Inside the Kray Family

by Rita Smith

  As Reg hadn’t been involved in the affair at all, it was obvious he had to be acquitted.Well, you would think it would be obvious, but he said it had been touch and go; what with lies and false statements being put forward by the prosecution. Yet instead of being pleased that he was free he seemed to feel guilty that he hadn’t been sent away with his brother.

  In twenty-three years the only time they had been separated was when they were in hospital as babies, and neither of them could remember that anyway. So we all wondered how they were going to get through the next three years. They were so close, they really were “two-ones” as I used to call them. They even had the same dreams.

  In that film about them the producers made out that these dreams were all fanciful, with birds flying high above clouds, or something that was obviously out of their imagination rather than that of the twins. But unless they had something like that and never mentioned it, from what I remember they were very ordinary. Even so it always made the hair on my neck prickle as first Reg would tell us about his dream, and then ten minutes later Ron would repeat it word for word. At first I told them they weren’t kidding me with their little joke, but when they both swore on their mother’s life they were telling the truth, I had to believe them, because like the rest of the family they were too superstitious to lie with that at stake. Those dreams, and lots of other little things, became part of our lives where the twins were concerned.

  Like when they were small, Ron might graze his knee out in the yard and Reg would start crying indoors for no reason at all. Or Reg might be limping after being kicked playing football, and in no time Ron would be unconsciously doing the same. It never went away, even when they grew up. One of them would walk in the room and say something, and five minutes later the other would come in and say exactly the same thing and then wonder why we all laughed.

  I suppose this has all been explained away by psychologists, but when you live with it year after year, it’s certainly strange.

  It’s often said they even had their own language, but the truth is it was a way of speaking that was quite common in the East End. I think it was known as back-slang and really when you understood it, it was so simple you wouldn’t think it would fool a child. Yet when it was spoken fast as the twins did you’d be surprised how effective it could be. What you did was take off the first letter of a word, put it on the end and add ay. So Rita would be Itaray, gun would be Ungay or punch, Unchpay. Usually this language was used in front of children who couldn’t keep up with it, though I’ve heard Reg and Ron talking to each other in a club and the puzzled looks on the faces of the other people was hilarious.

  I really did think that Reg might have a breakdown when Ron was sent to gaol, because in those first weeks he wasn’t himself at all. When he wasn’t visiting the prison he’d just sit around smoking. He was scruffy and unshaven, and seemed to lose interest in the billiard hall, no matter what any of us said to try and get him out of himself.

  Ron was in Wandsworth so it was no hardship to visit him whenever we could. I think I cried every time I went because I hated seeing him caged up like an animal, especially when he hadn’t really done anything to deserve such a long sentence – unlike Ramsey. But he was always cheerful and seemed to be coping well, so that helped us all, particularly Reg, who started to come out of his depression and get closer to cousin Charlie. Apart from their shared interest in boxing, the twins didn’t normally have a lot do to with him, but that’s probably quite normal in any family when there’s a seven-year age difference.

  Now they started spending a lot of time together and whether it was a deliberate plan to take Reg’s mind off of Ron or just one of those things that happen, Charlie found an old house in Poplar and suggested they both turn it into a club. Charlie put the money up, which might sound as though he was well off, but in the late fifties a run down place in east London could be bought for a few hundred pounds. They couldn’t afford to get builders in, so at some point over the next six months every one of us in the family got roped in to clean and paint the place up. Eventually it opened and I can remember feeling really proud that my two cousins were proper businessmen. I never counted the Regal because that struck me as just a place for men to hang around in, but this was different and seemed to be earning them a lot of money.

  I don’t mean it in a nasty way, but being separated from Ron seemed to do Reg the world of good. He was different somehow – relaxed and friendly and without that scowl on his face that we’d seen too much of over the past few years. He hadn’t forgotten Ron though. Not only was he very much part of this club, even though he’d never seen it, Reg named it the Double R and I know that really pleased Ron.

  They had two men on the front doors to keep any troublemakers out. One of these was Tommy Brown, and he was a lovely man. He must have been about six feet six, very broad and he had a boxer’s face, so of course no one would ever argue with him. Yet he was one of the most gentle men you could meet. The other one was big Pat Connolly, and he stayed overnight in our house once.

  I was getting ready for bed and I had a funny feeling that I was being watched. Mum was already in bed and Dad was at work. Anyway, I had a quick wash at the sink, put on my pyjamas and ran upstairs and got in with Mum, as I always did when we were on our own. I’d forgotten my glasses but no way was I going back down to get them. Mum said, “What’s up? Is Mrs Doyle about again?” I said, “No, I’ve got a feeling someone’s down there”. Then we heard a window open and our little Jack Russell ran to the top of the stairs and barked its head off.

  We just clung to each other really terrified. There was a bit of banging then footsteps running up the passage and out of the back door. I think we sat up in bed for about two hours until we thought it was safe, then I ran down the road to get Grandad.

  It was funny when the police came after he phoned them, because this young constable looked at a photo of the twins on the wall and said, “Who’d be silly enough to break in with them two about?” He must have known who they were but didn’t mention Ron being in prison. Whoever had broken in stole my handbag, took out my purse then threw the bag away. But what he didn’t get was the takings from the Double R. I don’t know why but Reg used to give my mum bundles of cash to look after for him until he needed it. She kept it in a biscuit tin, and luckily the person hadn’t opened it because it was only on the sideboard. Reg was really angry and he told Mum he was putting one of his men in to look after us because he knew burglars often came back after a few days.

  That night Pat Connolly turned up with the idea that he would sit by the door until Dad came home. What a night we had. He gave up on the chair, stretched out on the settee and for the rest of the night he snored, he shouted and he yelled out in his sleep. In the morning Mum said to him, “You was supposed to be protecting us and you was asleep”. He said, “No, May. It might have looked like I was asleep just because I closed my eyes but I was ready for anything.” Mum told Reg to take him away, saying she’d rather have the burglar than that bleeding racket all night.

  But then we had something more to worry about other than Ronnie being locked away. Auntie Rose came to my mum one day to ask her advice about a rash on her arms that she couldn’t seem to get rid of. Why she asked her was because Mum always had a nice skin and people often commented on it. Even Nanny had said to her one time, “’Ere May, what do you put on your face ’cos it’s always nice and smooth”. So Mum said, “I rub in a bit of zinc and borax cream every night”. Nanny’s given her a strange look and said “Ooer, that’s a funny name for a cream innit?” Mum said, “No, not really; you can get some at Boots the Chemist. So during the week Nanny’s gone to the chemist and asked for some of that there “zinc and bollocks” cream. Imagine what she said to Mum when she came home?

  As far as the rash on Rose’s arm was concerned, Mum told her that it was probably caused by nerves because she had been really upset about Ron.

  Apart from his mother first and Reg second, Aunt Rose was closer
to him than anyone else could ever be. She seemed to understand his need to be different and encouraged him when he wanted to talk about his heroes like Lawrence of Arabia or Gordon of Khartoum, without laughing at him like Reg or Billy did. And I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she knew about his sexuality years before any of us others even suspected it.

  When Nanny insisted that she went to the doctors to get something for the rash that hadn’t cleared up, he sent her to the London Hospital. A week later she was diagnosed with leukaemia. Today this illness is serious, but in most cases curable. Then it was just a question of how long you had left. I can’t begin to say how we all felt – devastated sums it up in one word. Rose, so full of life; so fiery and so generous. If she had half a crown, two shillings was for anyone who needed it, and often they didn’t even have to ask. Remember, she’d been a single mother since Billy was a baby but every Friday when she got her wages, she’d buy something for the twins and she did that right up until they were teenagers.

  We daren’t tell Ron because he couldn’t have taken it in his situation, and when he questioned why she wasn’t visiting we told him she had a bad hip and couldn’t travel. We thought that with time off for good behaviour, and he was a model prisoner, he would be out long before the end, and being with her he might come to terms with it. She went in and out of hospital, each time getting weaker and weaker. They couldn’t do much for her anyway, so Nanny and her sisters decided they would nurse her at home. They set up a bed in the sitting room at Nan’s, but apart from at night it was a job to keep her in it as weak as she was. She never gave up though, and on good days would do housework or go round the shops.

  I’ll give you an example of the spirit she had and of how tough she was. For some time she had been going out with a local villain by the name of Jimmy Stannard. In fact he’d moved in with her for a while, though that didn’t last. None of us thought much of him, although he wasn’t half as bad as his brother Ted, who the twins looked on as some sort of hero because he’d served seven years in Dartmoor for slashing a man’s face. Auntie Rosie’s brother Joe was always telling her to get rid of this Jimmy, but being the way she was she did just what she wanted to do.

  She must have fallen out with him because when he called in to see her one Sunday morning with his sister, she told them both to “eff off ”, with the result they both set about her – though the sister had more to do with that than her brother. When Uncle Joe heard about this he went after him. And although this man might have thought he was as tough as his brother, when Joe got hold of him he couldn’t apologize enough.

  In fact afterward he went to Rose and said how sorry he was, that they’d both been drunk and it would never happen again, and so on. What makes me think that he hadn’t been too much out of order that morning was that Rose let it go as far as he was concerned, but told us that she was going after the sister.

  With the influence she’d had over Ronnie for years and years, it’s no wonder that he picked up the attitude that even the smallest slight had to be punished. No matter how many times we told her that she was ill and shouldn’t be thinking about such things, her answer was always the same. “I’m going to bleedin’ well ’ave ’er for what she done.” It had to happen.

  She was out with Auntie Violet and Mum and she did look awful. As they got to Bethnal Green Road by the butcher’s on the corner of Maker Street, Stannard’s sister and another woman came out of the shop. Rose saw her and said to her sisters, “Right, she’s for it now”. They tried to stop her but she ran at this woman shouting, “Come in my house and start punching away, you cow? Now it’s your turn,” and hit her full in the face. All along the front of the shop were egg boxes laid out on the slant, and she fell backward into the lot of them. Rose jumped on top of her and punched her again and again – about half a dozen times. The man from the greengrocer’s a few shops down came out and said to Violet, “Make her pack it in; she’s ruining that man’s stock.” And though he was very big and used to be a boxer, Auntie Violet of all people told him to mind his own business or she’d put him in the eggs as well. He went back to his shop.

  When Rose had finished the Stannard woman’s face was all bloody and she was crying, but Rose just dusted her hands off and told her that next time she’d get even worse.

  There was never a next time though, because she died about three weeks later. A fighter all her life and right up to the end.

  As I said, we’d all hoped that Ron would’ve been out by the time this happened and we could all have supported him. It didn’t work out and Reg had the terrible job of breaking the news to him. We were surprised that he took it as well as he did. Being the man he was there was no way he was going to break down and cry in front of the prison officers, though that’s what he must have felt like doing. Instead him and Reg calmly discussed the funeral and what suit Ron wanted bringing in to wear on the day.

  If Rose had been his mother or sister, there wouldn’t have been a problem. As it was aunts didn’t come into the category that would have allowed him escorted leave for the day, and they turned down his request.

  How he felt inside himself, or in his cell at night, we don’t know, but on the surface he accepted the decision. Then a tiny incident tipped him over the edge. As a mark of respect, and the only way he could see to mark the passing of his beloved Rose, he asked to be allowed to wear a black armband. This was refused as well, and he went completely berserk. He smashed up his cell and attacked officers, and from what we were told it took five men to hold him down while a doctor injected him with Stematol.

  Weeks later I went to see him with my auntie and Reg, and I wished I hadn’t. He was unshaven and puffy faced, and his eyes were vacant. When we spoke to him the only answer we got was either a nod or a shake of his head.

  On the way home Auntie Violet said, “I thought he looked a bit rundown,” as though she was blanking out that he looked close to death’s door.

  I blamed the prison authorities for the state he was in. If only they had shown a little bit of compassion – bent the rules and allowed him out, or simplest of all had let him wear that armband – the rest of his life might have been changed.

  As it was, an example of how callous they could be came in a brief official letter not too long after. Auntie Violet and Uncle Charlie both came round to my mum clutching this letter and not really understanding what it meant, though it was plain enough. As cold as you like it said, “Mr and Mrs Kray, I regret to inform you that your son Ronald Kray has been certified insane”. No explanation, nothing, apart from telling them that he was being transferred to Long Grove Hospital. Violet’s answer, as always, was to keep saying, “There must be some mistake,” while Charlie tried to laugh it off by saying, “Ronnie knows what he’s doing. Loads of blokes did it to get out of the army.”

  Nanny and Grandad weren’t even told – they wouldn’t have understood either, and if they did it would only have upset them.

  As for Reg, he wouldn’t accept what they said at all and like his dad put it down to Ron playing games with the authorities like when they were in the army prison. At least that’s what he said to us all. But Nanny told me that he’d asked more than once what exactly had been wrong with his great grandfather, almost as if he was worried that there was something in the family that might come out in himself one day.

  6. The Double R

  Rita Smith

  I said before that life goes on, and in my case I got married to Ritchie Smith and we moved into the top two rooms at Mum’s house, number 174. When I first met him you couldn’t have found a more ordinary working man than he was. He knew the twins and a lot of the sort of people they mixed with, but that wasn’t for him. All he wanted was to work hard at the timber yard and come home at night.

  Years later friends of my cousins would say to me that while they were Jack the Lads, suited up and standing around on street corners, they’d see my Ritchie trudging home from work in heavy boots, with a lunch bag on his shoulder and
wonder about his mentality. He’d have a word with them and all that, but they couldn’t understand how anyone would rather get their hands dirty working for a boss, when they could be like them – up to all kinds to raise money, and hanging about with their friends.

  I suppose it was too good to last and what changed him into someone I didn’t know was when he got a job in the docks and started mixing with what you could only call real villains. When he was eventually made redundant and given a lump sum of money, the combination of this, those men and a liking for too much drink changed his life and mine because then I found myself in a similar position to my Auntie Violet.

  Isn’t it strange how things repeat themselves in families? After what I’d seen I always vowed that no man would ever treat me badly, and there I was putting up with abuse after drunken abuse and accepting it for the sake of my two children. They say, “Don’t judge a man (or woman) unless you’ve walked in their shoes”. It was only then I understood why my aunt had been so protective of Uncle Charlie, even after he did the most horrible things to her. A lot of people wanted to give him a really good hiding but she wouldn’t let them. And here was me, the favourite little sister of two of the most powerful men in London (not that I knew it then), and I couldn’t tell them – daren’t tell them because of what I knew they would do to Ritchie.

  The final straw came when he made me sit in a chair while he held a loaded shotgun to my head from midnight until he fell asleep at six o’clock in the morning, allowing me to grab the gun and throw it down the rubbish chute. Afterward he was sorry as usual, but I was worn out with it all and wanted him out. Even sober he could be nasty, because before he left he said to our son, David, after he’d had another last go at me, “Don’t look at me wishing you were bigger and could have a go, ’cos you’ll never be that big”.