The death of Charlie Kray
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.
Tags: charlie kray, east end of london, kray twins, mad frankie fraser