Kray twins
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The Kray twins, Reginald (left) and Ronald. |
Ronald Kray (
24 October 1933 –
17 March 1995) and
Reginald Kray (
24 October 1933 –
1 October 2000) were
identical twin brothers, and the foremost organised crime leaders in North and East London in the
1960s.
Ronald - commonly referred to as Ron or Ronnie - was the dominant twin, and suffered from
antisocial personality disorder. His brother is usually just referred to as Reg or Reggie.
Their rivals in South London were the
Richardson brothers accompanied by
Frankie Fraser.
The Kray twins were born on
24th October 1933 in
Hoxton, in the
East End of London, to Charlie Kray and Violet Lee. Of the twins, Reggie was the first born, while Ronnie appeared ten minutes later. At the time the twins were born, Charlie and Violet had a seven-year old son, also called Charlie.
As well as their elder brother Charlie, the twins also had a sister, but, sadly, she died in infancy. During the
1920s and
1930s, the death toll of infants was very high, with
Pneumonia and
Tuberculosis being the claiming the most lives followed by
Diphtheria and
Malnutrition.
Up until 1939, having previously lived in Stene Street, Hoxton (now called Shoreditch), the Kray family moved to 178 Vallance Road,
Bethnal Green. It was around this time, at the start of the
Second World War, that Charlie Kray Senior was
called up into the Army, but he
deserted and remained on the run for 12 years. During his time on the run, Charlie Senior, who liked to roam the country, buying and selling Silver, Gold and clothing, saw very little of his sons, who grew close to their mother during the father's absence.
The frequent presence of
Military Police hardened an already pronounced anti-authoritarian attitude in Ron and Reg, who were both to desert from the army later in life.
The twins first attended
Wood Close School and then
Daneford Street School. Although not bright pupils, they showed none of their future criminal tendencies. Their principal teacher there reported of them,
"Salt of the earth, the twins; never the slightest trouble to anyone who knew how to handle them."
"If there was anything to be done in school, they'd be utterly co-operative… they'd always be the first to help. Nothing was too much trouble."
The influence of their grandfather, Jimmy 'Cannonball' Lee, led both boys into amateur
boxing, at that time a popular pursuit for
working class children in the East End. An element of competition between them spurred them on, and they achieved some success. They are said never to have lost a bout before turning professional at age 28.
The fighting did not stop at the edge of the ring, and the Kray twins quickly became famous for their gang of roughs and the mayhem they caused. They narrowly escaped probation and/or prison several times and in 1951, they were called up for
National Service. They deserted several times, each time being recaptured. The army seemed to hold to the hope of turning them around and making good soldiers of them, but it was not to be.
While
absent without leave from the army, the twins assaulted a police officer who had spotted them and was trying to arrest them. They were sentenced to a month's prison, and afterward were sent to a military prison in
Somerset awaiting
court-martial. Their behaviour in prison was so bad that in the end they were given a
dishonourable discharge from the service; for the last few weeks of their imprisonment, when their fate was a certainty anyway, they ruled the holding room they were in. They threw tantrums, upended their latrine bucket over a
sergeant, handcuffed a guard to the prison bars with a pair of stolen cuffs, and burnt their bedding. Eventually they were discharged, but not before escaping from the guardhouse and being recaptured by the army one last time.
It was during this period that Ron started to show the first signs of mental illness. He would refuse to eat, shave only one side of his face and suffer wild mood swings, sitting still for hours before erupting into a violent frenzy. It is not clear whether at this stage it was another prank to annoy their guards, or if even now Ron was unbalanced. Three years later he would be certified insane while in prison.
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The once-notorious Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel Road in quieter times. (November 2005) |
Their criminal record and dishonourable discharge having ended their boxing careers, the boys turned to crime, buying a seedy snooker club in
Bethnal Green, and commencing several
protection rackets. By the end of the 1950s, the Krays were involved in
hijacking,
armed robbery and
arson, through which means they acquired a small empire of clubs and other properties.
In the 1960s, they were well placed, as prosperous
nightclub owners, to be a part of the 'swinging'
London scene. A large part of their fame is due to their non-criminal activities as figures on the celebrity circuit, being photographed by
David Bailey on more than one occasion; their associates included the Webster Family and show-business characters such as the actors
George Sewell and
Barbara Windsor. The Krays came into the public eye, however, when Ron's homosexual friendship with
Lord Boothby, a
Conservative peer, was alluded to in a tabloid expose.
The criminal activities of the twins several times came to the attention of the police, but the Kray name had grown to such a reputation for violence that witnesses would not come forward.
Their criminal activities continued behind their apparent social success. In 1967, Reg was persuaded by his brother to kill Jack 'the Hat' McVitie, an unimportant member of the Kray gang who had stepped out of line. This wasn't the first murder the twins had committed. They were also implicated in the deaths of Frank Mitchell and George Cornell, the latter being shot at the notorious
Blind Beggar pub by Ronnie in 1966. Despite a substantial reputation for violence, the twins were convicted of killing only McVitie and Cornell, though they are believed to have continued to hold influence in the underworld up until their deaths.
When
Inspector Leonard "Nipper" Read of
Scotland Yard was promoted to the
Murder Squad, his first assignment was to bring down the Kray twins. It was not his first involvement with Reg and Ron; during the first half of 1964 Read had been investigating their activities, but the publicity and official denials surrounding allegations of Ron's relationship with Lord Boothby had made all the evidence he had collected useless. Read attacked the problem of convicting the twins with renewed activity in 1967, but frequently came up against the famed East End Wall of Silence, the cockney
code of silence that discouraged anyone from
providing information to the police.
Nevertheless, by the end of 1967 Read had built up a substantial body of evidence against the Krays. There were a number of witnesses' statements incriminating them, as well as other evidence, but none of it added up to a convincing case on any one charge. In addition to this, most of the statements were given on the condition that they were not used until the Krays were in detention, making a warrant almost impossible to obtain.
Early in 1968 the twins had sent a man named Elvey to
Glasgow to purchase explosives for rigging a car bomb. Police met him in
Scotland and arrested him, and he confessed the whole story (he had been involved in three botched murder attempts). However, this evidence was seriously weakened by the heavy involvement of a man named Cooper, who claimed to be an agent for the
United States Treasury Department investigating links between the American
mafia and the Kray gang. The botched murder attempts were his work, in an attempt to pin something on the Krays. Read tried using Cooper as a trap for Ron and Reg, but they stayed away from him.
Eventually, a high-level Scotland Yard conference decided to arrest the Krays on the evidence already collected, in the hope that other witnesses would be forthcoming once the Krays were in custody. In the early hours of 9 May 1968, the Krays and a number of the senior members of their 'Firm' were arrested. Their reign of intimidation being over, many witnesses came forward, and it was relatively easy to gain a conviction. The twins did not really have a defence, other than discrediting witnesses (by pointing out their criminal pasts) and flat denials of all charges. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of thirty years, for the murders of Cornell and McVitie. Their brother Charlie received a ten year sentence for his part in the murders.
There was a long-running campaign, with much celebrity support, to have the twins released from prison, but successive
Home Secretaries vetoed the idea. Ron was eventually once more certified insane and lived out the remainder of his life detained in a mental institution,
Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, dying in 1995.
Reg was a different story, however. For many years he was
Category A prisoner, one who is denied almost all liberties, and cannot mix with other prisoners. Such treatment frequently sends men mad, but Reg seemed to maintain some sense of humour about his situation, writing a fitness manual (never published) titled
The Reg Kray Book of Exercises for People in Confined Spaces. He was eventually freed on
26 August 2000 on compassionate grounds as a result of inoperable cancer. On
1 October 2000, Reg Kray died a free man.
The twins' older brother, Charlie Kray, was given a ten-year sentence for his role as an accessory in the murder of Jack McVitie. He was released in
1975 after serving seven years but was returned to prison in
1997 for conspiracy to smuggle
cocaine. He died of natural causes on
4 April 2000, just six months before Reginald's death.
The Kray twins were tried as separate, responsible adults. However, work since that time has shown that criminal twins do not act independently. In the case of the Krays, Ronnie was the dominant twin. He was also a
paranoid schizophrenic psychopath. Many times in his career, Reg Kray expressed a desire to leave crime and 'go straight,' but each time was prevented either by persuasion from Ron, or by the knowledge that Ron would not cope on his own. Reg's several attempted murders, and the murder of Jack McVitie, were all done at Ron's prompting, to show that he was equal to Ron's earlier murders. Ron, a bisexual, generally preferred the company of other men. However, he married a woman while incarcerated at Broadmoor prison for the mentally insane. Prior to his marriage, Ron frequently berated Reg for his relationships with women. Reg's marriage to Frances Shea in 1965 lasted only eight weeks, although the marriage was never formally ended. She later took her own life, and many blamed Ron for their unhappiness.
Ron spent three years in prison in 1956, and during this time Reg turned the 'Firm' around, putting it on a sound financial footing, and removing many of the more violent and less appealing aspects, if not actually turning it legal. Some speculate that without Ron, Reg would have turned the 'Firm' into one of the largest and most successful criminal organisations in Europe; however, the Kray business was always built on their reputation for savage violence, and it was Ron who was responsible for it. The twins were never able to survive well apart.
They were the subject of a feature film,
The Krays (
1990), in which they were played by
Gary and
Martin Kemp of the band
Spandau Ballet. There are many books about their reign of terror, among the most critically acclaimed is
The Profession of Violence by John Pearson. They were also the inspiration behind the
Monty Python "
Piranha Brothers" sketch. This sketch was rooted in historical fact; even the tale of nailing someone to the floor is based on the murder of Jack "the Hat" McVitie, who was pinned to the floor with a long knife.
Singer
Morrissey mentions the Kray twins in his song "Last Of The Famous International Playboys", and
Blur mentions Ronald Kray in their song "Charmless Man". The first single by electronic band Renegade Soundwave was a song about them, "Kray twins", with the Twins featured on the cover artwork. (on the Mute label / 1987). The all-female British New Wave band Mo-Dettes also wrote a song about them, also called "Kray Twins," on their 1980 album "The Story So Far."
Association with (or former association with) the Krays is also seen as a sign of prestige in many differing social circles, or an indication of
cockney authenticity. This attitude was spoofed in the
UK Television Series
The Young Ones with
Robbie Coltrane as a bouncer claiming "...and I was at Violet's funeral.", indicating that the speaker attended the funeral of the Krays' mother.
The
TV series EastEnders has featured a gangland organisation called
The Firm. Also, it has been suggested that the Eastenders brothers Phil and Grant Mitchell were loosely based on the Krays.
Krays TV interview (1965)[
1]
See also BBC website for Richard Whitmore's report on the Kray trial[
2]
Ronnie was openly
homosexual, as seen in his relationship with Boothby. It is a testament to the fear and respect that the twins inspired that this went unquestioned during a period when homosexuality was far less accepted than in modern times, particularly among "hard" characters.
