His gangster boss Charles Richardson remembered him as one of the most polite, mild-mannered men Ive met but he has a bad temper on him sometimes. At her kitchen table, Alice would teach her girls how to roll furs on the hanger and shove them down their drawers, which the gang called 'clouting'. It was just what we knew and to be honest, we loved it.. He spent 42 years behind bars before achieving a certain cult status in later life as an author, after-dinner speaker, television pundit and tour guide. Aged seven, Ms Pitts was stealing milk and bread to provide food for her five siblings. They set up a fruit machine enterprise, which they would sell to pub landlords, to cover up their crimes. In the early half of the 20th century one queen, Diamond, regularly appeared in the press where she was once described as a 'tall and commanding figure with a cool demeanour'. They bought fur coats, jewellery and went dancing in West End nightclubs. However, according to a new documentary, he is clearly not going gentle into any good night. Newsquest Media Group Ltd, Loudwater Mill, Station Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. He was released from prison in 1985.[17]. Frankie Fraser, born December 13 1923, died November 26 2014, Frankie Fraser at Repton Boxing Club in 2005, Rishi Sunak to host Coronation Big Lunch at Downing Street, Erik ten Hag: Man Utd were a mess with no rules Casemiro has helped sort them out, How Ollie Lawrence became England's missing piece, Harlequins set attendance record but rampant Exeter spoil Twickenham party, Marcus Smith sends England message to Steve Borthwick with man-of-the-match performance, Super-sub Reiss Nelson completes thrilling Arsenal fightback. By the time of the Swinging Sixties, she was drinking champagne with the Krays. "Maybe he was bored with going to prison," Ronnie Richardson, Charlie's widow, tells the programme. ', As the photographs show, the women often wore beautifully designed hats , coats and dresses in order to fit in, known as 'putting on the posh'. She liked to earn her own money and paid her own way quite something for a young woman in the 1930s and 1940s. "You name it, we nicked it," he says. It was not that he thought he was Napoleon. A witness changed his testimony and the charges were eventually dropped, though Fraser still received a five-year sentence for affray. But few would perhaps know about the equally incredible lives led by his three sisters. She got six months in jail, for stealing stockings from Bentalls in Kingston upon Thames. They didnt go to jail, they did bird or got a lagging. Fraser received seven years. He stopped following a warning from the Kray Twins. A Hoisters' Code of loyalty dictated rules such as having an early night before 'going shopping', handing over all they pinched to the Queen in return for generous weekly wages, and never stealing each other's boyfriends (bad for morale). [3][4], Frankie Fraser was born on Cornwall Road in Waterloo, London. Fraser was the youngest of five children who were growing up in poverty - he first turned to crime at the tender age of 10, alongside his sister Eva. He received a further five years when, in 1970, he was acquitted of incitement to murder but convicted of grievous bodily harm after he had led the Parkhurst prison riot the previous year. Fraser was part of Britain's Underworld between the 1940s-1960's. Fraser was jailed along with other members of the Richardson gang for violently punishing people whom the Richardsons believed owed them money. Their loot would be stuffed into these 'hoister's drawers', allowing the women to leave the stores undetected. Mason was found, barely alive, wearing only his underpants and wrapped in a blanket, on the steps of the London Hospital in Whitechapel. During his time in prison, Fraser was involved in a number of riots and frequently fought with prison officers, fellow inmates and governors. For a time he was engaged to Marilyn Wisbey, daughter of the Great Train Robber Tommy Wisbey, with whom he briefly ran a massage parlour in Islington, in which Fraser made the tea. His fourth son, Francis, in Frasers joking words, let me down by having no criminal career at all. Eric wasnt a bad fellow, Fraser later explained, but that particular night he was bang out of order.. Facebook gives people the power. One such member was Lilian Goldstein, who was known as the Bob-Haired Bandit. It has emerged that the former gangland enforcer, who has spent 42 years in prison for 26. At his funeral, one of his old prison friends summed him up: Whether he has gone upstairs or downstairs, I cant say, but wherever he is, you can be sure of this: he will be protesting about the conditions.. She was one of the top thieves during the war. As a young woman, Eva became an accomplished hoister (shoplifter). As people facedblackouts, rationing and a lack of professional policing due toconscription, Fraser had ample opportunities for criminal activities, such as stealing from houses while the occupants were hiding for safety in air-raid shelters. Bought stolen goods and sold them on in a role known as 'the fence'. It sounds like the worst days of Prohibition in Chicago rather than London in 1956, complained Mr Justice Donovan, but words were wasted on Fraser. Former Northern Echo journalist Beezy Marsh has written a book about London gangster Mad Frankie Fraser. He built a reputation as an enforcer and strongman for various gang leaders, including Billy Hill, self-styled King of Britains Underworld in the 1940s and 1950s and, in the 1960s, the Richardson brothers. By 20 she was leader of The Forty Thieves and wore a row of diamond rings that acted as a knuckle duster. Shortly afterwards, Fraser kidnapped Eric Mason, a Kray gang member, outside the Astor Club in Berkeley Square, with even direr consequences. The business came to an end in 1966 when a fight in a Catford night club, Mr Smiths, left a Kray associate, Dickie Hart, dead, and Richardson and Fraser, who was charged with Harts murder, in prison. She operated out of Walworth, South East London and her home was called an 'Aladdin's cave of loot'. The gang's ringleaders appeared in a secret register of criminals, that is now kept by the National Archives, which then existed to help police track down the most persistent offenders. He was still touring clubs and pubs in 2011. The cells did not have a reforming effect on her character or on that of her gang leader Diamond, who was arrested on numerous occasions over the following decade. The memoir KEEPING MY SISTER'S SECRETS, (Pan Macmillan 2017) tells the moving story of three sisters born into poverty in 1930s London and their fight for a survival through a decade of social upheaval. Her wartime experience was spent on the switchboards during the Blitz. When Frankie was in prison, Eva helped to run his protection rackets in Soho and even sent her daughters to collect payments, as the police would not stop a child. When the heat from the cops in London got too much, they headed off to the Costa del Crime to seek their fortunes there. Frankie Fraser was known anotorious torturer and hitman, who worked as an enforcer for some of London's most feared gang leaders. Both Frank and his sister, Eva, whom he adored, inherited their fathers features and his jet-black hair. He was said to have pulled out the teeth of one of the victims with a pair of pliers. The following year, the British mobsterJack Spotand wife Rita were attacked on Billy Hill's say-so, by Fraser, Bobby Warren and at least half a dozen other men. She had known their father, who was a fence (seller of stolen goods) or a 'thieves' ponce' - he would put up the money to finance criminal operations - which was a career on which she looked down. In later life he would say that had there been an elder criminal member of the family to advise him, he would not have served his sentences in what was called the hard way. He regularly led conducted tours of East End crime scenes, invariably ending up in the Blind Beggar pub where Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell dead. On 26 November, Fraser died after his family made the decision to turn off his life-support machine. He then worked for legendary Soho crime boss Billy Hill in the 1950s, earning the nickname razor Fraser for his attacks on those who crossed him, before becoming embroiled in protection rackets in the 1960s, rising to the position of the Boss of Soho. As her reign came to an end, Forty Thieves queen Diamondpassed on her 'wisdom' to a future queen, Shirley Pitts. As he languished in jail, his sons David and Patrick and their older brother, Frank Jnr currently living quietly on the Costa del Sol carved their own careers as bank robbers and jewellery thieves in 1970s London. The raids seem often to have been left to chance, and he was particularly unfortunate with cars. Over the last decade or so he was on the cabaret circuit and ran gangland tours of the East End, taking in such sights as the Blind Beggar pub, where Ronnie Kray shot dead George Cornell, one of the Richardson gang, in 1966. Here are some pictures of Eva Fraser of the Forty Thieves and her sister Kathleen. Tony Lambrianou, a one-time henchman of the rival Kray brothers, was also a fan. She helped him sell on his loot. Fraser was placed into an induced coma, but just five days later, on November 26, 2014, Fraser passed away after his family made the decision to turn off his life-support machine. People shook his hand in the street, others kissed him or asked for his autograph and taxi drivers honked their horns. 42 years a lag She had died in. She was an alcoholic and onceran out of a jeweller with a tray of 34 diamond rings and bumped straight into a policeman. Although he was conscripted, Fraser later boasted that he had never once worn the uniform, preferring to ignore call-up papers, desert and resume his criminal activities. It has emerged that the former gangland enforcer, who has spent 42 years in prison for 26 offences, has been issued with an asbo after an incident in his residential accommodation. He was a rock.. Although he was acquitted, a further five years were added to his sentence. Comments have been closed on this article. His mother was of Norwegian-Irish stock and his father was half Native American. The following year he was involved in a torture trial the Old Bailey, where members of the gang were charged with electrocuting, whipping and burning those disloyal to them. [8] Although his parents were not criminals, Fraser turned to crime aged 10 with his sister Eva, to whom he was close. 'Any girl worth her salt in South London in those days was a. ", Of the war years, when he was heavily involved in theft from bombed-out stores, he says: "You wanted to win the war but you wanted it to go on for ever. What Fraser invariably threatened was violence. However, it was the during the 'torture trial' of the Richardson gang in 1967, that Frankie Fraser become notorious nationally. A ponce was someone who thieves looked down on, because they lived by taking a cut from someone elses earnings. His decision to join the Richardsons rather than their rivals, the Krays, has been described as "like China getting the atom bomb". With Warren at his heels, Fraser ambushed Spot in a Paddington street, knocking him to the ground with a shillelagh. We'll never send you spam or share your email address. What saved him I think was the branch; it was supple and it bent. Although Lawton survived, the dog died. Photograph: Alex Segre/Rex. We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The notorious English gangster turned to a life of a crime and before he knew it, he was behind bars. He was a deserter during the Second World War, escaping from his barracks . She once stabbed a policeman in the eye with a hatpin, blinding him. An early nickname Razor Fraser reflected his penchant for shivving his enemies faces with a cut-throat blade. 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