The Kray Twins - London Gangsters

by Read Listen Learn


Who were the Kray Twins?

On 9th March, 1966, in the east of London, the pub was quiet as the evening began. In the corner, there was an old man reading a newspaper, by the door was a young couple. Others sat here and there and, at the bar, there stood a hard-looking man called George Cornell, chatting a little to the barmaid. At this moment, Ronnie Kray walked in with another man, went straight to Cornell, said, ´Well, look who´s here´, then took a pistol out of his pocket and shot Cornell between the eyes. Ronnie and the other man left. Cornell lay dead on the floor, a pool of blood growing around him.

The police arrived quickly. It didn´t take them long to identify the dead man as a violent gangster or Ronnie Kray, who, with his twin brother Reggie, ran the criminal underworld of London, as the gunman. The problem was that all the people in the pub who had seen the killing had either run off immediately to avoid the police or, if, like the barmaid, they couldn´t run off, said they were in the toilet when the shooting happened and, so, missed seeing it altogether. This was something new for the police. That eight, maybe ten, ordinary Londoners should witness a cold-blooded murder from a few metres away and yet be so scared of the killer and his criminal organisation that they wouldn´t help the police in any way. Something had to be done. A special detective team started looking into all of the Kray twins’ many criminal activities.

But who were the Kray twins and how had they become so powerful and deadly? They were born on 24th October, 1934, in the east of London. Their mother, Violet, was a housewife and their father, Charles, was a clever businessman who, by buying and selling gold, had become quite rich. Or rich compared to his neighbours in this very poor district of London. He wasn´t a criminal but he knew all the criminals in his area and many others besides.

There were many boxers in the twins´ family and their grandfather, Jimmy Lee, had been a champion. The twins began training as boxers from the age of eight or nine, perhaps earlier. They also liked going out looking for fights with other groups of boys on the empty bombsites of war-time London. The twins usually fought against larger groups of older boys and always won. They soon had a reputation in their area.

In 1952, the twins, like every other eighteen-year-old in Britain, had to serve in the army. They didn´t want to. Their father had avoided the army all through the war and was still wanted by the police. Again and again, the twins ran away or attacked their sergeants. After about a year, the army let them go. The twins returned to London with nothing to do. They were eighteen, very fit and hard and filled with self-confidence. They knew only one thing for sure – they wanted to be gangsters.

The Krays often visited the clubs and dance halls of London. They neither drank nor danced. At first, they just wanted to watch but, little by little, they began to go to more and more places. Wherever the twins went, there would be a lot of fights. The twins were never involved. When they looked after a place, the trouble stopped and never returned and the business became profitable. Places that the Krays did not own began to pay them. This guaranteed that there would be no trouble. If other criminals or hooligans came to look for trouble, the twins knew exactly what to do and the trouble would end very quickly. This kind of crime is called a protection racket. It would be the Krays’ main way of making money and of controlling the criminals of London. The twins, however, worked in every profitable form of crime. Sometimes they just took money from other criminals like a tax. Everyone paid.

Their empire grew until they controlled the criminal underworld of London and many other British cities. They had all the right characteristics for success as gangsters. They were very good at hurting people. They had a wide range of criminal contacts through their family and, most important, their mother was proud of their life of crime. Though they were identical twins, there were some important differences between Ronnie and Reggie. Ronnie was gay at a time when it was still illegal and this gave him contacts at all levels of society, including aristocrats and politicians. Ronnie also paid gay teenagers to give him useful information for blackmail or to watch people for him. He knew at any moment exactly where his enemies were. This is how he was able find Cornell so quickly when he wanted to kill him.

Reggie was not gay. In fact, he was considered a playboy. He also had a great deal of charm and his father´s talent for making money. This was not true of Ronnie who had increasing psychiatric problems. He was a paranoid schizophrenic with homicidal thoughts. He was deeply suspicious of people and often wanted to kill them. He kept lists of names of people he meant to murder. Some of the people on the list disappeared. This made him very useful to his gang but made trouble with the police inevitable. The reason it took the police so long to do anything was because almost all the Krays´ victims were other violent criminals.

For about ten years or more, The Krays ruled London with the fist, the knife and the gun. The twins had ways of making dead bodies disappear. In the end, they were beaten by the careful police work of the investigation team. But they had also made many enemies and lived in a world of drink and amphetamines. The whole gang was arrested at dawn in 1969. Some said that Reggie would enter a special plea because he was the twin of someone who was criminally insane. Some said that the twins would name their friends in high society, causing scandal after scandal. They did neither. They believed that, when the moment came, you should take your time in prison like a man. They were given a thirty year minimum sentence. Ronnie died in prison in 1995 and Reggie was released about six weeks before he died in 2000. Both twins were given large funerals in the east of London, where they are still seen as heroes by many.