by Lee, Jane
It didn’t matter that money was scarce because we always ate well. Every night we had a proper cooked dinner and I’ve never known what it was to be hungry. There was always plenty of food on our table. Yet Mum was turning more and more to drink and that was when things started to get difficult for me. Brandy was her tipple and she couldn’t get enough of it. To be honest, ever since I can remember she was drunk and, believe me, growing up in a house with a drunk who didn’t mind giving me a slap made life hard. Mum was a violent drunk, I think it’s fair to say. At least, that is what she became.
I was just a kid and I had a mum who was eventually drunk 24/7. She would come and beat me in the night and throw me out in the street. I’d sleep outside on the stairs in the flats opposite our house until the morning. As the years went by, I was sleeping under the flats more frequently, yet Mum was always sorry in the morning. It was tough on me. I thought Mum hated me and she was always apologetic the next day. But by dinner time she was back to being nasty and by night time she was well drunk and started getting violent again and I’d be back under the flats after getting a good hiding. Eventually, it didn’t bother me. I was thinking I’d rather be there instead of being in the house with her.
There wasn’t much Dad could do at the time about Mum’s behaviour. Dad didn’t know the half of what was going on with me and Mum. He would have killed her if he had known she was throwing me out in the night. But I couldn’t tell him and cause more rows. She wouldn’t do it until everyone was in bed. She would be sitting in the kitchen drinking until she wasn’t herself anymore. Then some nasty violent person in a drunken rage took over. She would come for me. Sometimes I was awake and made out I was asleep, hoping she would leave me alone, but the drink just wouldn’t let her.
Since Shell was her favourite and John was just John, all her bad temper and violence, was directed at me. But Mum couldn’t handle me and, boy, did I bring the nutty side out in her. I didn’t get on with my sister either. Shell was Miss prim and proper and didn’t have a hair out of place. Unlike me, she was always immaculate and I suppose she was embarrassed about the way I was. My rough-and-tumble behaviour got too much for her and she didn’t want me in her room. This was when I was eight, long before I ended up sleeping outdoors. Mum told me I had to move downstairs and sleep on the sofa. Mum said Shell needed her own room.
I didn’t like sleeping downstairs as I was afraid of the dark and, being downstairs, I felt I was all on my own. I would put my head under the covers and wait for morning. I was too afraid to even peek my head back out. I was scared to death, to be honest. I started to resent Shell and Mum. So one day, when Mum was taking a nap while her hair was in rollers, I got the scissors and I cut every roller off her head. She had a big night out with Dad planned and, when she woke up, I got the beating of my life. I denied everything, obviously, but being the only other person in the house at the time – and the only one nutty enough to do it in the first place – there was no way out. But that was one beating I took on the chin. It was worth it. Mum was a bit of a dolly bird and she had to wear a wig for three months after that. And she cried like a baby. It was a sign of just how far I was prepared to go. I didn’t have any limits and next on my list was Shell.
She had won a goldfish at the fair. She only had it a couple of days and I wasn’t even allowed to look at it because we weren’t getting on. So I waited until Mum and Shell were at the other end of the room and I grabbed it by its tail and shouted, ‘Shell!’ When her and Mum looked round at me, I lifted my head, opened my mouth and, while Shell screamed, ‘No! No!’ I swallowed it down whole in one big gulp. The goldfish went down a lot easier than the incident did with Mum. I got battered by her again but I felt it was worth it. I felt as if I’d got my own back on them both. Don’t get me wrong – I’d never usually hurt an animal and never have since. In fact, I have always felt guilty about it because it was no way to treat a goldfish. I should have done something to Shell instead.
I was so strong willed that I always got on Mum’s wrong side and Mum was more forceful than Dad. He tried to stop me and Mum from rowing but it was no good because he couldn’t control either of us. She was a mad woman and, come to think of it, maybe my gypsy blood isn’t the only thing that made me the way I am.
Mum had a babysitter called Rosie and she became my guardian angel and best friend. When she moved into the flats, I no longer had to sleep rough on the stairs. I’d just go straight to hers and she would always welcome me in her house, which became my second home.
One night, after mum turned on me, something snapped inside me and I fought back against her for the first time in my life. I grabbed her and stopped her from hitting me. I wrestled her to the ground and held her there until she calmed down. She soon stopped trying to hit me and I swore there and then that she’d never hit me again. I was so young and that was the start of living from house to house because I couldn’t be under the same roof as Mum anymore. All this wasn’t doing my schooling much good. I went to Cumberland school in Plaistow but, to be honest, I was never that keen and was absent more often than not. During the days I started hanging around with people who were a few years older than me because everyone my age was still at school. I practically moved in with Rosie but I also stayed with other friends that all knew Mum was boozing and losing the plot. Nobody ever turned me away. I still stayed at home sometimes but never at the weekends because that is when it could get really bad.
By this time I was growing up fast. I was already learning the street code that my dad had lived by before he went straight. I knew that you didn’t do anybody any wrong unless they had done it to you first and that you didn’t do any wrong to you and yours, and that you didn’t make your family ashamed. I was a kid but I was already what we call old school and I was living by the rules of the East End. You don’t grass anyone up and you don’t do your own.
Out on the streets I grew up believing that loyalty, morals and honour were the most important things because nobody could take them away from you. You made sure you didn’t give them away. And it was around this same time that what you might call my childhood came to end because I was introduced to the world of gangsters and guns – and I took to it like a duck to water.
2
SCHOOLGIRL ARMED ROBBER
I loved my sawn-off straight away.
By 1980 I was 14 and hanging around with a couple of older lads and we got into armed robberies together. How did I go from eating my sister’s goldfish to pointing shotguns at people for money? Well, I’m not too sure myself. What I do know is that money was scarce, I wasn’t attending school and it seemed like a good idea at the time. And you have to understand that the world I had been brought up in meant it wasn’t such a big deal. Everyone was up to a bit of this and a bit of that. When you consider I was barely living at home and was fending for myself, the idea of having a few quid in my pocket was quite appealing. So where was I going to get it from? I didn’t have that many options until the day one of my mates told me to pop round to his house. He was there with another mate talking about doing an armed robbery to make a lot of money. They were polishing there sawn-off shotguns and asked me if I wanted in. The excitement and adrenalin had already taken over and I told them I was in all right. This was my big break. I might have only been 14 but I was a lot older than my age suggested. I had grown up fast and I was more streetwise than most other people I knew. I was trusted by everyone. It was a life-changing moment but that didn’t mean it was complicated. I didn’t think twice.
‘I’m in, boys,’ I said.
‘We knew you would be, Gran. That’s why we came to you.’
A few thousand pounds to a 14-year-old is a lot of money – and that was even more so 30 years ago. The prospect of a few grand made me feel like a millionaire and I loved my sawn-off straight away. It started me off on a lifelong love affair with guns. There wasn’t all this CCTV stuff in those days, safes weren’t on timers and we didn’t come across triple-locking doors. Back then secur
ity for most businesses was a bell above the door and a mirror in the corner, and nobody ever got hurt because the staff didn’t want to die heroes for nothing. We never had any bullets in the guns but they didn’t know that. We weren’t going out to hurt anyone. We were just doing our job and we were good at it.
I don’t want to go into too many details about the jobs we did because I don’t want to remind the coppers of what happened. I mean, we did a few jobs in those days and I never got caught, and I could see how the police might be a bit upset about that. So the less said about that the better. Mind you, the coppers got their payback later on so, in a way, we are all square.
On the first job I ever did, one lad stayed in the getaway car and me and the other lad put on black balaclavas in broad daylight and went inside. We pulled the guns from under our coats and, before anyone could say anything, I just pointed my gun at the man behind the counter and screamed, ‘Give us the fucking money. Now!’ He must have been terrified because it all went into a brown cloth bag quicker than you can say Billy Whizz and we were away on our toes, into the waiting car and gone. I was giggling when I got in the car. It was a rush and my share was around two K.
I didn’t feel bad about it afterwards because nobody got hurt and it was not as if we were mugging people in the street and taking their hard-earned money. We weren’t going into their homes and taking what was theirs. I mean, we did the workers at the places we robbed a favour really. They would get six weeks off work with full pay because of their ordeal if they were smart enough to play their cards right. They could have a right touch just for getting robbed by us.
By this time Mum wasn’t doing any work herself. She hadn’t for a good couple of years because, to be brutally honest, the drink had fucked her. What Dad was earning as a painter and decorator was getting them by but I soon found out what made Mum smile – cold, hard cash. By giving Mum money, she turned a blind eye to what she thought I was up to because she could go out and spend it on whatever she wanted to. ‘Where is it coming from, Jane?’ she would ask and I’d reply, ‘I’m doing a bit of this and a bit of that, Mum, but don’t worry, I’m doing none of the other,’ and I would be gone. She didn’t want to hear the truth, even though inside she guessed what I was up to.
We all kept it from Dad but don’t get me wrong. He didn’t go without. We just made out that Mum got the extra money from buying and selling knocked-off gear here and there. Mum was happy, Dad was happy. In fact, everyone was happy – especially me!
This went on for two years. I was no longer looking scruffy. In fact, I felt like I had it all, which meant everyone around me did, as I’ve always been a giver. If I’ve got it, you can have it as far as I’m concerned. But one day the CID turned up at Mum and Dad’s door asking for me. Dad was in the pub at the time so Mum took over and said I wasn’t living there, which was true enough. Anyway, Mum said she didn’t know where I was and they can’t have had much to go on so they went on their way.
When Dad got home and heard the news, Mum said he went white with shock. Thank God they didn’t have Crimewatch in those days. Anyway, they had nothing on me, just some jealous local snitch giving information about what they thought was going on but didn’t really know. My mates had warned me not to tell anyone what we were up to, no matter how much I trusted them. People had to be treated on a need-to-know basis and most people didn’t need to know. That’s how people get caught and that’s why we never did. But that little visit spelled the end of my armed-robbery apprenticeship. I decided never to do another job. I knew it was coming on top and my luck would run out. I might have been wild but I wasn’t stupid. Then again, life doesn’t always let you do what you want.
By now Dad was getting suspicious as to what I had been up to and he searched the house for my gun but he didn’t find it because it wasn’t there. He said that, if the police ever found a gun in the house, they would take him away, as he was on a lifetime firearms ban for the crimes he did as a young man. That shook me up a bit. ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ I told him. ‘My gun wasn’t here. You are never going down on account of me.’ I’d been keeping my gun hidden at a derelict pickle factory in Silvertown. It was well buried and I had no plans to dig it up.
3
FIRST LOVE
I was a teenage girl in love and trying to make my dreams come true.
I fell in love for the first time in my life when I was 16. His name was Jamie. He was a boxer and didn’t smoke or drink. He was the opposite of me but how I loved him. He was my everything. I would dream about the day we would be married with kids – and what a dream it was.
To be honest, I thought he was too good for me and I knew he was only with me for one thing. But I didn’t care. He could have it as long as he was mine. But don’t get me wrong. He loved me in his own teenage, puppy-love sort of way. He was the first boy I slept with.
There wasn’t a lot of money around. I was still ducking and diving but the money was nowhere near as good as I made through the robberies. I just wanted to be with Jamie all the time and, when I wasn’t, he was all I could think about. It was pure, happy and in many ways one of the happiest times of my life. Jamie was a good-looking boy – really handsome – and I was an attractive young woman. Everyone said we made a lovely couple. It was a fun, fun time.
Jamie and I used to go to the pictures and we would go out clubbing sometimes but mostly we would drive down to Woolwich and watch the boats sailing from the marina. Jamie used to talk about becoming the best boxer in the country and I knew he would. I was happy. Even so, although we went out with each other for two years on and off, we were more off than on. Jamie didn’t want a full-on relationship but I did. Oh, how I loved him with all my heart. We were only young and I wanted so much more so I tried to trap him. I got pregnant to keep him because I knew he wasn’t ready to settle down and, to be honest, I knew he wanted a life before becoming a dad. He made it clear he wasn’t ready for a family so I made out I was on the pill and got pregnant.
Looking back now, I know how selfish I was but at that time I was a teenager in love and trying to make my dreams come true. I really believed that having his baby meant he would stay with me for ever. How wrong I was. He panicked. What would he tell his family? They didn’t like him being with me because of the life I had led. We came from different worlds. He said that he didn’t love me but I said I was going to keep the baby anyway. He said he would stay with me until the baby was five years old. So I agreed. I thought, once we were a real family, he wouldn’t leave us and he would learn to love me like I loved him. Then all of a sudden he didn’t answer my phone calls. His mum came on the phone and told me to keep away from her son. I was so heartbroken and felt all alone. I never contacted him again. I just walked away. He had chosen his family over me and it was all my fault.
I told my mum and dad that I was pregnant and Dad went mad. It was bad enough being pregnant but, when Jamie wanted nothing to do with me either, that made it worse. I’d let Dad down. I understood he only wanted what was best for me and it was all going wrong. Mum was back to being nasty and I found myself pregnant and living from house to house again. There was no way I could stay at home. Mum and I had started to row and it would just be better all round if I wasn’t there. I spent most of my pregnancy with a friend who shared my surname, though she wasn’t related.
My friend lived in Prince Regents Lane with her family, including the mum and her husband, six sisters and a brother. They became as close to me as family and I will never forget how they looked after me when Jamie turned his back. They might not have been my blood but they were as close a family to me as my own and I thank them and love them with all my heart.
4
TOOLED UP AND PREGNANT
I didn’t want to be a gangster. I just wanted to be a proper mum.
After I had been pregnant for six months, I finally got my own flat through the council in October, 1984 because of my circumstances. I’d got no money coming in, a baby on the way and Christmas was a
round the corner.
I was trying so hard to keep on the straight and narrow but I needed money for my baby. It was time to go and dig up my gun. I knew what I had to do and I went and did it. I didn’t want to because I had promised myself I wouldn’t do any more armed robberies after the CID had turned up that day. But I had to do it for my baby because I had nothing. I would just do one job so I could make my flat a home.
The people I was robbing thought I was a gangster but little did they know. I didn’t want to be a gangster. I just wanted to be a proper mum. The job went without a hitch. But I’ve got to be honest, I was a lot more nervous than before because I was so worried for my baby. I used the balaclava and did the job on my own, and covered myself with a big coat so I wouldn’t look pregnant. I mean, pregnancy was a bit of a giveaway as clues go, so I had to be a bit crafty on that front. But I made enough to get everything I needed for the baby’s arrival. A pram, cot, baby clothes and toys, and I decorated the flat.
Dad still wasn’t talking to me and, God, it was killing me because I love my dad. But I’d let him down by getting pregnant. Jamie having nothing to do with me upset Dad too because he wanted more for me. I understood Dad’s feelings but I was more hurt that Dad wasn’t there than I had been by Jamie leaving.
Christmas came and I had two weeks to go before giving birth. I spent Christmas with Shell, who by then was married and pregnant herself. Shell said I looked beautiful and her house was so Christmassy with all its decorations and presents under the tree. It was so lovely. Shell and I had done some growing up and she made me feel so welcome. I felt about as happy as I can remember being, apart from still missing Dad.
