The Profession of Violence

by John Pearson

Just before Christmas Reggie’s appeal against conviction in the Shay case failed. Despite the efforts of his lawyers he went back to Wandsworth for the following six months. Ronnie was left to make the most of wealth and Esmeralda’s Barn alone.

  He enjoyed sitting in the bar at night, knowing that people wondered who he was. He enjoyed the money. He enjoyed the sense of ownership. But there was nothing in the whole club for him to do: had there been, he might have learned just how delicate a business big-time gambling can be. He never did learn this. He was a villain, not a bank clerk. He hated gambling and despised the rich. He was incapable of sitting back and accepting £800 a week for doing nothing. For Ronnie there was something wrong with money that was not dishonestly acquired. He had to have a racket of his own. Not for the money; he had more than enough by now. But racketeering was a habit and a way of life. He could feel superior to those he cheated. Soon he was ‘nipping’ the cashier for small amounts and fleecing the occasional client. Then he found something neater. It was exactly what he wanted, since it enhanced his sense of private power.

  Like any gambling club, Esmeralda’s Barn was obliged to pay winnings straight away and bear any losers’ cheques that bounced. Success depended on keeping the margin of dud losers’ cheques to a minimum; the manager was extremely strict over the credit he would grant within the club. Ronnie was different. Whenever the manager was away or off duty, Ronnie as a director had the right to say who should have credit; he began granting it quite freely, seeing that it placed the gambler firmly in his debt. If the man won, Ronnie had done him a favour and would expect a good commission in return. If he lost, the house might have to carry the bad cheque; Ronnie would settle privately for whatever he could recover. Provided Ronnie could scare the man into paying him a few pounds, he would be satisfied.

  The manager soon saw what was happening when cheques marked ‘return to drawer’ flooded the office. When they came to over £2,000 in one week, he mentioned it to Ronnie. Ronnie laughed. Why should the manager worry, when there was more play than ever across the tables? The manager tried explaining that no club could carry such losses. As a last gesture he offered the twins £1,000 a week to stay away. Reggie was still in Wandsworth; Ronnie replied that they weren’t interested.

  So the manager, good gambler that he was, saw that the time had come to cut his losses, forget the money he had invested in the club and place his bets elsewhere. He was scrupulously polite to Ronnie; he could afford to be. When he set up his new club in Curzon Street his richest clients followed; the cheques no longer bounced. Today his club remains what Esmeralda’s Barn would have been – one of the four top gambling clubs in London. The twins could still have had a permanent share of the profits.

  At the time, nobody worried. If the manager left, so much the better. His share of profit could now go to Leslie Payne and the twins. They had to bring a new manager in to run the gambling, but he had no say over credit; if something like £15,000 of bad cheques piled up in the cashier’s office during the six months, who cared? Play was increasing all the time.

  What Ronnie really wanted was a plushier version of the billiard hall, a headquarters where he could come on show with all his followers and be himself before an audience. This seemed impossible at first. Everybody in the Barn appeared so confident and rich. But Ronnie despised them. ‘They’re such a lot of cry-babies, frightened of what their old man will say when he finds out what they’ve been up to. So when they’re in a mess they come crawling. They’ll do anything then to save themselves, even pretend to like you. But they’re not sincere like East End people. When it comes to it they always let you know your place.’

  The chip on his shoulder showed; the urge to humiliate was irresistible. One of the Barn’s most regular losers was a dead-beat peer. Ronnie knew he was on the edge of bankruptcy but always gave him credit to play. When he had lost again the old man would ring him up at Vallance Road and threaten suicide. Ronnie enjoyed this and would say, ‘All right, you silly old bastard. Don’t waste the gas by putting your head in the oven today. You can’t afford it. Come round to Vallance Road when I’ve had my shave and I’ll see what I can do. Don’t be late.’

  The clientele was changing as the dedicated, big-time gamblers started to keep away. Now came the playboy gamblers, gambling addicts, chancers and the chronically in debt, people the manager would have headed off; Ronnie welcomed them. If they got deeper into debt so much the better. The house could carry them and this would mean more people under his control. Violence crept in. Several drunken losers at the Barn were thrown down the stairs, and occasionally Ronnie instructed East End villains to call on members he considered ‘cheeky’ about their debts. What happened then was not his business: if somebody was hurt, an empty flat smashed up, this had nothing to do with him.

  But on the whole Ronnie knew better than to use violence to get back money he was owed. He wanted power and status. There was a sort of devious flirtation in the way he played those who feared him: smiling one night, meeting them with a blank stare and a demand for money the next.

  He began getting what he seemed to want – the pretence of friendship, the appearance of respect, even of social success; these were people who could introduce him to the smart life if he wanted it. They took him to their homes, their London clubs, dined him in the House of Lords, introduced him to celebrities. It was surprising how cheap the rich world was, and it gave Ronnie a new role – the playboy gangster in a sophisticated world.

  As usual he began dressing for the part – sharper suits, heavier jewellery, better-cut overcoats. Then he moved into the West End, taking the lease on a top-floor Chelsea flat in payment for a gambling debt. He took the whole place over – furniture, pictures, the former tenant’s young boyfriend. Then for a while he became something of a character on the Chelsea scene, the King’s Road’s own gangster-in-residence.

  He was the showman once again, conscious of his public. Sometimes he played the heavy gangster, sometimes the clown. One night he brought a chimpanzee in evening dress into the Barn, sat him down at the tables and had him paid his winnings. Another night when things were dull he announced that he was marrying one of the girls in the club. This was a novelty at least; like everything with Ronnie it had to be done at once. Payne suggested holding the marriage aboard ship. He knew somebody with a boat moored off Chelsea Reach. It was 2 A.M. but the man was fetched, guests summoned; Payne was appointed best man, the wedding party started.

  It was a great affair. Word soon got round that there was free champagne at Esmeralda’s Barn; Ronnie was suddenly in earnest, drinking toasts and talking about the children he would have. The one thing he refused to do was kiss the bride. Not that this mattered. Long before dawn broke, Ronnie was slumbering quietly on a couch at the far end of the restaurant, the girl on one side and the man who was to have married them on the other. They woke up with the cleaners.

  Despite a joke like this and an occasional experiment, Ronnie disliked women more than ever; now he was out of the East End he made no bones about his homosexuality. It was a relief to be able to admit it. Now he discovered its advantages. It was quite smart, a sort of eccentricity to be made the most of, and he had an entree to the useful freemasonry of the similarly inclined.

  There was no hint of effeminacy about him. ‘I’m not a poof, I’m homosexual,’ he would say, and was genuinely put out by the antics of effeminate males. ‘Pansies,’ he used to say, with the same cockney contempt with which he pronounced the word ‘women’.

  He liked boys, preferably with long lashes and a certain melting look round the eyes. He particularly enjoyed them if they had had no experience of men before. He liked teaching them and often gave them a fiver to take their girl-friends out on condition they slept with him the following night. He always asked them which they had preferred. He was something of a sadist, but was generous with his lovers. The gifts he gave them were his main extravagance. He never seems to have forced anyone into bed against his will and, as he proud
ly insisted, was free from colour prejudice, having tried Scandinavians, Latins, Anglo-Saxons, Arabs, Negroes, Chinese and a Tahitian. An important part of the compulsive pederasty which had begun to dominate his life was his growing fear of the dark. He dreaded sleeping alone.

  During this period at the Barn he fell in love. This was not something he actually approved of: love, especially when combined with sex, was usually a means women employed to keep men at home and relieve them of their money. So it might be more accurate to say that Ronnie began living with a boy on a regular basis and permitted himself the luxury of continued tenderness for the first time in his life.

  Vanity came into it. He enjoyed taking the boy out and being seen with him in the best restaurants: the boy was beautiful and behaved like a petulant young mistress. Ronnie enjoyed indulging these shows of temperament. He liked taking him to his tailors, selecting all his shirts and ties and doing what he could to curb the excesses of his youthful bad taste. He was extremely jealous: one man the boy had flirted with had his face cut open. The boy was ‘his’ boy.

  He called him ‘son’, referring to himself as ‘your old Dad’. Any extravagance was allowed him. One of Ronnie’s greatest pleasures was taking him with a select party of ‘interesting people’ to the old Society Club in Jermyn Street. Ronnie loved the Society. With its dark panelling and pink silk-covered lamps, it was like something from a thirties film. This was where jovial businessmen brought their secretaries for a night out; an Israeli violinist called ‘Gipsy’ played Lehar at the tables; the champagne was expensive.

  Never a great one for the swinging scene, Ronnie felt that the Society was somehow ‘right’, always tipped lavishly and paid his bill. When Gipsy came to his table, as he always did, Ronnie’s eyes moistened at the music. Turning to his guests, he would point to his boy.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t he? Don’t you think he’s beautiful? Don’t you wish he was yours?’

  During these six months with Reggie in prison Ronnie could finally enjoy worldly success himself –money, cars, boys, admirers, a West End flat, even social respect of a sort. He had achieved what every poor cockney boy longs for: freedom to be and do exactly as he liked.

  But it was no good. Everybody round him seemed to find happiness; not Ronnie. Possessions meant nothing, friends could not be trusted, even his freedom made him feel an outcast. His spending orgies left him wardrobes full of suits, piles of shirts he never wore again. His new friends seemed to offer sympathy or flattery but he knew they laughed behind his back. Boys were like drink. They helped him to forget; next day the hopelessness returned.

  His nightmares worsened. The world was slipping out of his control. His psychiatrist increased his daily dose of Stematol, and ordered him to rest. Somebody mentioned the Canary Islands: he booked at the best hotel, taking his boy-friend for a fortnight’s holiday. This was no use either. How could he lie on the beach or waste his time swimming when there was always something to be done?

  The boy soon became sullen at Ronnie’s attitude, especially when he insisted on moving to a seedier hotel where he felt more at home. This didn’t help: nothing on that sunny island interested Ronnie or could set his mind at rest. They returned to London six days early.

  Reggie would help him. Reggie would soon be out of gaol. But when Reggie did return the unforgivable had occurred: he was in love, and with a girl. She was just sixteen, a schoolgirl – pretty and pert and innocent and earnest. Reggie was twenty-seven. She was called Frances Shea and was the sister of Frank Shea, a Hoxton boy the twins had known for years. Ronnie once admired his looks and there was a strong resemblance between Frank Shea and his sister. Her father once ran the gambling at The Regency Club in Stoke Newington, where the twins already had an interest. Reggie had noticed her during his period on bail from Wandsworth and taken her out then once or twice. She was in awe of him at first, but he was respectful, almost shy of her. He talked a lot about life, ideals, and ‘seemed sort of sad, different from other boys,’ she told her friend. He hadn’t tried to kiss her yet.

  It was when he returned to Wandsworth that Reggie really fell in love with her. During the previous period of his sentence he had been cheerful, ‘one of the best, a laugh for everyone. When he came back he’d changed. All he could think about was this girl of his. He’d got it bad – you couldn’t kid him about it.’

  Each day he wrote to her. He was afraid she might fall in love with someone else before he was released. He wrote her poetry and was tormented by the memory of the brown eyes framed in the chestnut-coloured hair. Once he was free he could carry her off to a deserted bay beside a blue sea and build a house; the dark life with Ronnie would be buried and forgotten. She was his cockney Cinderella and he made her his princess.

  This time with Reggie back the rows between the twins were the worst anyone remembered, with insults screamed about the girl and Ronnie’s boys.

  Ronnie soon realized his greatest danger of losing Reggie to Frances Shea would be through Esmeralda’s Barn. Now that Reggie had his directorship and share of the profits, he had no need for crime. He could do what he had always dreamed of when away from Ronnie, living the good life and dazzling the girl.

  The Barn was still bringing in big money throughout 1961. A discotheque was started in the basement. Lord Effingham joined the twins on the Barn’s board of directors. There was still great potential; it would not be hard to make the most of it and use the contacts offered for expansion into other gambling clubs. Their brother Charlie had been doing well at the Barn on his own account. Anxious for this life to continue, he urged the twins to invest their profits in betting shops and clubs. Ronnie objected. He knew if Esmeralda’s Barn became the centre of a thriving business chain, he would be quite superfluous.

  Ronnie told Reggie it was time he brought his girl to meet him at the Barn. She was nervous when she came, a wide-eyed child in an unaccustomed world. But Ronnie seemed in a good mood, his big face beaming as he greeted her like one of the family.

  ‘Hullo, Frances, my dear. I’ve heard a lot about you. ’Ow are you?’

  And Frances Shea, who’d heard a lot about him, relaxed and was impressed. She met Lord Effingham. Ronnie insisted that she try her hand at roulette; she won a pound or two. She and the twins ate in the restaurant. But something about Ronnie scared her.

  TEN

  Organized Crime

  Just eight weeks after Reggie emerged from Wandsworth, all three Kray brothers were in trouble with the Law. First Reggie – he was accused of petty house-breaking on the evidence of a woman who failed to identify him when she entered the witness-box of the East London Magistrates’ Court. The case was dismissed; Reggie was awarded costs.

  Then it was his brothers’ turn; both were accused of ‘loitering in the Queensbridge Road with intent to commit a felony’ and of trying the door-handles of parked cars. The improbability of the charges gave Ronnie just the case he needed to stage a demonstration of the power of the Krays against the Law. It was something he’d been waiting for.

  There was a combination of flair and thoroughness in the way he played it. The first thing he wanted was publicity; he briefed Nemone Lethbridge, the prettiest young female barrister in the country, to defend him. His case needed to be watertight so he hired a private detective and produced eight solid witnesses to swear to his alibi. Finally he wanted to teach the local police a lesson; this wasn’t difficult. Through a contact on a local paper he made sure the East End press carried his allegations of victimization by the police under banner headlines: ‘Detective called us “scum of the earth”.’

  In court the case could not stand up: on 8 May the Marylebone Magistrates’ Court dismissed the charges. Now Ronnie could enjoy himself handling the publicity against the Law like an adroit public relations man. He held a full-scale party for the press at Esmeralda’s Barn, where he proposed a toast to ‘British justice’. There was a lot of free champagne and instant friendship. He got the full press coverage he wanted – the Daily Express
carried a long article complete with pictures of the twins and ample quotes from them both under the headline: ‘“It’s a vendetta,” say freed boxing twins.’

  The impression was of a pair of clean-living cockney sporting boys caught up in a sinister persecution by the police. From now on it would be a bold East End policeman who would risk his career tangling with them.

  Photographed that night at their victory party as Esmeralda’s Barn, both twins were smiling – Ronnie from a sense of triumph, Reggie with relief. For Ronnie the acquittal at Marylebone confirmed what he had always known – he was being picked out, persecuted, but had the power to beat his enemies. He was untouchable. Reggie felt none of this. He had loathed his time in prison and wanted no more risks. All he desired was peace and the chance to enjoy himself like any normal man. That summer he tried very hard to get it. His share of profit from Esmeralda’s Barn had mounted in his absence. He was rich. He bought a new Mercedes, smart clothes, improved his dancing, rode, ran, kept himself fit. He spent weekends at Steeple Bay in Essex where the family had a caravan and he could swim and lie in the sun. He began seeing less of Ronnie; for once this didn’t worry him. Frances was there. He was becoming a possessive lover. Neither had been in love before.

  While he was in prison she had started a shorthand course. He didn’t care for the idea of her being independent or seeing too many people. Each afternoon he would be waiting outside the college with the car. Since she was his princess she needed royal treatment – gifts, evenings out, all the respect the Krays enjoyed. She lived quite simply with her parents in a terraced house in Ormsby Street, just off the Kingsland Road. Suddenly neighbours noticed the expensive cars calling for her; word got round that she was Reggie’s girl.

  This turned her head at first. Reggie was very kind. Nothing was too much trouble and he never went too far like boys of her own age. He was proud of her and patiently possessive. She could be as temperamental and capricious as she pleased, but she was his for keeps. Her brother was in awe of him, even her father liked him. As Mr Shea says now, ‘I respected Reggie as an athlete and a clean-living man. He never used bad language, even when talking to me on my own, and always had her home on time. We knew he never tried anything wrong with her, but treated her like a lady. We thought that was very nice.’