by John Pearson
‘When’re you goina find yourself a nice girl and keep outa trouble, Ronnie love?’ But Ronnie never had been interested in girls.
‘Why would I be needing some stupid girl when I got me mum. Aunt Rose?’
TWO
Battle Training
The second of March 1952 was a grey day at the end of another London winter, and the Tower of London gave a grim welcome to the two quiet young men in identical blue suits who arrived among that morning’s sparse crop of tourists at the main gate by the Shrewsbury Tower. They showed the Yeoman Warder the official form they had received three weeks earlier, and he directed them past Traitor’s Gate to the Waterloo Building opposite the White Tower, the headquarters of the Royal Fusiliers.
Few regiments excel at the welcome of newcomers, and the Waterloo Building – a Victorian block of old-fashioned military ferocity – was enough to make any recruit wonder what he was in for. But the twins seemed unconcerned. They smiled at no one and said nothing. A sergeant put them in line and led them off to the other-ranks’ mess for a meal. When they had eaten and were ordered outside to collect their uniforms and equipment, they went along with thirty or so other new recruits. Their squad corporal took over. He showed them their barrack room, allocated beds, and prepared to start the hard sharp lesson that turns mere boys into grown soldiers. He began by showing them how to lay their kit out – small pack above large pack, greatcoat above the bed with brasses gleaming, back and front. He told them the toe-caps of both pairs of boots must be shiny enough to see their faces in by the weekend. And he paused to explain how pride in appearance was the mark of all good soldiers, but that if you were lucky enough to be a Fusilier …
Before the corporal could explain what was so special about the Royal Fusiliers the two recruits in the identical blue suits started walking towards the door.
The corporal stopped. He was not the man to take nonsense from recruits but had never faced a situation quite like this before.
‘And where might you be going?’
The twins paused, faces expressionless except for a faint but identical raising of the eyebrows.
‘I said, where d’you think you’re off to, you lovely pair?’
One of the twins spoke then, as quietly as if telling somebody the time.
‘We don’t care for it here. We’re off home to see our mum.’ They continued to walk towards the door.
The corporal felt the two boys were trying to make a fool of him, and grabbed one by the arm.
There was something strange about what happened then. Violence is usually accompanied by some sign of emotion but the faces of the twins remained expressionless. There was a thud. The corporal staggered back against the wall, holding his jaw – and still unspeaking, still unhurrying, the twins, in their dark blue suits, walked down the stairs and out across the square where the ravens perched and the last of the afternoon sightseers was being shown the spot where Queen Anne Boleyn lost her head four hundred years or so before.
Ronald and Reginald Kray of the Royal Fusiliers were back at Vallance Road in time for tea.
The ending of National Service is often seen as a factor in the rise of lawlessness among the young. Perhaps. But for the Kray twins it is undeniable that without the two years they were now to spend in contact with the army, they would never have been able to take over the East End with the speed and ruthlessness they showed when finally released in the spring of 1954.
Next morning, just before daybreak, the police called at Vallance Road. The twins, who had spent their first night of service to Queen and Country at a dance-hall in Tottenham, were asleep. But they had been expecting the police. They yawned, dressed, made no attempt to resist, and telling their mother not to worry as they’d soon be back, went downstairs and into the police car which carried them to Bethnal Green Police Station where a military escort returned them to the Tower. They were placed in a cell, presented with a fresh uniform apiece, told to get shaved, given a slice of bread and mug of army tea, and informed they would be appearing in the Commanding Officer’s orderly room next morning charged with being absent without leave.
From the day the Fusiliers tried teaching them the rudiments of discipline and military training, the twins found something they could never really do without – an enemy.
They also discovered certain skills they needed from the army – lessons in organization and morale, of leadership and weaponry and propaganda which were to prove invaluable when the time came to organize a private army of their own. They learned about themselves as well – how much they could take and just how tough they really were; together with the advantages of being twins. They learned how vulnerable a large organization can be, and taught themselves new ways of making officials ridiculous. They tested out their powers of resistance – and found them more than adequate.
Next morning the twins were lined up among the other petty offenders to face the charge of absence without leave and striking an NCO in the lawful exercise of his duty. By army standards these were serious charges. The corporal gave his evidence and normally this would have led to a court-martial. But there would have been something faintly ridiculous about court-martialling a pair of boys for knocking out an NCO on their first afternoon in the army. There was also a practical difficulty which no one had thought of until that moment. Which of these identical young tearaways landed the actual blow?
The corporal wasn’t sure, but thought it was the one on the far left.
‘Were you the one who attacked the corporal?’ the CO asked Private Ronald Kray.
‘No, sir.’
‘Then it must have been you.’
‘Oh no, sir.’
‘Well, one of you did it.’
This was a situation the twins had faced since childhood and they knew exactly how to act.
‘Did what, sir?’
‘Struck this NCO.’
‘But which one of us are you accusing, sir?’
‘Whichever of you made this cowardly assault. Who did?’
The twins shrugged their shoulders – an impertinent gesture and a slightly uncanny one, for they did it together.
The next seven days were spent back in the guardroom. Wisely perhaps, the Commanding Officer had decided to temper justice with discretion and rather than become embroiled in interminable questions of identification, contented himself with reading the twins a lecture on doing their duty and awarded them the most moderate punishment he could in the circumstances.
The twins showed no sign of objecting. The guardroom was icy, the food just eatable and instead of a mattress they slept on the bare boards of a punishment cell. But this was what they wanted, for it proved how right they were to be contracting out of an organization that could treat anyone like this. There was also a certain satisfaction in the very harshness of the regime. Bare boards and bad food were a challenge. The better they resisted, the manlier they felt.
Apart from a visit from their father – still on the wanted list as a deserter, wily old Charlie Kray had the nerve to bluff his way to see them by pretending to be their uncle – the only event of importance was the arrival in the guard-room of a grey-faced, battered-looking thief from Mile End who had been drafted to the Fusiliers straight from a four-year sentence at Portland Borstal. He introduced himself as Dickie Morgan. One of five sons of an Australian sailor father and part-German mother, he had begun his criminal career at eight by stealing from the orthodox Jews of Whitechapel who paid him a halfpenny a time to light the gas for them during the Sabbath. He had been in and out of approved schools and Borstals ever since and had a triangular dent just below the hairline where he had smashed his skull falling into a chalk quarry escaping from Ardale Approved School.
Dickie Morgan was the first of an invaluable set of criminal acquaintances the army would introduce to the twins in the months to come. His twisted smile, his gaol humour, his habitual-criminal’s cynicism made a particular impression on them. For like the twins, he lived in a world of his own –
in which the chief aim was to grab and spend as much as possible before the next inevitable spell inside. Already life had taught him a philosophy which matched the conclusions the twins were reaching on their own account.
‘Ordinary straight life’s just not for the likes of us. That’s why we’re in a separate world. You see, we get bored with most of the stupid things straight people seem to enjoy, when they could be out drinking or doing a spot of villainy. What’s the best thing in life? Getting money. And after that? Spending it.’
A week later, when the twins had been released from the guardroom and went on the run the second time, Richard Morgan went with them. And this time they employed a little more finesse.
* * *
In their first escape they had been acting out of sheer bravado. Now, thanks to Morgan, they had a clearer idea of what they wanted. Dickie Morgan didn’t merely talk and dream about the ‘separate world’ of the habitual criminal. He lived in it, and the twins were swift to see its possibilities.
The Morgan house in Clinton Road – one of a warren of grey little terraces coiling away from the western end of London Docks – was something the twins had never really known before: a truly extraordinary household. The barrel-chested sailor father had just been sentenced for his part in a raid on the warehouse where he was night-watchman. ‘Chunky’ the elder brother, who was in Parkhurst Gaol, had made a name for himself in a riot at Portland Borstal organized by an immensely strong young giant from Hackney called Frank Mitchell. And one of the younger brothers was already serving his apprenticeship in Borstal.
Somehow in the midst of all this, with her straight hair, her full-moon spectacles and her text of ‘Bless this House’ on the kitchen wall, stood the eternally worried, uncomplaining figure of Richard Morgan’s mother, bringing up the two youngest boys, and cooking eggs and bacon for the unceasing traffic of ‘friends on the run’ who made for Clinton Road, snatched a few hours’ sleep on the front-room sofa, and dodged off over the garden wall before the police knocked on the door as dawn was breaking.
At Vallance Road the twins’ actual home-life had been curiously sheltered, and Violet and her parents were an influence against dishonesty. The Lees were ‘respectable’. Here it was different, and at Clinton Road the twins found what they had always wanted – lawlessness and adventure. And as fellow deserters and friends of a youthful old lag like Richard Morgan, they had a guide to the exclusive and caste-ridden maquis of petty East London criminals.
Previously as dedicated young professional boxers they had been ascetic to a degree – non-smoking and -drinking and continuing to get up at six each morning for their training runs almost until the day they entered the army. Overnight this went. For the first time in their lives they smoked and drank. Instead of training spins and early nights they adopted thieves’ hours, out most of the night and cat-napping during the day. And they made their first actual money out of crime – a few pounds which was their share from a raid on a Clerkenwell dress wholesaler when they joined forces with an old-time thief from Mile End and got away with seven rolls of cloth.
And just as Morgan introduced them to the criminals of Mile End, so they enjoyed taking him surreptitiously to the places where they were known. The fantasy of being wanted criminals on the run gripped them all, particularly Ronnie, who was to play the same game with spectacular variations in years to come.
Now that the police were after them in earnest, they could play out this fantasy for all it was worth; the two of them, alone, uncaring, wanted by a society they despised yet always able to survive, fight back, and vanish like the Scarlet Pimpernel himself.
They always had been natural actors – particularly Ronnie, who had inherited his showman’s instincts from Grandfather Lee, and the first night they took Dickie to the Royal Ballroom at Tottenham they had the role they wanted.
The Royal is still one place in the East End where the young can meet, pick each other up and show off with impunity. A great barn of a place off the Kingsland Road, with brass and mahogany swing doors, and a facade that looks like mouldy marzipan, it usually boasts two separate bands, and the noise inside is deafening. In early evening it is a ballroom pure and simple, but when the pubs close it becomes something more. The noise increases, coloured spotlights flicker high above the crowd, and on hot, early summer nights, the Royal becomes a living showcase of the East End. In the days when the Kray twins were there, it was also a good place for fights.
The girls and the dancing were unimportant, except for background and the sense of occasion they gave the place. The crowd was the sort of audience the twins enjoyed, and the real attraction of the Royal was as a place where the local tearaways could come ‘on show’. It was the tribal proving ground, where the self-appointed ‘rulers’ of the neighbourhood would make their ritual appearance like the young bloods of some primitive society. And just as in a primitive society, the entry of someone from another territory into the group of sharp-eyed youths around the bar carried inevitable overtones of challenge.
But the night the twins took Dickie there, none of the wild young men of Tottenham was in the mood to pick a fight.
Three brothers – all good amateur boxers – led the reigning local gang of Tottenham, and were in the bar. They knew the twins and understood that their appearance was a challenge – particularly when everybody knew they were absent from the army. There were a tense few minutes as the twins and the Tottenham gang sized each other up. Then the local gang quietly surrendered. One of the boxers offered the twins a drink, asked how they were doing, and offered to lend them a fiver – which Ronnie grudgingly accepted. Dickie was impressed. He and the twins remained for half an hour, drinking at the Tottenham gang’s expense, then caught a bus to Clinton Road, feeling they had won a useful victory – and that their great adventure was progressing.
It continued for the next fortnight. A fourth member joined their team of young escapers – a wild boy on the run from Rochester Borstal. The twins already had a knack of gathering people round them in the most unlikely situations, and at the boy’s suggestion they decided it was time for a little expedition. Unlike Dickie and the twins, the boy could drive, so they stole a car, and drove to Southend for a holiday. For a few hours they enjoyed themselves and took a lot of trouble choosing a rude postcard which they posted to their CO at the Tower, saying, ‘Having a good time. Best of luck. Ron, Reg and Dick.’
The twins were always rather proud of this and Reggie insisted, ‘The CO had a sense of humour and put the card on the board in the officers’ mess.’ But once they had made their little gesture, what else was there to do in Southend? Drink. Visit the cinema. Walk along the pier. With Southend full of ordinary straight people having their boring summer holidays it was no place for the twins, so they slept the night in the car then drove back to the one place where they could be happy and where they were certain to be picked up in the end – Bethnal Green. They were getting bored – and for the twins, boredom was worse than the army or the Law or any rival gang.
A few more visits to the Royal, one of which ended with a brawl in which the twins gave Morgan an exhibition of bar-fighting he was never to forget. A couple of attempts, neither successful, to steal from lorries parked up for the night on the bomb-sites along the Commercial Road. But petty thieving wasn’t the twins’ style at all, and their hearts weren’t in it. All that really mattered was the next round in their running battle with the Fusiliers. They were ready for the fray. So when a keen young constable called Fisher recognized them in a Mile End caff, they came along without a murmur. It was a relief to have something to fight against once more.
Back in the Tower the detention cells in the Waterloo Building almost seemed like home. The Commanding Officer gave them a stiffer sentence and a stronger warning. It was boring for him and boring for the twins, but until they decided to settle down and soldier, this absurd cat-and-mouse game would continue.
For the rest of early summer, the pattern of escape, recapture and impri
sonment continued. And just occasionally it looked as if the twins would settle down and soldier. Once they got as far as the .303 range at Purfleet where both proved unusually bad shots. When they beat up a sergeant who had tried teaching them a lesson on his own account, the CO decided to separate the twins. Reggie was sent to the punishment cells at Purfleet and Ronnie to the tender mercies of Wellington Guards Barracks.
It did no good. They were worse parted than together. At Purfleet Reggie spent his time perfecting his left hook on a stream of obligingly aggressive NCOs until he was left alone. Ronnie among the Guards found fewer opportunities for self-expression, weeded the barrack square and resorted to his earliest form of protest – refusing to shave or wear a uniform.
The month they spent together after this at Colchester military detention barracks marked the turning point of their military career. Until then, with an optimism that does them credit, the Fusiliers had clung to the belief that the twins were redeemable private soldier material. Now it was plain they never wouid be, and this month at Colchester was to bring them face to face with some of the toughest delinquents in the army and strengthened their resolve to get out of the army the hard way. It was now too that they began forming rather more precise ideas about their own future when they were discharged. Reggie said:
‘I can remember discussing armed robbery seriously with someone for the first time at Colchester. You see, by then, Ron and I had decided that when we came out we wanted the good life and that there was only one way to get it.’
‘The Good Life’ – but where was it? When they had served their month at Colchester, they were back together at the Tower, and nothing was easier than to forget about the army, change into a jacket and an old pair of trousers and slip out through the Shrewsbury Gate among the tourists any afternoon. Which, very soon, they did and faithful grey-faced Dickie Morgan followed them.
From Tower Hill you can turn right into Cable Street, left up Backchurch Lane and you find yourself in Whitechapel. It was tempting, but this time the twins had no wish to be caught, and instead of turning right at the top of Tower Hill, they went left, down through the City and into the West End where their friends from Colchester had told them ‘the Good Life’ was waiting for them. They had been told that, in the West, anyone prepared to fight could make himself an easy living. There were mugs there to be conned, ponces to be preyed on, gambling clubs waiting to be tapped, armed robberies to be executed. Provided you weren’t fussy there were no limits in this villains’ Eldorado – and the twins were not feeling particularly fussy now.
