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A frustratingly brief piece pops up on the radar courtesy of the Press Association, saying that seven paintings by the late East End gangster Ronnie Kray are set to be auctioned. However there’s very little in the way of what, where and by who, so if anybody knows anything, please post a comment to this story.

The works, which date from the early 1970s, in the early years of Ronnie’s life sentence, will be auctioned in Sudbury, Suffolk, on 26 July. Ronnie, who died aged 61 in 1995, and his identical twin Reggie (who died a few years later, as did older brother Charlie), was a terrifyingly violent man who used his years of incarceration to explore the other side of his character, through books, writing, art and a deal of spiritual self examination. I don’t know if the paintings are any good, but they should be interesting to see.

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.