by John Pearson
It would be like a raiding-party with everyone bringing out his favourite weapon and piling into ancient battered cars outside the hall. The twins were always in the lead and would usually keep the destination secret. ‘It was really all a bit of a lark. Sort of an outing. But it was a funny thing – wherever we went, to a pub or dance hall or another club, there was always trouble.’ As for the fighting, friends of the twins insist that this was always deadly serious. ‘They were a wicked couple really. They were frightened of no one and loved every minute of it. Something got into them once a fight started, and you could see they enjoyed their bit of violence, really enjoyed it. If I was cutting somebody or putting the boot in, I’d usually hold back a bit – never the twins though. If you watched their faces while they did it, you’d see real hate. They always went the limit.’
At this stage there was no clear purpose to those nightly gatherings. But gradually, behind the fooling, boozing and aimless brawling of this one small cockney gang, the outlines of something bigger started to appear. The gang began to change.
The key to this change lay in the twins and their power as fighters. They were not particularly big men. Ronnie was 5 feet 10 inches, Reggie half an inch shorter. Reggie tipped the scales at eleven stone, Ronnie at twelve and a half. Many of their fights were with much larger men, yet in the several hundred bar brawls, woundings, shootings, and punch-ups they were involved in, they never once appear to have come off second best. Neither was shot or cut or damaged seriously.
Both were abnormally tough; their teenage boxing training had left them strong in the arms and shoulders, and taught them both the precise use of their fists. They needed little sleep. Ronnie is reputed to have drunk fifty-five brown ales in one night at the billiard hall and carried on next day as usual. From the start they made it clear that they intended to become professionals of violence. They had their fantasies, their jokes, but behind the fooling there was one thing they took seriously – fighting. Here they knew their job, took no unnecessary risks and carefully refused to hamper themselves by effete conventions of fair play. These were for amateurs. If it was necessary to hit someone, they hit first and hardest and put the boot in afterwards. If they were cutting someone’s face or backside, they used a knife or sharpened cutlass. ‘Razors,’ Ronnie used to say, ‘are old-fashioned and strike us as babyish. You can’t put any real power behind a razor.’
Reggie developed what was known as his ‘cigarette punch’. With his right hand he would offer somebody a cigarette and as the man opened his mouth to take it, would hit him on the side of the jaw with a swift left. It required timing and you needed to know the exact spot to hit. Reggie practised it for hours on a punch-bag and the cigarette punch broke many jaws. An open jaw will fracture easily.
Similarly, the ‘little wars’ that everyone enjoyed against the neighbouring gangs were organized in deadly earnest by the twins. For most of their followers ‘they were just a lark, an outing, a sort of club activity’. But for the twins there was too much at stake to leave anything to chance. They quickly learned the elements of leadership and imposed strict discipline. They began using many of the military principles they had avoided in the army; Ronnie’s fantasies of Lawrence of Arabia started to make sense.
From the start he knew the importance of reliable intelligence about the enemy, and took trouble picking up facts about rival gangs. He had a following of small boys he used to meet in a cafe in the Bethnal Green Road. He was developing a taste for teenage boys, but these also acted as his ‘spies’; he used to send them out to watch a house or club, or follow someone and report back to the hall. Payment was strictly by results. He used to call the boys ‘my little information service’.
As a result of what they told him he often managed to plan out his battles in advance, banking on surprise and giving his followers their orders with cool military precision. Soon he was demonstrating more complex military skills. The billiard-hall wars became more ambitious. He would take trouble over ‘propaganda’ to mislead his enemy – usually in the form of rumours put round by his friends. Sometimes he used diversionary tactics during a raid, splitting his forces into two and timing his attack after the main body of the enemy had been drawn off by a false offensive. Secrecy became important.
A failure or an indiscretion by any follower was taken seriously. Sometimes the twins sat in judgement on an offender in the billiard hail late at night in a carefully staged court-martial. Evidence was heard, the prisoner was allowed to speak, the twins passed judgement. Ronnie was careful to make the punishment fit the crime. Sometimes it would be a simple beating, sometimes expulsion from the group. Several times members of the gang were awarded a day’s solitary confinement and locked up in an empty house behind the billiard hall.
Reggie was an effective fighter and organizer, but the more serious the ‘wars’ became, the more the initiative and the ideas seemed to be coming now from Ronnie.
‘Christ, Ron,’ said one of the gang, after a preliminary briefing, ‘you’re just like a bloody colonel.’
‘Am I?’ he said. The name stuck.
Although short-sighted and an indifferent shot, Ronnie was obsessed with firearms. The twins had bought their first gun at sixteen. Since then their armoury had grown. Now it included a new Luger automatic, an old Mauser, revolvers of varying calibres and several sawn-off shotguns. Most of these were hidden under the floorboards of 178 Vallance Road. Ronnie dreamed of using all these guns, though at the moment they remained objects of fantasy. He still had his big Alsatian; he had trained it to be fierce and liked to think nobody else could handle it. He also had his ordinary weapons, a large collection of cavalry sabres, Gurkha knives, bayonets, anything that cut, most of them bought from antique shops. He enjoyed the feel of them and spent hours sharpening his swords on a big grindstone in the yard at Vallance Road. He filled his bedroom with them, saying that he slept more soundly surrounded by cold steel.
Reggie also saw the billiard hall as an important opportunity in life, but in a more practical way than Ronnie. With much of his father’s sharpness, he was the businessman of the two and quickly realized that with the name the twins were getting, they had a chance of money. Possibly the good life was not so hard to find as they had thought.
Many of their friends were criminals, mostly thieves, and since the twins’ fame had spread they started to play host to a fair slice of the up-and-coming criminals of the East End. Most thieves require a well-run base if they can find it, somewhere to relax, talk freely, pick up the latest gossip and know they are safe. For them the billiard hall was ideal. It was not yet known to the police, and the twins could guarantee the thief what he needed – order. They would see that no one tried to pay off old scores and no one preyed on those who were in luck. Thieves could leave the tools of their trade on the premises; in an emergency the twins might even look after a thief’s takings for him.
The twins had connections everywhere: fences and other villains, con men and prisoners freshly released from gaol. If there was trouble they knew what was going on. If the Law started getting difficult, rumour said they could fix it. They had the natural con man’s memory for faces and had begun inviting some of the choicer characters they had got to know in the West End and in the army.
Before long the billiard hall was offering local criminals a genuine service. It was organized efficiently. There were lock-up cubicles under the seats for the thieves’ tools; stolen goods could be left round the back of the hall. If necessary the twins would arrange transport and worked an introductions bureau for criminals they knew. There might be a warehouseman they knew in Tottenham who had been getting in debt on the dogs and who wasn’t fussy what he did for a couple of hundred pounds. Before the evening ended the twins would have contacted willing thieves, found customers for the goods and come to an understanding that when the warehouse was burgled they would be in for their percentage.
It would be an adequate percentage; Reggie always saw to that.
These growing business activities were certain to be challenged sooner or later. The twins had no real power yet. Each section of the East End had its own established ‘guv’nors’. In serious criminal affairs the twins were interlopers, but for a while most of the serious local gangs seemed to ignore them. Three Poplar dockers who unofficially ‘ruled’ Poplar and Mile End finally decided to take them in hand. A challenge was sent out.
Not that it looked much like a challenge, simply an invitation to the twins for a drink at a certain Mile End pub the following Sunday morning. But in the East End there are ways of sending an invitation so that it becomes common knowledge. By the time the twins heard, everyone who mattered knew as well.
The twins’ reaction to the dockers’ challenge was unusual. All their friends at the hall knew about it and waited for the explosion; none came. Nobody liked to mention it. Nothing was said. By Saturday night the challenge had become the sole topic of conversation, out of earshot of the twins. At the billiard hall people were uneasy, suddenly remembering the dockers’ records as amateur boxers. They were brothers, a good three inches taller than the twins, and all of them fought as heavyweights. No one could be surprised at the twins appearing shy of meeting them, but it would be the end of their reputation. Not even they could hope to bluff their way out of an affair like this. But they seemed unconcerned and the evening ended with a cheerful rumpus in a pub at Stoke Newington.
The following morning the billiard hall saw the largest Sunday morning turnout for years. Half the neighbourhood seemed to have arrived to see how Reggie and Ronnie were getting on. The twins seemed much as usual on a Sunday morning after a hard night’s drinking: Ronnie unshaven and rubbing his eyes, Reggie neatly dressed in slacks and sports shirt, fixing a new counter to the bar. Both raised their eyes at all the visitors, but said nothing. Reggie made tea. More of the regulars arrived. Conversation languished.
It was 11.50 when Reggie put down his cup and Ronnie nodded to him and they strolled out through the door. They continued their leisurely stroll along the Mile End Road and were ten minutes late when they reached the pub. Apart from the three large men drinking light ales in the private bar the pub was empty. One of them asked the twins if they were drinking. The twins nodded. The man had to call for the barman, who produced two drinks in half-pint tankards and scurried away. One of the large men passed Ronnie a glass.
‘Beer mixed with lemonade. What little boys drink, or don’t they let you yet?’ he said.
The fight took place behind the closed doors of the private bar. While it lasted no one risked entering, but finally the manager thought the twins must have learned their lesson. There was blood and broken glass everywhere. Two of the dockers were out cold. Ronnie Kray had to be dragged off the third or he would have killed him.
FOUR
The Colonel
In most ways Ronnie led a simple life. At twenty-one he still lived at home, slept in the back bedroom of his parents’ house in Vallance Road, ate all his meals in the kitchen and never seemed to have a penny in his pocket. His mother cooked for him, loved him, ironed his shirts and asked no questions. He was the dependent son he always had been. ‘I used to hear things about my Ronnie, but I had learned by now never to trust what other people say. I knew him, others didn’t. He was so kind, you see. Always made such a fuss of me, and that’s more than most of the mothers round here can say of their boys.’
Apart from fighting and helping run the billiard hall he had no interests and no job. He couldn’t thieve, understand betting or drive a car. His life was rooted in the village life of the East End. He had no taste for grand living nor, for that matter, for material success away from Bethnal Green. His only weakness was for the young boys he encouraged to come to the billiard hall. He had no interest in women, but with his boys he could become surprisingly sentimental. His favourite book round this time was Boy’s Town. But he was wary of being known as homosexual and rarely took a boy out. Among his followers these boys were officially ‘Ronnie’s spies’ and nothing else.
What Ronnie really wanted out of life was fame and notoriety. For years his dream-life had been peopled with successful gangsters, boxers, military men. Now he was ‘the Colonel’ he could at last invent a style of life that suited him. The billiard hall was his theatre; the house at Vallance Road became his citadel. It contained everything he really loved – his swords, his suits, his mother and his dog. It was the one place he felt really safe. Somebody christened it ‘Tort Vallance’.
He knew that big-time Chicago gangsters always had their private barbers. He would have the same. When he awoke now someone in the house would telephone the barber’s shop in Whitechapel Road. Half an hour later the Colonel would be sitting in the kitchen in a purple dressing-gown, face smothered in lather, and while the barber stropped his razors Ronnie would hold the first conference of the day with his lieutenants. He also had his hair cut at home now, summoned his tailor here for fittings for his suits and ordered shirts and shoes by telephone. For a while a masseur called to give him massage every morning. He tried to practise yoga. Later he lived upon a diet of raw eggs, ‘because raw eggs are strengthening and make you good at sex’.
At the same time his permanent suspicion of the police grew worse. From earliest boyhood he had hated them. Now he was certain they were always watching him. Outside his home he trusted no one and was convinced the telephone was tapped. At night he could sleep only with the light on and a gun beneath the pillow.
Reggie began to slip into his shadow. They still looked identical and were constantly together. One might have thought Reggie would have dominated Ronnie. He was the saner of the two – cleverer, more charming, more responsible. He was quite capable of living in the ordinary straight world. Yet it was Reggie who fell into second place and followed Ronnie’s fantasies. He lacked the actor’s instincts of his brother. Nobody thought of calling Reggie ‘Colonel’.
Nevertheless he seemed quite happy now to follow Ronnie, dressing as he did, joining in his plans, even adopting the Chicago gangster role. He could be as suspicious now as Ronnie, on occasions just as violent; and he had problems Ronnie never had to face. Ronnie accepted that the straight world was not for him and wanted no part in it. Reggie was not so sure. He had that hankering after what he still referred to as ‘the good life’. Possessions and respect, a comfortable house, even a woman and a family – these were anathema for Ronnie, but for Reggie they were possibilities. One day he knew that he might leave the violent, homosexual world of Ronnie and go out to seek them on his own. But for the present, Reggie’s duty was to stay with Ronnie and look after him. They could enjoy their life together, and Ronnie needed him. It would all work out in the end. In the meantime there was money to be made. Money is one thing that means much the same in both the straight world and the crooked.
‘What is straight business, anyhow? Be honest. It’s just a bloody racket, same as our way of life. All of that keeping in with the right people, going to the proper school, an’ knowing how much you can fiddle an’ get away with. All of those lawyers and accountants to squeeze you round the law. What’s all of it except one great big bloody racket?’ This was how the twins looked at life: business was a racket; rackets were business. By becoming something of a racketeer Reggie Kray had his first big chance to pick up some of the trappings of the good life he had heard about. If it was necessary he would take it seriously, dress the part, become methodical, even keep accounts. So he cut down his drinking, kept to more regular hours, bought himself single-breasted suits and started making money. Ronnie could be the Colonel. They would still have each other.
Now on their twenty-second birthday they were a formidable pair and there suddenly seemed no stopping them. They were the ideal complementary couple. Ronnie would bring the crowds in, Reggie would fleece them. Ronnie would make their ‘name’ for violence. Reggie would market it. When there was a serious fight they could still join in together.
It was now that Reggie started to be known a
s the ‘live wire’ of the two. He was terrier-like in his eagerness to worry out cash from any situation. There were already certain dues ready for the taking. In the East End it had been taken for granted that the reigning ‘guv’nor of the manor’ had his legitimate sources of income. Each week he could count on a few pounds from every betting shop in the district as insurance against lesser hooligans. If trouble did occur the guv’nor was expected to deal with it; it was the same with some pubs, cafes, and various tradesmen. The arrangement was usually informal; sometimes a loan, sometimes some infinitely extended credit. Anyone vulnerable to trouble was a potential source of income. Sometimes it needed tact to get it, but Reggie knew how to ask a careful question and never take no for an answer.
Minor protection was the bread-and-butter of villainy; there were far bigger pickings to be had from other criminals. With honest men there always comes a point when they will rather call in the police and take the consequences. Crooks can’t. The reigning local villain has them at his mercy. Illicit bookmakers and unlicensed gambling clubs had always been fair game for a pension to the local guv’nor. Working methodically, Reggie made the rounds of all of them in Bethnal Green and Mile End and upped the contributions. It was the same with the local rackets that he heard about; and the twins were making sure they heard about most of them. The billiard hall was a good receiving ground for criminal information, a word from a fence, a tip-off from a taxi-driver, a telephone call from a barman. The twins would always pay well for any information they could use, and they had a sixth sense about what was going on in their district.
Mile End has a lot of thieves. Few of them are very good. A big haul is rare and any thief who has one tries to keep news of it to himself. This is hard. Others are usually involved and goods have to be disposed of. Somehow the Kray twins always seemed to discover in the end; when they did, the thief would get an invitation to the billiard hall and it would usually be Reggie who discussed their percentage. Thieves are vulnerable, and they would usually pay up more or less what the twins demanded. Those who didn’t finally wished they had.