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He gave his name to one of the most famous, or infamous, pubs in Britain, and is now a byword for the East End, even for people who have never been here. But who exactly was the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green?
The story itself is shrouded in legend, and set in a Bethnal Green vastly different from the chaotic and overcrowded slum it became in the 19th century.
Bethnal Green is first mentioned in an Eighth Century deed. One Mathilda le Vayre of Stepney is listed as having a home in ‘Blithehall’, and making a grant of the house’s courtyard.
By the Middle Ages, however, Bethnal Green was rather isolated from London, a quiet little village and rather grand. There were manor houses and mansions in the surrounding countryside and cottages cluster- ed around the green itself.
In the 1200s, one of those manor houses belonged to Simon de Montford – the young lord who is today remembered by Montford House, a red-brick block of flats on the north side of Victoria Park Square.
His story, and how he went from landed gentry to poor beggar, became hugely popular in early Tudor times, and was given a new lease of life by Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which was published in 1765.
Simon was a soldier in the service of the king, and fought at the Battle of Evesham, in the West Country, in 1265. According to the legend, he fell at the battle and was found wandering, blinded, by a nobleman’s daughter. She nursed the wounded soldier back to health, they fell in love and were married.
In time a daughter arrived, but although Besse was beautiful she couldn’t find a husband – the problem being her father. Besse was courted by four suitors; a rich gentleman, a knight, a London merchant and the son of an innkeeper.
Most of them withdrew their suit when they met Montford to ask for the old soldier’s consent to the marriage.
Montford’s reduced circum-stances were related through a popular song of the time:
“My father, shee said, is soone to be seene
The siely, blind beggar of Bednall-green,
That daylye sits begging for charitie,
He is the good father of pretty Besse.
Hie makrs and his tokens are knowen very well;
He alwayes is led with a dogg and a bell;
A seely old man, God knoweth, is he,
Yet he is the father of pretty Besse.”

In a predictably medieval twist, the courtly knight was the only man who could see past the seeming lack of a decent dowry to the woman he loved.
He received his reward, as the couple received a dowry of £3,000, plus £100 for Besse’s wedding dress. The benefactor? Grandfather Henry, who was still a rich man.
The legend persisted. Samuel Pepys visited fashionable Bethnal Green to stay with his friend, Sir William Ryder; Ryder’s house occupied the very same spot as the Montford mansion. The great diarist records the occasion on June 26, 1663:
“By coach to Bednall-green, to Sir W Ryder’s to dinner. A fine merry walk with the ladies alone after dinner in the garden; the greatest quantity of strawberries I ever saw, and good. This very house was built by the Blind Beggar of Bednall-green, so much talked of and sang in ballads.”
By 1690, the Bethnal Green beadle bore the badge of the Blind Beggar on his ceremonial staff. And in the 18th century every pub in the area bore the image of the beggar on their signs. Even Kirby’s Castle, a lunatic asylum, was dubbed the Blind Beggar’s House in 1727.
Kirby’s Castle was demolished to make way for post-War redevelopment, Montford’s House is buried in mystery, and today only one pub bears the sign of the Blind Beggar.
But Besse is remembered in Besse Street, the mayor bears an image of Simon and Besse on the borough’s ceremonial badge and, most famous of all, in 1966, the Kray twins and the unfortunate George Cornell sealed the Blind Beggar in the nation’s folklore forever.
With thanks to London’s East End: Life and Traditions, by Jane Cox, Phoenix Illustrated, ISBN 1-85799-956-8, £9.99.

THE targeting of Brick Lane may have a twisted logic for Saturday’s bombers.
If there’s one area that has shown the ability of Londoners to welcome and absorb incoming cultures it’s Spitalfields, as wave after wave of immigrants have settled in the area and each added their unique ingredients to the strong cultural mix of the East End.
But if there’s one lesson the politicians of hate haven’t learned from history, it’s that centuries of attacks against the Irish, Huguenots, Jews and now Bangladeshis don’t drive people away, they just make them stronger.
Even before immigration began in earnest, the area had a reputation for religious and cultural diversity – and it was always a haven for refugees and free-thinkers.
In 1675, when there were 1,300 new buildings crammed onto the old market gardens, it was seen as a centre of non-conformity, as citizens resisted the authority of the established Church of England. In fact the first Baptist church in England had been built there in 1612.
And organised opposition to incomers is nothing new. Back in the early 1700s, there had been protests in the streets of Spitalfields as the newly built-up area was settled by Huguenots, refugees from religious persecution in the Low Countries.
Fine weaving skills
They had come, under the protection of the English crown, bringing with them their skills of fine silk-weaving to settle around Fournier and Elder Streets. Many locals resented their new ways, but soon the incomers were bringing wealth and jobs to the area, as Spitalfields became famous for fine cloths.
Then, in 1780, Lord George Gordon played on Protestant fears of Rome to stoke up the Gordon Riots. Many Irish people had settled on the eastern fringes of the City, looking for work and escaping religious persecution, poverty and starvation back in their home country.
On June 2, Roman Catholic chapels in Spitalfields were burned to the ground and the mob made for Downing Street. Most of them never got there, having sacked Langdale’s Brewery in Holborn and poisoned themselves as they gorged on alcohol. Their eccentric leader was arrested for treason and saw out his years in prison.
For many East Enders, their proudest defence against the forces of fascism came in the wake of the Jewish immigration of the late 1800s.

The Jews had come in their thousands, escaping the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe. Jewishness is an essential ingredient in the rich recipe that is today’s East End, whether it be the humour, the numerous charitable schools and settlements the incomers established, or the world-famous Brick Lane Beigel Shop.
But for some, richness, newness and diversity is itself a threat. In the 1930s Oswald Mosley, another rabble-rouser who pitched for people’s fears, led his Blackshirts on provocative marches around Brick Lane and Club Row.
The fascist challenge culminated in the Battle of Cable Street, on October 5, 1936, when East Enders decided once and for all that the racists would not pass.
The Blackshirts were broken, as was their leader, who had marched his troops up the hill and down again – and achieved nothing. He drifted from influence, a forlorn and half-forgotten figure.
Back in the 1970s, Brick Lane was changing again. Most of the Jewish population had moved on, and their place was taken by a new wave of refugees, Bangladeshis – many fleeing the war that led to the secession of the new Bangladesh from Pakistan.
Walk along Brick Lane today and you will see that some mosques carry a Star Of David above the door – testament to their previous lives as synagogues and the capacity of the area to welcome and absorb new religions and cultures.
On Brick Lane though, the Sunday morning market was a magnet for the new fascists of the National Front and, later, the British Movement and British National Party to hand out their literature of race hate.
But, just like in the 1930s, a new wave of defiance rose to meet them.
The late seventies saw the birth of the Anti Nazi League, Rock Against Racism and the anti-racist movement that eventually forced them off the streets.
The last ten years have demonstrated just how good the East End is at absorbing new religions, cultures and ideas – and how much the area gains from it.
As for the fascists – they’ve yet to learn the lessons
of history.

The recent nail bomb attack on Brick Lane confirms the activity of far right neo-Nazi groups in Tower Hamlets.
Although race hate incidents seem to have subsided recently, the East End is not without its fair share of race- related violence.
The British National Party (BNP), which hit the headlines in 1993 when it secured a council by-election victory in Millwall ward, is believed to be a major player in creating racial tension.
Anti-fascist magazine Searchlight gave us details of the BNP’s history and the origins of other organisations focused against Asians, blacks, Jews and other ethnic minorities.
“Formed in 1982, the BNP spent much of the 1980s in the shadow of the National Front (NF),” said the magazine.
“The BNP’s Millwall victory was achieved after several years of activity. “Campaigning under the slogan Rights for Whites, the BNP successfully galvanised electoral support with a public that had become disillusioned with the main political parties.
“However, the election victory was secured at a heavy local cost. The Rights for Whites campaign, launched in 1990 heralded a massive increase in racial violence throughout east London. While BNP members were personally responsible for only a fraction of these incidents, their political activity and direct scapegoating, coupled with equally racist national media contributed to an atmosphere of racial tension.”
“It was also in the early nineties that the Nazi group Combat 18 emerged out of the BNP’s stewarding group.”
“The 1,500 strong BNP now accepts that the majority of British people totally refute Nazi and anti-Semitic ideas.
“But the party is playing with words rather than substance and as night follows day, Nazism, and violence follow the BNP.”

The thought of corpses being dug up from a cemetery in the middle of the night makes the blood run cold. But it often happened in the Victorian East End.
In ill-lit streets around burial grounds at Whitechapel, Mile End and Bethnal Green, chilling tales were told of men carrying slumped shapes to a waiting horse and cart.
Hospitals were helped by an old law which allowed murderers’ bodies to be cut up for research by the Surgeons Company. After all, it was argued, the killers had it coming.
But London was at the heart of international medical research and would-be surgeons required at least a dozen bodies to complete their studies.
They had no other reliable source than shadowy figures, known as Resurrection Men, who roamed the graveyards at night with their shovels and were prepared to provide a freshly-buried corpse at the back door for £4.
Not the least of the attractions were teeth which could be made into dentures. A resurrectionist named Murphy is said to have earned £60 in one burial vault simply by going around, yanking out teeth.
The infamous Ben Crouch Gang used to pay bent grave-diggers in London to slip a fresh body from its coffin soon after mourners left the open graveside. The hole would be filled in with the corpse on top, under a thin layer of earth, to await “collection after dark.”

Grave robbers William Burke and Bill Hare also made a lucrative living selling corpses but went over the top by murdering at least 15 people to step up their supply.
They started their gruesome trade in Edinburgh, then moved to London in the 1820s where there was more demand. Burke was eventually hanged, largely on the evidence of his dim companion who survived to beg on East End streets for many years.
Burke confessed to the world at large after his conviction but was outraged by what he thought was a real wrong-doing. He claimed he had not been paid in full for one of his last bodies and wanted the balance to buy a decent coat for his execution.
Some undertakers took special precautions to thwart grave robbers. An example is recorded of 73-year-old Mary Mason, buried at Christ Church, Spitalfields, who had three iron bands fastened around her coffin. Another was chained to the wall.
Undertaker William Horne was so concerned about his own resting place, at Spital-fields in 1826, that he had three coffins, one inside the other. One was lead, another iron and the last one wood.
Death was almost as important as life to Victorians, and it was many years before fears of bodysnatching finally receded and relatives of the deceased slept soundly in their beds.
For further reading: Bodysnatchers by Martin Fido; and Life and Death in Spitalfields 1700-1850 by Margaret Cox.

Arthur Orton wasn’t a man born to great things but the Wapping butcher knew he wanted more than a lifetime selling sausages.
In 1852 18-year-old Arthur set sail for Australia, a new identity and one of the most costly, lengthy and extraordinary trials in legal history.
One of the novelties of the New World was that peers and paupers could rub shoulders as equals and Arthur befriended exiled Sir Alfred Tichborne, the 11th Baronet.
Alfred died in 1866 but never confided in Arthur the Tichborne family secrets, not least the “loss” of his elder brother Roger.
Sir Roger Doughty Tichborne had been born in Paris in 1829, 10 years before Alfred. And, after receiving his military commission in the Sixth Dragoons, he was expected to become the 11th baronet.
But Roger disliked military life, preferring to fritter the family fortune in the clubs of London with his friends.
He also had an eye for the ladies and soon a romance was blossoming with one Katherine Doughty. Her parents were appalled, not least by the fact that the dissolute Tichborne was Katherine’s first cousin.

The parents decided on a three-year wait before the two exchanged vows, reckoning that the feckless Tichborne would lose interest. The plan suited Roger perfectly, and he immediately made plans for a world tour.
The 24-year-old peer set sail for Rio de Janeiro in January 1853. From there he journeyed to New York, setting off on the SS Bella on 20 April 1854.
Young Tichborne never reached the US, the vessel capsizing due to a poorly balanced load of coffee. Around 40 passengers and crew were presumed lost when an empty lifeboat was found drifting a by a passing ship.
Weeks later the news reached the Tichborne estate back in England and the family lawyer’s set about executing Roger’s will, which he had completed before he set sail. Roger’s father inherited the estate but eight years later he too died and Roger’s younger brother stood in line to inherit Tichborne wealth.
But young Alfred was, if anything, even more feckless than his brother and mother, Lady Henrietta was determined he should not succeed his father.
Clutching at straws, and the rumour that Roger had survived the shipwreck, Henrietta placed advertisements in newspapers inviting information about her son’s whereabouts.
Glancing over a week old copy of the Times in a shanty hut in Wagga Wagga, Australia, one Thomas Castro’s sharp eye chanced on the name Tichborne. Castro was none other than Arthur Orton.
His plans for fame and fortune hadn’t panned out, and Orton was facing financial ruin.
Orton had not only met the late baronet years before but he had also met Sir Edward Doughty’s valet Bogle.
Orton decided on a bold gamble. Using Bogle as a go-between he travelled to Melbourne and passed himself off as the long-drowned Roger.
He returned to London, at Lady Henrietta’s expense, to meet his joyful mother.
Bizarrely, Lady Henrietta convinced herself that an obese Wapping butcher with an Australian accent was her slim, aesthetic and aristocratic son but other members of the family were not so easily fooled.
The case went before the London Court of Common Pleas on 11 May 1871. Almost three years, hundreds of witnesses and 10,000 pages of evidence later, the prosecution found Orton’s claim false.
The fact that he had forgotten any details of the first 16 years of his life and that he no longer had his school days’ tattoo of the initials RCT on his arm where just two damning pieces of evidence.
Orton got 14 years, serving 10 before his release in 1884. In poverty he sold his story to People magazine and he died on April Fool’s Day 1898.
The imposter was buried in a coffin bearing the curious legend: Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne. It seems the only person he successfully fooled was himself.

“Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green.
“Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government—which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence.
“Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.”
When the reporter and novelist Sax Rohmer wrote those words 80 years ago he was obviously not advancing the cause of racial tolerance too far.
Fear and mistrust
But in his portrayal of the evil criminal mastermind, he tapped into a strong vein of fear and mistrust of the Chinese community in the East End.
And in the novels and Hollywood films that followed, Rohmer not only made the mysterious Dr Fu-Manchu a worldwide name, he gave fame to Limehouse – the shadowy quarter from which the bad doctor sprung.
Rohmer first visited the East End in 1911, doing groundwork for a piece for the Daily Sketch. His brief was to discover the mysterious “Mr King”, a criminal boss who supposedly had tentacles in all the organised crime of the area but who had never been seen.
Rohmer never found Mr King, but claimed that tucked away in the labyrinthine streets of old Limehouse, he had met Fu-Manchu. That “meeting” was to make his name and his fortune.
Myth, intrigue, and a strong fictional tradition was closely linked in the public’s mind with Limehouse. The area had been a centre of barge and ship building for 500 years.

And over those centuries, one of the East End’s oldest villages built up a large “Lascar” population. That was a catch-all term for the Asian seamen who, having worked a passage to London, were often paid off as soon as they hit port. Many worked their way back but many stayed.
Limehouse Chinatown really got established around the 1860s and soon worked its way into popular fiction. Sherlock Holmes pursued his quarry here, and found rich young men slumming it in Limehouse opium dens.
Oscar Wilde’s dissolute Dorian Gray did the same and Hollywood producer DW Griffith travelled the area, researching his film Broken Blossoms.
The Victorian newspapers played it to the hilt, with reports of the yellow peril, of inscrutable orientals running their opium dens.
Young white women were, of course, always at risk of being drugged and spirited away into the white slave trade!
Certainly, by the turn of the century, opium could be bought over the counter and was openly smoked, not just by locals but by the wealthy coming down from the West End to taste the mysteries of oriental Limehouse.
During the First World War around 4,000 Chinese people were living in the East End but the numbers were soon to dwindle as fear of the visitors translated into an ugly backlash.
Anti-Chinese riots broke out in 1919, as locals swallowed the yellow peril scare stories in the papers.
Deportation
The Government came down hard on the Chinese – hard labour followed by deportation was a typical sentence for possession of the now outlawed opium. Many were deported for far less, such as gambling on the game of puck-apu.
In 1934, more brutal action was taken. The Council widened Limehouse Causeway, sweeping away the maze of houses and shops that gave the area its mystery. The Blitz did more damage – many Chinese names are on casualty lists from the bombing raids in 1940.
And the building of the Limehouse Link finally destroyed the atmosphere and topography of the old hamlet. The fog-bound labyrinth of Limehouse was swept away – and with it the ghosts of Chinatown.

Cable Street occupies a pivotal position in local history as the site of east enders’ great stand against the fascists of Oswald Moseley. But almost a century before Blackshirt violence failed to drive the Jews out of the East End, another immigrant population was fighting off persecution.

By the middle of the 1800s, Knockfergus, as the eastern end of Cable Street was known, was an Irish colony. This was the hothouse age of British industry. Most settlers worked in the booming coal industry that flourished around the docks, as steam replaced sail and the railways gradually snaked over the whole of the British Isles. Irish immigrants may well have been attracted by the name – an ironic twist since it was called Knockfergus by English soldiers of Elizabeth I’s army, returning in the 1580s after their invasion of Gaelic Ireland.

In the 18th Century, the influx of Irish people, with a different religion and language, had already led to conflicts with some local people and in 1736 there were riots in Spitalfields. In 1780 came the Gordon Riots – the most violent yet. The Government had passed the Relief Act in 1778, removing the harsh anti-Catholic laws of the late 1600s. Riots in Glasgow and Edinburgh persuaded the Government not to extend the law to Scotland, but in London there was strong anti-Catholic feeling too.

The Protestant Association got up a petition and persuaded the eccentric MP Lord George Gordon to head a march on Parliament to present it. On the same day, Catholic chapels across London came under attack. Two in Stepney were wrecked, as clashes between protesters and the 12,000 troops called in by the King spiralled out of control.

London was in turmoil for ten days as the houses of Catholics and supposed sympathisers were burned to the ground. When the smoke cleared the scale of the horror became apparent. 700 were dead, 450 arrested and 160 of those indicted. 25 people were executed for their role in the riots, the Lord Mayor of London was fined £1,000 for criminal negligence and Gordon tried for High Treason. The MP was acquitted and carried on his maverick way, converting to Judaism before being imprisoned in 1787 for a libel on Marie Antoinette. He died in Newgate Gaol in 1793, a broken man.

But Gordon’s bloody riot hadn’t purged anti-Catholic feeling in London. By the mid-1800s, Europe was in the grip of revolution, with the crown heads of Europe toppling at the guillotine and the scaffold. For some, foreigners equalled Catholics equalled revolution. The Irish, meanwhile – with centuries of history as a staunchly Catholic country and of resistance against often brutal British rule – were moving to London in their thousands to escape the ravages of the Potato Famine. The 1851 census showed 3,444 Irish immigrants living in the slum parish of St George’s in the East.

The England of the time was obsessed with religion. Its poetry, art and literature reflect the fears of some that Catholicism was going to usurp the established Church of England. But as the century drew to a close, Catholicism became part of English life once again – and the east end of Cable Street just one more part of London with a strong Irish tradition.

On July 9, 1864, Thomas Briggs decided to travel on the new train line from Fenchurch Street to Hackney Wick. It was the worst decision of his life and also his last. Unluckily for 70-year-old Mr Briggs, his sole travelling companion was Franz Muller. Before their short trip was over both would enter the annals of criminal history. Muller was to commit the first-ever murder on a British train, Thomas was to be the first victim. When travellers boarded the train at the old Bow station, they found the carriage empty, save for a black bag, an expensive walking cane, a hat and a huge pool of blood. Briggs was discovered dying on the track between Hackney Wick and Bow. But of his assailant, there was no sign. Muller, a 25-year-old German tailor, had failed financially in his homeland and again in London. He was now planning a new life in America. The gold watch and chain he had snatched from Mr Briggs’ was to help pay for his ticket.

It looked an impossible case, but Chief Inspector William Tanner of Scotland Yard thought differently. He traced the stolen chain to a jeweller in Cheapside called John Death. Death remembered his customer – a young man with a German accent. The hat gave Tanner another clue. He knew it hadn’t belonged to Briggs and the ace detective managed to trace it to a German tailor, one Franz Muller. A search of the killer’s lodgings revealed that he had made a hasty getaway – but Mr Tanner was in luck again. A friend of Muller’s at the lodging house told the policeman that the German was on board the passenger ship Victoria, steaming towards a new life in New York. Mr Tanner and Sergeant George Clarke raced to Southampton and boarded the City of Manchester. The quicker ship reached New York two weeks before the Victoria and the pair simply had to sit back and wait for their quarry to arrive. The persistent pair found the gold watch in Muller’s luggage along with Briggs’ hat, which the killer had snatched by mistake as he fled the murder scene.

Muller’s trial opened at the Old Bailey on October 27, 1864. Mr Baron Martin presided and the Solicitor General, Sir Robert Collier, had the job of prosecuting the German. His counsel, Serjeant John Humffreys Parry, was a redoubtable defence lawyer but even he could not argue with the evidence of the Briggs Hat, which Muller had cut down by several inches in order to disguise its appearance. The hat’s fame spread well beyond the Bailey. The new style became a fashion item and was adopted by fashionable young gentlemen of the day. That was probably of little comfort to Muller. The jury found the evidence so compelling that they took just 15 minutes to reach a guilty verdict. Muller was hanged on November 14, 1864, but his fame didn’t end there. Fears over the safety of single carriages were so great in the wake of the crime that the railway companies began to cut peepholes between compartments which became known as “Muller Lights”.

With the death of Charlie Kray on April 4, London’s most notorious gangland family is now down to one, with Reggie Kray serving out his life sentence in Parkhurst Prison. Charlie died an inmate, too. He returned to jail at an age when most of us would be playing with our grandkids and tending the garden – caught out by a pension plan that involved smuggling illegal drugs into Britain. But who was this lesser-known third member of ‘The Firm’? The dapper figure who appears as a sidekick in David Bailey’s classic 1960s photos of the twins. An older brother who lived in the youngsters’ shadows. The brains behind a brutal gangland machine. An organiser and businessman who professed to hate violence.

Charlie and Violet Kray had their first son in 1926 and named him after his dad. It was a tough time, when the East End was ravaged by the Depression. Charlie Senior led a peripatetic lifestyle, working on the ‘knock’ – travelling the country, knocking on doors, and buying and selling the antiques, gold and silver the owners would show him. But if money was tight, the family’s house in Gorusch Street, Hackney, was always spick and span. And young Charlie was always well turned out for his classes at Laburnum Street School.
Charlie was raised on his grandad and dad’s tales of boxing. Grandad Lee was a bare-knuckle fighter in Victoria Park, and Charlie Senior would take his son to local bouts. As he grew, Charlie, who was a natural athlete, became a keen fighter himself, as well as playing in the school football team and becoming an accomplished runner.
Charlie had a little sister who tragically died, but he could not have been more pleased when his mum gave birth to twins. The seven-year-old would push Ronnie and Reggie round the East End streets in their pram, and loved it as people bent over the pram to admire the pair. In 1939, the Krays moved to 178 Vallance Road, Bethnal Green, and – apart from a year as evacuees in Suffolk – that remained their home. Charlie Senior was now even more absent than before: much to his disgust he had been conscripted into the Army and quickly went AWOL. The Kray family soon got used to the police knocking on 178 in the early hours hoping to catch the deserter.
It was probably then that Charlie first took on his mantle of man of the house – a paternalistic relationship to the twins that he never really let go. He was now working as a messenger at Lloyds in the City, and giving as much cash to Violet as he could. Charlie joined the Navy, boxing for the Senior Service at welterweight, but terrible headaches led to him being medically discharged due to chronic migraines. His boxing career was coming to an end, too. Back in Civvy Street he lost a professional bout and promptly retired, devoting himself to managing his brothers’ fighting careers.
Charlie already knew there was something different about these boys, saying: “Sometimes they looked up at me in a strange, adult sort of way, and I’d have this weird feeling that they knew all about me and what was going on around them. “Their dark eyes seemed to lack that childlike innocence. It was as if each boy knew more than he ought. The mental and physical relationship between them was intense.”
In their 1960s heyday, Charlie was always the brother in the background – organising, handling the money, the brains behind the operation according to many. Detective Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read, who put the three away in the late 60s, said: “When the twins were in trouble, Charlie was the first person they’d turn to. He was clever but never violent. All he had to say was he was Charlie Kray, and people looked over his shoulder and wondered where the twins were.” But Charlie got sucked in to the violence, being jailed for 10 years as an accessory to the murder of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie. A murder charge on Frank Mitchell was dropped.
Out of prison he reinvented himself as a businessman, brokering the deal for the 1990 Krays movie, starring Spandau Ballet stars Gary and Martin Kemp. Martin, now a star in BBC soap EastEnders, said: “We would not have been able to make the film without him.” But the money was quickly spent and, in desperation, Charlie got involved in drug smuggling. It was a disastrous decision and, in 1997, he went back to jail as Britain’s oldest top security prisoner, protesting his innocence. The calling of ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser as a character witness failed to sway the judge; neither did his own counsel describing him as “a pathetic old has been”. Charlie died peacefully, his family around him, and shortly after a visit from his beloved younger brother Reg. He will have a traditional East End state funeral at Chingford Cemetery on Wednesday, April 19.

The death of Reggie Kray on 1 October , 2000 wrote the final chapter in one of the most enduring stories in the annals of East End crime. For nearly 30 years, Kray brothers Ronnie, Reggie and Charlie had either been campaigning for release from prison, or trying to stay out of it. Now, in the course of five short years, all three of the notorious founders of The Firm have died. Just five months after attending older brother Charlie’s funeral, Reggie died of cancer at a hotel in Thorpe St Andrew, Norfolk.At his trial for the murder of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie, the judge recommended he serve no less than 30 years. An embittered Reggie Kray was still in prison 32 years later feeling, with some justification, that a man with a lesser reputation would have been freed years earlier. Reggie’s final incarceration in 1969 brought an end to a career of crime that had stretched over 20 years. The twins had grown up in Burdett Road, raised by tough matriach Violet, while their dad Charlie spent much of his time away, working around the country.

They may have had their disagreements with their dad, but one thing they inherited from him was a taste for boxing. Charlie Snr had been a successful bare knuckle street fighter and the twins, along with their father figure, Charlie Jr, soon excelled in the boxing ring. By the early fifties they were making a living in the East End protection rackets – a profitable business that was interrupted by their being called up for national service. They were hardly ideal recruits, spending as much time in the glasshouse for fighting as they did on the parade ground. Back on Civvy Street, they took over the Regal billiard hall on Mile End Road.They were soon making their name with their own spectacularly brutal brand of violence. When a Maltese gang tried to cull protection money from Ronnie, he cutlassed them. Word and fear quickly spread.

By 1957, the brothers had their own club, the Double R, in Bow Road. They protected their growing assets with a ring of fear, recruiting a band of Scottish and Cockney hardman who would feed the Kray mystique. Such was the fear they generated that, when Ronnie shot George Cornell dead in the Blind Beggar pub in 1966 (Cornell was played by East End actor Steven Berkoff in the Krays movie), the police could initially find not a single witness. It was a pointless killing and another was to be the brothers’ undoing. Jack The Hat was a petty crook who had supposedly been badmouthing the Kray family. In revenge, the twins lured him to a party in Hackney, where Reggie stabbed him to death.

The twins were sent down. Ronnie was to die in Broadmoor and Charlie was sent back to prison in 1997 for his part in a cocaine smuggling plot. Ironically, Reg was the only one of the three to die on the outside. The pair grew in fame and notoriety as the years went by. First there was a musical, then the film The Krays starring brothers Gary and Martin (EastEnders) Kemp. There were innumerable books, and celebrity ‘friends’ by the score. Prison certainly gave Reg time to reflect on his life. He spent his latter years embracing Christianity and working on his writing. He wanted to be remembered, he said, ‘first as a man, then as an author, poet and philosopher’. Most of all, he craved freedom and a home far from the East End.

But when the last in a long line of intransigent home secretaries did finally free him, it was in recognition that Kray was a dying man. Reggie had long dreamed of seeing out his declining years in a beautiful country cottage, saying recently: “I want to be able to sit out and smell the fresh air, then I will really feel free. “I might not have long left to enjoy my freedom but that will mean I can die happy. I will savour every moment.’ There weren’t too many moments to savour. Reggie enjoyed just 35 days of freedom after his 32 years in jail.

More stories on the Krays.