Gangland UK: The Inside Story of Britain's Most Evil Gangsters (8 page)

A few hours into their army career, the twins turned and walked towards the door. A corporal asked where they were going. ‘Home,’ they replied, ‘We’re going to see our mother.’ The corporal caught hold of Ronnie’s arm. Ronnie punched him on the jaw, knocking him out, and strolled out, along with his brother.

The following morning, the army came and collected them, and they returned without a struggle to their barracks, where they were sentenced to seven days in the guardroom.

They immediately decided to desert again. In the guardroom, they met Dickie Morgan, a former Borstal boy from Mile End. As soon as their seven days were up, the three of them walked out of the Tower and headed straight for Morgan’s home near London’s docklands.

If the army couldn’t tame the Kray twins, nobody could, and now, for the first time, the twins encountered a world where crime was regarded as a way of life. Through Morgan, they began to drink in clubs and bars frequented by criminals – much like Kenny Noye had done – and by the time the army caught up with them once again, they had opted to forgo the possibilities of boxing for a life of full-time villainy.

From that day on, the army and the law actively aided them. A month in Wormwood Scrubs (for assaulting a
policeman) and nine months at the Shepton Mallet Military Prison (for striking an NCO and going absent without leave) only served to introduce them to a wider range of criminals from across the country.

With their sentences completed, the army discharged the twins, leaving them with the problems of earning a living. They spent a large part of the day in the Regal Snooker Hall in Mile End. The place had seen better days – gangs had their fights there, fireworks were thrown at the manager’s Alsatian, the baize on the tables was slashed. When the manager resigned, Reggie and Ronnie stepped in with the offer of renting the hall for
£
5 a week.

Immediately, the trouble stopped. As Reggie later explained, ‘It was very simple – the punters, the local tearaways, knew that if there was any trouble, if anything got broken, Ron and I would simply break their bones.’

Apart from maintaining order, it is to their credit that the twins redecorated the hall, moved in 14 second-hand tables and began to earn reasonable money. Their aim, however, was not merely to secure an income. With the Regal, they had found themselves an operating base. One of their first tasks was to see off threats from potential rivals. When a Maltese gang appeared to demand protection money, the twins went after them with knives, and word started to circulate about the newest arrivals in the East End underworld.

With a headquarters and a growing band of regulars who found the twins’ patronage useful, the two Krays started to flaunt their violence. In the late evenings, Ronnie would frequently stand up and announce it was time for a raid. Then, accompanied by Reggie and a crowd of followers, he would set off for a pub, dance hall
or club to engineer a brawl. At the same time, small-time crooks began to find the Regal a useful place to meet and discuss and plan possible ventures.

The twins also began to operate protection rackets – ‘nipping and pensions’ as they were known – whereby pubs, cafés, illegal gambling joints and bookies would be obliged to hand over goods or money in return for protection from rival gangs.

But although the income had begun to flow in on a regular basis, the twins were still very much local villains, criminals from the East End who worked the East End. If they were going to break out from their ghetto, they needed an introduction to the wider world of organised crime in the West End.

In 1955, now aged just 22, it appeared as if their break had finally arrived. The joint bosses of the London underworld were two men called Billy Hill and Jack Comer, better known as ‘Jack’ and ‘Spot’. Between them, they had overseen the West End’s drinking, gambling, prostitution and protection rackets for more than a decade. But they fell out with each other and, after being badly cut up in a fight, Spot decided he needed some extra muscle. He called on the Krays.

Jack Comer… Jacob Colmore… John Colmore… Jacob Comacho… he was known by a multitude of names. However, ‘Jack Spot’ was his common title, with him claiming it was because he was always on the spot when trouble needed sorting. More prosaically, it was said to be a childhood alias given for the mole on his cheek.

Born on Friday, 12 April 1912 in Whitechapel’s Myrdle Street, Spot was the son of Polish immigrants, his brother a tailor and his sister a dressmaker. But if his siblings
took a predictable route for young immigrants, Spot was after better money.

At 15, he became a bookie’s runner, then a year later he hooked up with a man running protection rackets on the Sunday morning stalls in Petticoat Lane. Times were tight, and the stallholders’ main concern was to prevent new traders moving in and diluting their takings. Quickly showing his aptitude for gangland procedure, Spot managed to fall out with his senior partner, fought him, and took the protection business for himself, emerging as the self-styled ‘King of Aldgate’.

He went into partnership with East End bookie Dutch Barney, then took a more direct route, acting as lookout and minder to a successful housebreaker. Arrested and admitting to 40 offences, he was merely bound over. No doubt amazed by his luck, Spot went back to bookmaking.

They say the bookie never loses – Spot made sure he didn’t. If he had a bad day at the course, he’d be off before the punters came to collect their winnings, and supplemented his takings with a fairground con called ‘Take a Pick’, where punters paid sixpence (2.5p) to pull a straw from a cup. Lucky winners (and there were few) won a piece of tat, while Spot pocketed
£
40 a day. Amazingly, he continued to operate successfully at the racetracks for some time, relying on the never-ending supply of mug punters, backed up by the unspoken threat of violence. Taking his ‘Pick’ game back to Petticoat Lane, he would make
£
50 on a good day.

In addition to the reputation he was garnering as a hard-man villain, a major part of the Jack Spot mythology centres on his protection of Jewish shopkeepers from the Blackshirts on their marches down
Brick Lane. His status as friend and protector to East End Jews is certainly partly true – but he did charge the shopkeepers
£
10 a time. Nonetheless, it did the trick, and stallholders would be queuing up to donate money to Spot’s ‘Market Traders’ Association’; in fact, it was just another protection racket.

After a brief stint of war service in the Royal Artillery, he returned first to the East End and then west, to where the real money was. After a fight in the Edgware Road, and fearing imprisonment, he fled north. He worked as a minder around Leeds and Newcastle, helping up-
and-coming
gangsters beat or intimidate the old guard out of their nightclubs, gambling dens or racecourse pitches.

Back in London in the late 1940s, Spot ran the Botolph Club in Aldgate, pocketing
£
3,000 a week from illegal gambling. More romantically, he now saw himself as ‘the Robin Hood of the East End’, travelling to Leeds, Manchester or Glasgow to beat up villains who threatened Jewish businesses. He even claimed that rabbis would advise their frightened people to call on his services. And he was still making a fortune from the races, meeting anyone who crossed him with instant and savage retribution.

The White family, who had run betting at the major southern courses for years, were harassed, attacked with knives, bottles, machetes and, finally, routed in a fight at Haringey Arena. The date was 9 July 1947. Now in partnership with gangster Billy Hill, all serious opposition had been crushed, but now Billy Hill and Jack Spot had fallen out, and this was an invitation the twins had been waiting for – and immediately they embarked on
large-scale
preparations for a gang war with Spot’s enemies.
They collected weapons, called up their own band of ‘Merry Men’ and established a base in Vallance Road.

They heard that the opposition was meeting in a pub near Islington. After assembling their army at the Regal, the twins set off for north London. When they arrived, they found the place empty – Billy Hill had got wind of the impending battle and ordered his men to pull out.

What old-timers such as Spot and Billy Hill had long since learned was that power was wielded not through violence itself but by the credible threat of violence. The twins dealt in the real thing. Frustrated by the Islington fiasco, they sought a confrontation elsewhere, and they chose a social club in Clerkenwell Road which was the headquarters of a gang of Italians. ‘We were fearless in those days. Fighting was our game. When he got bored we would go to a dance hall or pub, just looking for a bit of bother,’ Reggie stated.

Arriving shortly after 10.00pm, Ronnie entered alone and challenged the men inside to a fight. A bottle was thrown at his head, but no one said anything. In response, he pulled out a Mauser and fired three shots into a wall. Still no one reacted, so Ronnie turned around and walked out.

Clearly, he had made his point – the twins meant business. But no one wanted to do business with them. Even Spot tired of their antics and retired to run a furniture business.

Ignoring the twins, however, would not make them go away. Despite their failure to win acceptance, they were no longer East End hoodlums, and it was only a matter of time before a major opening into the London underworld turned up. In the summer of 1956, the owner
of a West End drinking club called The Stragglers approached the Krays to help stamp out the fighting that plagued his bar.

The next few years were to be ones of increasing prosperity. Ironically, one of the major reasons for this success was the fact that, on 5 November 1956, Ronnie started a three-year prison sentence for grievous bodily harm. Having installed themselves in The Stragglers, the twins became involved in a dispute between the club’s proprietors and a rival Irish gang. Ronnie thought the gang should be taught a lesson and, after raiding the pub where the Irishmen met, participated in beating a man called Terence Martin to near-death.

Although the separation from Ronnie was a great emotional blow to Reggie, it gave him free rein to manage the twins’ business interests. Without his brother’s continual demands for violent retribution at the faintest hint of an insult or competition, they flourished. One of his first moves was to open a legitimate club of his own – The Double R on the Bow Road – which soon became the East End’s premier night spot. At the same time, he moved into minding and protecting the illegal gambling parties held at smart addresses in Mayfair and Belgravia.

Meanwhile, Ronnie appeared to accept his sentence at Wandsworth Prison with equanimity. Armed with his reputation and copious supplies of tobacco from his brother, he had little difficulty ensuring he was treated with due respect by his fellow inmates, many of whom he already knew. But, unexpectedly, because of his good behaviour he was transferred to Camp Hill Prison on the Isle of Wight.

Isolated from both his friends in Wandsworth and his
family, Ronnie’s mind began to collapse with amazing speed. He began to hear voices, to imagine that he was surrounded by informers and spies, and he injured several prisoners before being moved to the psychiatric wing of Winchester Prison.

Just after Christmas 1957, now aged 24, his mental breakdown reached a climax following the news that his favourite aunt had died. This may seem ridiculous to some, for the Krays, who spared no feelings for the victims they maimed, retained all the sentimentality of a close-knit Cockney family. After spending the night in a strait-jacket, Ronnie was certified insane the following morning. Two days later, Violet Kray received a prison telegram announcing: ‘
YOUR SON, RONALD, CERTIFIED INSANE
.’

From Winchester, Ronnie was transferred to Long Grove, a psychiatric hospital close to Epsom in Surrey, where his condition rapidly improved. Its former patients included Josef Hassid (a Polish violin prodigy) and former shoemaker George Pelham (a man who survived the sinking of two ships, including the RMS
Titanic
). Understandably, Pelham suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the asylum on 22 January 1935, and died four years later.

For his part, Hassid was first placed in a psychiatric hospital in 1941 after suffering from a nervous breakdown at the age of 18. He was admitted again in 1943 and was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. He was lobotomised in late 1950 and died at the age of 26.

History tells us that little attention was paid to strict security at Long Grove, and every Sunday visitors could come and see their friends or relatives. Reggie, naturally, was a regular visitor. But while he could see that his
brother was on the road to recovery, he knew that if the hospital continued to regard his twin as insane, they could postpone his release date indefinitely. Ronnie had to escape.

The plan was simplicity itself. Reggie entered the hospital wearing a light-coloured overcoat and, while the ward attendant looked elsewhere, Ronnie put on the overcoat and walked through the door to freedom. By the time it was realised that the remaining twin was Reggie, Ronnie was on his way to a caravan in Suffolk.

Although his mind again deteriorated rapidly in the isolation of the countryside, the scheme worked. He remained free long enough for his certification of insanity to expire. Reggie then handed him back to the police, and he completed his sentence in Wandsworth Prison.

Released in the spring of 1958, Ronnie could finally start to enjoy the riches his brother had been accumulating for the previous two years, and he was soon back to his old ways, planning gangland battles and expanding the twins’ operations through threats and violence. Then the Krays undertook their biggest and most profitable venture to date – Esmeralda’s Barn.

Esmeralda’s Barn was a successful casino at 50, Wilton Place, in wealthy Belgravia. One of the most exclusive areas in London, boasting Harrods and Harvey Nichols, two of the premier department stores in the world; just down the road is Buckingham Palace. Tipped off that it was effectively owned by just one man, Stefan de Faye, the twins, accompanied by Ronnie’s financial adviser Leslie Payne, paid him a visit in the autumn of 1960. Payne outlined the twins’ proposition that de Faye should sell his controlling share in the casino for
£
1,000. The
prospect of falling foul of the Krays was enough to persuade de Faye to accept the offer; thus, overnight, the twins were set up for the Sixties with one of the most lucrative gaming houses in the West End.