The nurses were very kind. ‘Don’t worry, Charlie,’ they said. ‘He won’t be disturbed. We’ll leave him.’
Ronnie stayed in that little room for four hours.
That afternoon the welfare officer at Parkhurst rang me to say he’d broken the news to Reggie.
‘How is he?’ I asked.
‘Better now,’ the officer said. ‘He broke down. But I told him you’ll be here tomorrow and he’s waiting to see you. He’ll feel better when you’re here.’
Someone else telling him was not the same as me, though. When Diana and I met him in a private room at the prison, Reggie broke his heart. And, of course, it started Di and me off again.
Tragedy always brings people closer together and I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to my brothers than those two days when we shared the same grief.
We didn’t want a circus. We wanted a funeral our Mum would have been proud of, a funeral people would remember. George English, an undertaker from Hoxton, had buried my grandparents and I knew he would do things the way we wanted. Ronnie and Reggie were given permission to attend the funeral at Chingford Mount in Essex. It would be the first time they had seen the outside world in fourteen years.
Crowds packed the streets from my mother’s flat through the East End. The media brought out many out of curiosity, I suppose, but hundreds came out of respect; not only for my mother, but for the family as a whole. The number of wreaths amazed us: they filled eight cars. So many friends were there: from people my mum had known all her life, to some she had met through her sons in recent years. Diana Dors was there with her husband, dear Alan Lake, and Andrew Ray, the actor.
And so, of course, were the police. I don’t know what they thought was going to happen, but for a couple of hours that afternoon of 24 August the village of Chingford looked like a setting for a war movie. Police on foot and on motorbikes lined the main street. A helicopter circled noisily overhead. There were even two officers in trees with walkie-talkies.
When we were all assembled in the tiny church of St John’s, Ronnie was brought in, then Reggie, each handcuffed to a giant policeman. The one escorting Reggie was no less than six feet seven! I had reserved the front row to the right of the nave for the twins, just in front of my old man, Diana, myself and Gary. But Ronnie was led to the front row on the left. He listened to the service for his dead mother out of sight and touch of his family. Reggie sat in front of us.
After the service, the twins were led out swiftly and taken to Chingford Mount police station. While their mother was being lowered into her grave, the twins sat in a room, surrounded by fifty coppers.
The old man was marvellous that day. He was desperately ill, but he managed to stand up in the church and at the graveside. He was very proud; if anyone tried to help him, he’d pull his arm away. He wanted to do things by himself, even though he wasn’t strong enough. How he managed to get through it all, I don’t know.
He was terribly upset by all the police fuss; he knew it was all unnecessary. I tried to convince him everything had gone well, that Mum would have been pleased, but he felt it was too much like a circus. As we left the graveside he said firmly, ‘If anything happens to me, I don’t want all this.’
The twins made sure that request was granted. When the old man went the following April each one decided independently not to go to the funeral. They wanted to, of course, but they didn’t want a repeat performance. At the time, officials at Broadmoor and Parkhurst rang me to say that permission would be given. I told them the twins wouldn’t be going and it threw them back a bit. They didn’t expect that.
But then they didn’t understand the twins. They still don’t. If anyone in authority had the slightest clue what my brothers are about, our mother’s funeral would have been handled differently and given the dignity and respect that she deserved and we all wanted.
How daft and unnecessary to separate the twins from each other and their family, and to handcuff them to strangers throughout the most harrowing ordeal of their lives. How irresponsible and wasteful to employ enough men to control a football match. And how crazy and insensitive to banish the twins from the graveside and guard them with fifty men in a police station while their mother was being buried.
The government and its servants were more concerned that August day with a massive, well-orchestrated propaganda exercise; a show of strength to the nation for reasons known only to themselves. I don’t know how much the whole business cost the taxpayer: £30,000 has been mentioned. But what I do know – and what the authorities themselves should have known if they truly believe in penal reform – is that Messrs Ronald and Reginald Kray could have been trusted to go to that funeral on their own. And to return afterwards.
They respected and adored their mother too much even to consider doing anything else.
Respect was something Mum had always commanded. She had a wonderfully sunny attitude to life, always laughing, always happy. I never once heard her criticize anybody or complain. As a woman she was immensely popular: always upbeat and chatty, but never gossipy. As a mother she was unbeatable, simply the tops. And I have her to thank for giving me a wonderful, happy and secure childhood in an East End that suffered as much as anywhere from the Depression that bit in to Britain in the late twenties and thirties. Hungry children roamed around Hackney in rags, stealing food from barrows and shops. But I was always well fed and dressed in smart, clean clothes; one vivid memory is of being taken for a walk in a strikingly fashionable sailor suit and noticing other children with holes in their trousers.
Millions throughout the country were penniless, but my old man made sure there was always money in our home in Gorsuch Street, off Hackney Road. He was a dealer who called on houses buying up gold and silver – anything of value, in fact. ‘On the knocker’ it was called. And he was good at it. The job meant he was away from home a lot; when he wasn’t ‘on the knocker’ he was selling the goods on the street stalls that had been in his family for fifty years. And even when he was at home he went down the pub nearly every night, like most men at that time. It didn’t bother Mum; she seemed happy to stay at home looking after me and go out with him just once or twice a month.
The old man was sport-mad and was chuffed when I was picked to play football for Laburnum Street School. He always made sure I had the right gear, and when he came to watch I’m sure he took an extra pride in seeing that his kid was one of the best-dressed players on the pitch. Boxing was his passion, though, and when he wasn’t in the pub he would go to professional contests at nearby Hoxton Baths, or other venues. Sometimes, he would take me. I can remember sitting in the crowd in my sailor suit, entranced by the sight of giants thumping hell out of each other.
The old man’s father, who ran a stall in Hoxton, could handle himself. He was known as ‘Big’ Jimmy Kray and was afraid of nobody. I used to sit on his knee at home as he told me thrilling stories of famous boxers he had known, including Hoxton’s own hero, Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis, who became world lightweight champion. Often I’d go to bed, my six-year-old head filled both with these stories and with the real thing I’d seen with Dad, and I would dream of standing in a ring, the treasured Lonsdale belt round my middle, as the cheering crowd hailed me Champion of the World.
The brutality of East End life, where most disputes were settled with fists, rubbed off on the children: it was not uncommon for two tiny tearaways to slug it out with the venom of the fighters I’d seen in the ring. I was one of them. I didn’t get involved too often but I quickly learned how to handle myself. Mum didn’t approve of fighting, however, and wasn’t too impressed that I’d inherited Grandad’s natural boxing ability. Whenever I had a scrap at school I made sure I tidied myself up before going home.
In 1932, we moved to Stean Street, the other side of Kingsland Street. Just