was seeing a side of them that I’d never seen before. Why it took so long I don’t know, but it wasn’t until seven the next morning that the police came and arrested them and took them away in a Black Maria.
That was March 1952 and they didn’t come home properly until March again in 1954. I say properly because unlike most of the young lads who went in the army and accepted whatever it was they had to do and got normal leave and all that, Reg and Ron spent almost all their time fighting the system and either being locked up or on the run.
Different from the first night when it was just a bit of fun, every other time they showed up in Vallance Road they didn’t want to be captured, so only came in the early hours when it was dark. Even then they didn’t stay very long. A few good meals, hello to all of us, then they’d be off ag
ain without telling any of us where they were going. Half the time I don’t think they knew themselves. What those two years was all about and what they got up to, I don’t really know.
Being their little sister in a way, they knew they didn’t have to impress me with stories of how tough they were. The men in the family got all the details but when it came to me they spoke as though it was one big laugh, and with always being a bit innocent, I believed them.
At home it really was strange with them not being around, but as they say, “Life goes on,” so we carried on the same as we always did.
I haven’t said much about my cousin Charlie, but with him being ten years older than me he always seemed so grown up, so obviously I hardly spent any time with him at all. Later in life that gap in years closes up to nothing and then I got to know him much better, though I was never quite as close to him as I was with the twins. He was so unlike his brothers that if you didn’t know better you’d think he was from a different family.
While there was a spare room going at Auntie Violet’s, Charlie had moved in with his wife, Dolly, and their little boy, Gary. Apart from that there were very little changes in our daily lives.
I only saw Ron once in the last ten months of his service and that was when my boyfriend Harry Skinner took me to see them in the army prison at Shepton Mallet. I didn’t see Reg at all, not even on that visit, because then I think he was in solitary or something, though why the two of them weren’t locked up together I don’t know. Harry and me were taken in to see Ron and he was sitting with his friend Dickie Morgan and behind them all up the wall was brown stuff that I hoped wasn’t what it looked like. When Ron saw me looking at it he laughed and said, “Don’t look so disgusted, Rita, it’s only cocoa. I slung it up there to piss them off.” Something else he’d done to piddle them off from what I could see was that he’d only shaved one side of his face. He did look funny. He said that he was appearing in court first thing in the morning and that they’d get the message that they didn’t worry him at all. It was a bit upsetting to see him locked up and in such a state, but at the same time he still had his sense of humour so things couldn’t be that bad.