Read Online Frances: The Tragic Bride by Jacky Hyams - Free Book Online
Authors: Jacky Hyams
Ads: Link
quietly informed that giving evidence against the twins would result in a razor attack.)
Another teenage court appearance for assaulting a policeman resulted in probation – mostly thanks to the court appearance of the twins’ long-term champion of their respectability, their kindness to their elders, Father Hetherington. He was the long-term vicar of St James’s Church in Bethnal Green Road and knew the twins as polite, helpful, caring youngsters. They never went to church but could impress with their good manners and polite ways.
In December 1951 when the three Kray brothers fought, with star billing, at London’s Albert Hall, the promise of a professional career as sporting champions peaked – and promptly faded.
Everyone knew by then that Ron was too vicious, too undisciplined, to make it big time in the profession. That night, he lost his temper and was disqualified. Reggie, far more calculating, had everything a man required to be a boxing champion. He won. Their brother Charlie lost.
Yet the twins’ growing reputation for excessive violence outside the ring meant their career prospects dwindled right there and then: the boxing authorities rejected them, thanks to the twins’ assault on the policeman referred to above. Reggie was never going to seek out a solo career, anyway. The bonds of twinship were far too tight.
National Service came next: in peacetime Britain from 1947–59, men between seventeen and twenty-one were required to sign up in the armed forces for eighteen months. The twins’ National Service record from 1952–54 proved to be ‘a catalogue of disaster – for the army’, as Reggie Kray once described it.
True to family custom, their National Service history saw them going on the run for several months until they were caught and court marshalled, imprisoned for nine months in a military prison at Shepton Mallet in Somerset in the southwest of England.
In the end, it was a dishonourable discharge. The duo merely used the imprisonment as a career opportunity – to establish contact with other criminals, and to enhance their own reputation.
Within weeks of freedom, the twins, now twenty, had sorted out an operations base, a shabby, run-down billiard hall: the Regal, near Bethnal Green in Eric Street, Mile End. The place was a wreck, already marked down for closure.
They simply moved in, established their presence and within days the word got round: this was where to find the twins. After a few weeks during which the Regal mysteriously became the scene of a series of violent outbreaks and nightly troubles, it all went quiet again. The owner, a sensible man, had accepted an offer from the twins: £5 a week rent and the Regal Billiard Hall went into operation: a well-run refreshment bar and HQ for their varied activities, it became Kray Central.
This, then, was their launch pad, the place where they started to gather around them a group of villains of all ages, an early fulfilment of Ron’s lurid and ever increasing fantasies of forming an all powerful criminal ‘firm’, headed by the twins, men who relished playing the genial hosts, the ringmasters, pushing everyone’s buttons and reaping the benefits of fear. The billiard hall was their first stage, if you like, for the ‘actor crims’. It set them on the road to power.
By 1956, they had established themselves as a distinct force to be reckoned with, running various kinds of protection rackets in their ‘manor’, the areas around Hackney, Mile End and out to Walthamstow, moving beyond protecting illegal bookies and gaming clubs – an income they dubbed ‘pensions’ – extending their remit to ‘protecting’ other places, such as used car lots. Any car dealer daft enough to refuse to pay up would get a night-time visit from the twins’ gang members, armed with sledgehammers and spray-paint cans.
Absolute loyalty was demanded from those who worked for the twins. The rewards were ‘pensions’ for those families of the
Another teenage court appearance for assaulting a policeman resulted in probation – mostly thanks to the court appearance of the twins’ long-term champion of their respectability, their kindness to their elders, Father Hetherington. He was the long-term vicar of St James’s Church in Bethnal Green Road and knew the twins as polite, helpful, caring youngsters. They never went to church but could impress with their good manners and polite ways.
In December 1951 when the three Kray brothers fought, with star billing, at London’s Albert Hall, the promise of a professional career as sporting champions peaked – and promptly faded.
Everyone knew by then that Ron was too vicious, too undisciplined, to make it big time in the profession. That night, he lost his temper and was disqualified. Reggie, far more calculating, had everything a man required to be a boxing champion. He won. Their brother Charlie lost.
Yet the twins’ growing reputation for excessive violence outside the ring meant their career prospects dwindled right there and then: the boxing authorities rejected them, thanks to the twins’ assault on the policeman referred to above. Reggie was never going to seek out a solo career, anyway. The bonds of twinship were far too tight.
National Service came next: in peacetime Britain from 1947–59, men between seventeen and twenty-one were required to sign up in the armed forces for eighteen months. The twins’ National Service record from 1952–54 proved to be ‘a catalogue of disaster – for the army’, as Reggie Kray once described it.
True to family custom, their National Service history saw them going on the run for several months until they were caught and court marshalled, imprisoned for nine months in a military prison at Shepton Mallet in Somerset in the southwest of England.
In the end, it was a dishonourable discharge. The duo merely used the imprisonment as a career opportunity – to establish contact with other criminals, and to enhance their own reputation.
Within weeks of freedom, the twins, now twenty, had sorted out an operations base, a shabby, run-down billiard hall: the Regal, near Bethnal Green in Eric Street, Mile End. The place was a wreck, already marked down for closure.
They simply moved in, established their presence and within days the word got round: this was where to find the twins. After a few weeks during which the Regal mysteriously became the scene of a series of violent outbreaks and nightly troubles, it all went quiet again. The owner, a sensible man, had accepted an offer from the twins: £5 a week rent and the Regal Billiard Hall went into operation: a well-run refreshment bar and HQ for their varied activities, it became Kray Central.
This, then, was their launch pad, the place where they started to gather around them a group of villains of all ages, an early fulfilment of Ron’s lurid and ever increasing fantasies of forming an all powerful criminal ‘firm’, headed by the twins, men who relished playing the genial hosts, the ringmasters, pushing everyone’s buttons and reaping the benefits of fear. The billiard hall was their first stage, if you like, for the ‘actor crims’. It set them on the road to power.
By 1956, they had established themselves as a distinct force to be reckoned with, running various kinds of protection rackets in their ‘manor’, the areas around Hackney, Mile End and out to Walthamstow, moving beyond protecting illegal bookies and gaming clubs – an income they dubbed ‘pensions’ – extending their remit to ‘protecting’ other places, such as used car lots. Any car dealer daft enough to refuse to pay up would get a night-time visit from the twins’ gang members, armed with sledgehammers and spray-paint cans.
Absolute loyalty was demanded from those who worked for the twins. The rewards were ‘pensions’ for those families of the
Similar Books
