The Blind Beggar and the Kray Twins....
Visitors in London with
spare time on their hands are often recommended to take a trip to the Blind Beggar
Public House in Whitechapel Road E.1., at the junction
with Cambridge Heath Road. It is a fine building
with a notorious past in relation to some of its criminal history and yet a
note of respectability on account of its Temperance connection on the other.
The present building
was built in 1894 on the site of a much earlier Inn which
was there before records began which show it present in
1654. It was one of many stage coach stop-offs as
travellers feared to enter London proper during the hours of
darkness.
The name comes from
a legend that a blind beggar used to beg at the crossroads. He
was apparently a wealthy landowner, Henry de Montfort who was wounded and lost an eye during a battle in 1265 and was nursed
back to health by a Baroness but lost everything and
ended up begging for alms.
The pub has become infamous as the scene of a
brutal murder by one of the Kray
Twins who ran an East End criminal gang. I shall elaborate
later..........
Salvationists regularly visit the area as it was at the
site that the Salvation
Army was basically founded. In 1865, William Booth preached
his first public sermon outside the pub and this resulted in the forming of the
East London Christian Mission later
to become known as the Salvation
Army. There is a statue of the great man
nearby. In fact a large Salvation
Army Hostel is not far away closer to the City.
Now back to the not so nice people who gave the
pub its bad name. On 9th March 1966
when Ronnie Kray (one of
the infamous twins) entered the pub, a member of another
gang, George Cornell,
passed an insulting remark at Ronnie. He is supposed to have
said “Well, look who’s here....” (Some say he added the words “the fat
poof” – but that is believed to have been said by someone else on another
occasion). Ronnie, in front of customers and bar
staff produced a handgun and shot Cornell a number of times. He died almost immediately..........
‘The
Twins’ as they were known all over London and towards the peak
of their career much further afield, were Reginald
(Reggie) and Ronald
(Ronnie) Kray. Their ‘manor’ was particularly the East End of London.
They were born on 24th October
1933 (Reggie was older by ten
minutes) in Stene
Street, Hoxton. This was then an area of abject
poverty yet produced many great boxers, pickpockets and thieves in
general. It
is now ‘yuppie’ territory.
They had an older
brother Charlie who
was born in 1927. Their father, also Charlie was a scrap metal
dealer. When the twins were three years old they contacted
diphtheria which was then sweeping the country. They survived....
In 1939 the family moved to Vallance Road Bethnal Green and
attended school in Brick
Lane (part of Petticoat Lane – the famous Sunday market). They
were good schoolboys and caused no problem to their teachers – nothing that warned of their future
escapades.
The two of them were always fighting with each
other apparently to gain the upper hand with their mother Violet who adored ‘her boys’ right up to
her death in 1982. Throughout their worst years and indeed
whilst serving imprisonment she still stood firmly by
them. Her husband Charlie,
who incidentally died seven months after Violet, was ‘called up’ for army
duty at the beginning of the war but went on the run travelling and hiding all
over the country thereby avoiding the law and arrest. It was
in 1942 during one of the boys fights that Reggie beat up Ronnie causing a head
injury that almost killed him.
Their grandfather on their mother’s side, Jimmy ‘Cannonball’ Lee was
a boxer and encouraged the boys to take up amateur boxing. A
fierce rivalry built up between the two boys and apparently when they were
fighting each other in the ring, no quarter was asked and indeed no quarter was
given. Legend has it that neither ever lost an amateur bout
during the years before becoming professional at the age of 19.
The beginning of the formation of ‘The Firm’, their gang was in
the process but they somehow managed to avoid prison. In 1952
they were ‘called up’ for National Service with
the Royal Fusiliers but
they deserted several times. On one occasion when a police
officer recognised them as being absent without leave and tried to arrest them
the twins assaulted him.
They were detained in
the Tower of London which
had a detention centre for such absconders and in fact they are among the last
people to be ever detained there. They were soon transferred
to await court-martial in Somerset. They
ended up in detention in Canterbury,
Kent where their behaviour caused mayhem. It
was so bad in fact that the Army decided to get rid of them and dismiss them
with ‘dishonourable discharges’. Their
escapades whilst in custody there are legendary and no doubt have gained in the
telling.
At this time Ronnie began to show signs of
mental illness. He refused to eat, only shaved one side of his
face and had violent mood swings. He would sit silently and
motionless for hours on end then break into a violent
outrage. The military were unsure whether this was all part of
his plan to get out of the Army but there is little doubt that he was genuinely
ill.
Their boxing careers were now over and instead
they bought a local snooker hall in Bethnal
Green and truly began their criminal
activities. They ran a well organised protection racket
throughout the East End and
were progressing further into North
London. They were now planning and executing hijackings of lorry loads, armed
robberies and arsons – especially on those who refused to pay
for their protection. Reggie in fact got 18 months in prison
for running such a protection racket and the threats involved.
They worked what was known as a ‘Long Firm’ fraud whereby
they would open a shop – many were furniture stores – put in a manager of good
character and work up a good credit rating. As soon as their stock
– all on credit – reached a satisfactory figure, everything would disappear
overnight with no trace of anyone who was involved.
Peter Rachman who was running a violent landlord
operation gave the twins a nightclub in Knightsbridge called
Esmeralda’s Barn which
gave them a foothold into the West
End of London. Soon the club became well
established and frequented by famous international stars of stage and screen, not to mention politicians.............
Meanwhile a South London gang were taking a keen
interest. They were the ‘Richardsons’ and
equally vicious…….
In the 60’s, with the supposed notion of ‘Swinging London’ the Twins had the
opportunity to go straight. They became known as ‘charming nightclub owners’ and
were making a large amount of money. George Raft, Frank Sinatra, Judy
Garland, Diana Dors, Barbara Windsor and many other screen
stars were regular patrons and the twins took great pride in being photographed
with them. David
Bailey became their regular photographer.
There is a lovely quote from Ronnie of the
time: “They
were the best years of our lives. They called them the
swinging sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were
rulers of pop music; Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world.......and me and my
brother ruled London. We were f...ing untouchable”.
At this time the Sunday Mirror wrote a
front page spread alleging that Ronnie had had a sexual relationship with Lord Boothby, a UK Conservative
politician. Although no names were mentioned when
Boothby threatened to sue, the paper withdrew its allegations, sacked the
editor and paid Boothby £40,000. This frightened other papers
from writing anything about the so-called affair and indeed anything about the
Krays either. Even the police (or so it is said) were
being hampered in any investigations by the Conservative Party leadership of the time.
In the middle 60’s the rivalry between the
Krays and the Richardsons took a new turn with violence between both sides for
supremacy rising all the time. George Cornell was a victim of that
violence but not the only one. Although it is said that he was shot
for calling Ronnie a fat poof, it is further claimed that it was in retaliation
for the murder of a Kray gang member. However, because of
their so-called power in the East
End, none of the witnesses present at the shooting would give
evidence against Ronnie.
More murders and other serious offences were
committed but still there were no reliable witnesses to give any evidence
against the Twins
or the Firm.
However when it was claimed that the Twins sent
a man called Elvey to Glasgow to buy
explosives to blow up a car he was arrested by Scottish police. He
confessed what he was in fact doing and admitted that he was involved in three
botched murder attempts.
He involved a man
named Cooper who
in turn claimed to be an agent for the United
States Treasury Department investigating links between the
Krays and the Mafia.
There was talk of large
volumes of Bearer
Treasury Bonds crossing the Atlantic. This was big stuff
– the Krays taking on the
banking system – the
establishment would never stand for that. A few inter-gangland murders were one
thing, but shaking the foundation of the banking system, that would never
do. There is little doubt that if it had continued the entire
financial structure would have been close to collapse.
On 8th May 1968, the Twins and
fifteen members of the Firm were arrested during a large scale Scotland Yard
operation. Now that they were in custody, witnesses were happy
enough to come forward and in some cases sign statements that they had made but
not signed in the past. The
walls were beginning to crumble around the Firm..............
Only one member was acquitted whilst Ronnie and
Reggie were sentenced to Life
Imprisonment with a recommendation that they serve 30 years
– the longest prison
sentence ever passed by a Judge at the Old Bailey – Central Criminal Court.
There were many who considered the convictions
to be correct but that the punishment was too severe and over the following
thirty years many petitions for clemency were made but rejected by
successive Home
Secretaries.
A film entitled The Krays was made in
1990 starring Martin and
Gary Kemp of the pop group Spandau Ballet. It is a very good
representation of the times and although it did not glamorise the twins, it did
lean towards leniency in regard to their sentences. Thirty years later, it is still well worth
seeing.
Ronnie spent most of his sentence in Broadmoor Hospital – a
secure hospital for mentally ill prisoners – and died on 17th March
1995 from a massive heart attack. He was aged 61.
Reggie spend the last few years of his life in
a Category C prison from where on 26th August 2000, he was
freed on compassionate grounds. He had
cancer. On 1st October that year he died in
his sleep. He was aged 67.
During my police service I knew a great many
officers who used to claim that ‘If
the Krays were still out, there would be no muggings on the streets of the East
End of London’.
Finally, it just goes to show that the Banks
can con the public to such an extent that the Government has to bail them out
to the extent of nearly 500 billion pounds, yet when someone like the Krays
take on the banking system, they spend the rest of their lives in prison. Not
one of the Banking management teams that I speak of has been fined even a
single pound for bringing Britain to its financial knees...............
---------Mike--------
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