Inside the Kray Family

by Rita Smith

  The only way I managed to get through those bad days was with the help of my friend Jenny Crossley. I know I had my family to turn to, but sometimes I needed someone my own age to talk things through with and she was always there for me. Some time later, when the situation was reversed and she was having problems, I was only too pleased to be able to do the same for her. She’s died since and I still miss her, but I would just like her two daughters, Julie and Daryl, to know what a nice person I thought their mother was.

  A long while after he showed how different he’d become from the hard working young man I’d fallen in love with – he did an armed robbery and went on the run.

  By this time Reg and Ron were in prison for life, and suddenly I got a small taste of what they’d been up against since they first got into trouble as boys. I was arrested, along with my Kimmy and David. I had nothing to do with Ritchie nor the kids with their father, but that didn’t stop the police from taking us all to Leman Street and treating us like criminals. Kimmy, taking after my Aunt Rose, had a little bit too much to say for herself, which was understandable as she hadn’t done anything, but even so a policewoman gave her a hard slap round the face and told her she was just like her father.

  You wouldn’t think innocent people could be treated in this way, especially in Britain, but it happened and made me understand why so many people I knew had no respect for the law.

  But back then as we worried about Ron, all that was a long time in the future.

  A few months went by and Reg called in late one night. He’d been to the hospital that day but instead of being down like he usually was, he had a big smile on his face. I said, “You look happy. Ron must be doing well.” He laughed and said, “Couldn’t be better. He’s out.” I couldn’t believe it. “That’s a bit short notice. Why didn’t they let us know? Is he with your mum?” He just laughed again and said, “They couldn’t tell us he was coming out because they didn’t know themselves until a few hours ago, and now he’s somewhere they’ll never find him”. Then he explained how he’d changed places with him and Ron had walked out. He went on to say that he wouldn’t tell me where he was hiding in case the police forced it out of me when they turned up, which they did early next morning.

  So once again all of us had to suffer policemen tramping through the house and looking in cupboards that a cat couldn’t hide in. We should have been used to it because this sort of thing had been going on since Uncle Charlie first deserted – but we never came to terms with having our private things being pulled out and tossed around.

  Later Reg told me that Ron was safe in a caravan at Sudbury with Teddy Smith, and was loving every minute of it. I knew he loved the countryside and I was happy for him, but worried that the police might hurt him when they caught him, because in the papers they were saying he was a violent madman.

  We all wanted to go and see him but Reg said the police were probably watching us, though if he could he’d try and bring him up for a quick visit. So you can imagine how we felt when they both turned up at a party we were all at in Tottenham. I didn’t know what an insane person was supposed to be like, but as far as I could see it was the same old Ronnie. A bit fatter but apart from that he seemed really well, and obviously had got over his little breakdown.

  What I couldn’t have known was this was the last time I’d ever see the Ron that I’d grown up with.

  Reggie’s idea in the first place was to keep Ron out long enough so that when he went back in he’d no longer be classed as insane. Charlie had found out that anyone who’d been certified had, by law, to be re-assessed if they could live normally outside for over six weeks. It must have looked very simple because they never believed he was mad in the first place. But as time went on I think they both realized they’d made a mistake.

  From making a big joke over having pulled a fast one on the law, or laughing about this and that Ron might have said or done on a visit to the caravan, Reg seemed to go quiet over the whole business.

  Everything was going well with the Double R, and him and Charlie were getting on better than they ever had. But every time he came back from Sudbury, which was about twice a week, he looked more and more worried. Until one day he said to me he thought he’d have to bring Ron home, whatever the risks, because he was acting very strangely. I knew that Reg had been getting different kinds of pills to take down to Ron, but as these weren’t prescribed who knows what they were doing to him.

  A few days later Reg came upstairs and told me that he’d brought Ron home in the small hours, and would I go and sit with him. He was in my mum’s house with the idea that being there would allow a small breathing space should the police turn up at Auntie Violet’s.

  For his sake I didn’t cry when I walked in the door and saw him huddled on the settee. I’d been warned that he probably wouldn’t know who I was, but he said “Hello Rita. You all right?” In a few months he’d gone from being Reggie’s double to someone I’d never seen before. He wasn’t fat; he was bloated and his eyes bulged out of his head. I didn’t know what to say or what to do, so I sat beside him patting his hand, and every few minutes he’d say, “You all right?” as though it was the first time he’d seen me. Mum just sat there with tears in her eyes, and Reg looked green, as though what we were looking at was his fault – which in a roundabout sort of way it was, though I’d never have said so. Reg stayed for an hour, then had to go back to the club, but when he said ta-ra to Ron he was told to “eff off out of it”, and that must have hurt him.

  For days and days we all took turns at sitting with him because he couldn’t be left on his own, but if Reg thought being with his mum and family was going to make him better, it wasn’t working.

  Mum lit one of those radiant paraffin heaters one morning. Ron was watching her with those blank eyes he had at the time, and as it popped and the red glow flared up, he jumped up screaming and ran out of the front door. When we found him he was hiding behind the counter in the sweet shop, with his arms over his head and crying uncontrollably.

  Mr Blewitt, the owner, was crying as well because he’d known the boys all their lives and thought a lot of them. His daughter had been coming home late one night when a man started following her making rude remarks. Ron happened to come along and escorted her until she was indoors, then went after the man. I don’t know what happened but I’m sure he didn’t accost ladies ever again. Mr Blewitt never forgot that and the twins could do no wrong in his eyes after that.

  When Ron wasn’t following us around the house asking if we were all right, he was crying or mumbling to himself that he was going to kill someone. These ranged from the local vicar (who he thought the world of) to some boy who’d hit him when he was at school. It couldn’t go on. He was getting worse and it was tearing the family’s heart out.

  In the end we all got together when he was knocked out with sleeping pills, and so that the decision wasn’t only Reggie’s or Charlie’s, we all decided that he had to go back to hospital. In one way it seemed like we were betraying Ron, but on the other we could see it wouldn’t do him any favours to keep him out.

  The next day he was picked up and taken back to Long Grove. It was heartbreaking to see him being led out of the house with a look on his face like a lost boy, but it could only be for the best. In hindsight Reg agreed Ron should never have been taken out in the first place, but he didn’t learn a lesson from it because later on him and Ron would both do the same with Frank Mitchell, and everyone knows how that ended up.

  Within weeks of getting proper medical care Ron was stabilized and sent to Wandsworth as an ordinary prisoner, and less than a year later was back home. But we could never turn the clock back and he’d never be our Ronnie again up to the day he died.

  I couldn’t believe the famous people we were rubbing shoulders with at the club. There was us, the most ordinary people you could find, brought up in falling down old terraces, chatting to celebrities like we’d always known them. Judy Garland, for instance, even then was a super super
star, and I found myself sitting next to her. The first thing she said to me was, “I just love your jacket. I noticed it the minute I walked in the door.” Her outfit must have cost more than my year’s wages, and she was admiring my jacket that was less than twelve pounds in Marks and Sparks. She also said, “Y’know, I wish my daughter was here. I think you two would get along fine.”

  I won’t mention all the names but because of what I thought of as “those two shy cousins of mine”, we felt we were celebrities as well.

  Looking back, though, they must have been like Jekyll and Hyde, because I honestly never knew they were anything else but how I saw them. At least up until the papers started to print stories about them, and even then I thought what they said was exaggerated.

  Then it was Reggie’s turn to be sent to prison, and though it never made any difference to how I felt about him or Ron, I have to say it opened my eyes to the fact that perhaps I’d been missing something over the past few years. Somehow the shock of him getting eighteen months for demanding money with menaces didn’t seem as great as it was when Ron was sent down. I shouldn’t say it but really there was no shame when one of the family was. None of us were criminals but a lot of people we knew were, whether petty or otherwise, and there was always someone going in or coming out all our lives. Also Reg seemed to make light of it, saying he’d be out in less than twelve months and he could do that standing on his head.

  What he hadn’t allowed for was while he was out on bail he’d fall properly in love for the first time in his life.

  He came to my flat one evening and quite honestly he was hyperactive. I was trying to make a cup of tea and he was up and down and in and out of the kitchen. The kettle wasn’t boiling quick enough for him because he wanted me to finish and sit down, so it was obvious he wanted to talk. I’d hardly sat down before he said, “Rita, you won’t believe this, but I’ve just met the loveliest girl you’ve ever seen”. I asked him who she was and he said, “Frank Shea’s sister”. I went, “You’re not serious, Reg, she’s only a baby”. Because the last time I’d seen her she was wearing a gymslip and white socks. But he got all defensive saying, “No she’s not, she’s nearly sixteen,” so I didn’t say any more because he wouldn’t have listened anyway. I’d never seen him like that before. He’d been out with lots of girls and was always the centre of attraction when there were women about, but none of them ever put him in that state before.

  He took her out a few times then he had to go back to prison, and from what he wrote to me it was painful for him because he desperately wanted to be with Frances.

  When he was released in the summer of 1961 he made straight for her parents’ house in Ormsby Street before going home to see his mother, and that was really out of character for him.

  We had a small family party the following night to celebrate his coming home, and I was introduced to her properly. I had to admit it to Reg that no, she wasn’t such a baby as I remembered, but a very pretty young woman. She struck me as being painfully shy, but then meeting all of us at once must have been a bit daunting – bearing in mind that while she looked like a woman she was only a child.

  In some ways Reg and Frances were very much alike, and I’m saying that from the point of view of the Reg I knew and not the public face he showed everywhere in London – but not at home. When he was relaxed and felt he could let his guard down among family and behind closed doors, he could be very vulnerable. He was also insecure, and I often think his tough-guy front was a way of hiding this. Quiet in his manner and in the way he spoke, he often gave the impression that while he was talking to you on one level, his mind was somewhere else altogether.

  Frances shared all these things. What made them different was while Reg could put on a front that hid the real him from the type of people he mixed with, she couldn’t. What you saw was what she was.

  I don’t think Ron liked her from the beginning. He was always polite to her, but that’s not the same as being friendly and it seemed as though at every opportunity he was looking for ways to spoil things between them. And it didn’t take long before him and Reg were having blazing rows about her. I think if Reg was having one-night stands, or a girlfriend for a week or two, Ron wouldn’t have bothered in the slightest, but he saw what they had together and knew it was going to become permanent. Quite simply he was jealous that anyone could become closer to his brother than he was, though I’m not sure it was as clear as that in his own head.

  We were all aware by now that Ron had no time for women because he said it often enough, yet for some reason he separated us in the family from those outside. He’d say to me, “Girls are no good. All they want is your money,” completely unaware that he was talking to one. So while it was no secret that he had a down on females, we didn’t think of him as gay. Queers, as everyone called them then, were not as common as they are today, and the ones we were aware of (and I had a good friend that was gay) were effeminate and “limp wristed”, you know, like Kenneth Williams in the Carry On... films. Our Ronnie was nothing like that at all. Even the pretty-looking boys that he always had hanging around him in the club didn’t make us think. Again, a strange thing to say about someone as supposedly frightening as they say he was, he never really grew up and could be quite childlike sometimes, so we just assumed he got something from their youth.

  His humour, when he cared to show any, was very simple. His favourite joke was to stand talking to Grandad Lee and either jingle the loose change in his pocket or carefully count the notes in his wallet. Grandad would sit there like a dog waiting for crumbs to drop from a biscuit, and then Ron would say “Gotta go, see you,” and walk out of the door. Grandad would say to anyone with him, “That Ronnie is the greediest bastard I’ve ever come across,” and then Ron would come back in. “Sorry, Grandad, nearly forgot,” and he’d give him some money. Then it changed: “God bless you, son. Ronnie’s all right, he is.” Time after time he did this and never tired of the joke.

  Most of the time, and especially since he’d been ill, humour wasn’t his strong point, so when one of the young vicars from the Red Church asked me to help him wind Ron up one day, I had my doubts if it was a good idea.

  David and John were different from any vicars I’d ever known. They were both good looking, trendy and always out for a laugh. If we had parties they’d come along and dance all night long and drink as much as anyone else. Years later when people said to me, “Have you seen that young vicar in EastEnders? Not real to life is he?” I’d say, “He’s just like those two I used to know”.

  Anyway David came over one day and just as I was leaving Mum’s to go home he stopped me and asked if the twins were indoors. When I said they were, he laughed and said, “Right, you go in and tell them somebody’s just driven off in their Mercedes”. Knowing how Ron could be if you caught him on a wrong day I told him I’d better not, but he coaxed me along until I thought, “Oh, why not?” I walked into Auntie Violet’s and Ron was dozing in the armchair and Reg was on the phone. I said to them what David had told me to and they knocked me over in their rush to get out. Ron was shouting he’d kill the bastard before he got out of the door. Reg saw the funny side of it when he saw the vicar leaning against the car, but Ron looked as though he was going to hit him and I’m sure it was only respect for his collar that stopped him.

  Not too many years ago I bumped into one of my old Sunday-school teachers in Bethnal Green Road, and she told me that she’d just had a letter from this David, who was now working in Zambia. He’d said in his letter, “Say hello to Rita Lee when you see her. She was my pin-up when we were younger.” I’m sure I must have blushed when I said to her, “I didn’t think that was allowed”. She laughed and said, “No, they couldn’t get married but they’re still men all the same, and that doesn’t stop them thinking”.

  For the first year they were together Reg and Frances were inseparable, but what was bothering him was Frances kept putting him off whenever he mentioned getting married, and that must have taken
some doing because he could be very persuasive when he wanted something.

  My Kimmy was just a baby and I used to watch him play with her and think he’d make a really good father one day. If she was awake the first thing he’d do when he came in was pick her up and cuddle her. If she was asleep he’d hover around waiting for her eyes to open. I used to dread his knock on the door because I knew he’d walk in with the biggest teddy bear he could find, or a swing – and one time a full-size rocking horse, and my room couldn’t fit anything else in.

  I was so tight for space I put the horse in the only clear space I could find and that was right in front of the window. I mean it was perfectly safe otherwise I’d have moved it myself, but as Kimmy threw herself backward and forward on it, Reg would get all worried and stand by her in case she rocked straight out of the window. Most of the time he acted like he was a father himself. He loved feeding her with a bottle and making all kinds of soppy noises while he was giving her a cuddle. When she gurgled at him his face lit up, but if she cried he’d ask me quite seriously if I was sure she liked him.

  I’m sure that was one of the reasons he wanted to get married, and he often said that one day he’d have two or three babies just like Kimmy. The other reason was less romantic. He loved Frances to the point of obsession but he was very possessive and jealous, and in his mind he thought the quicker she was legally tied to him the better. When she wasn’t there he’d say to me, “She keeps saying she’s too young to settle down – I don’t understand”. I’d say things like, “Well, she is a little bit,” or “Give it time, Reg,” to stop him brooding on it. What I didn’t say was that she’d already spoken to me about his proposals, and she really wasn’t sure if that’s what she wanted. Being “inseparable” meant that she had to be at his side wherever he wanted to go.