He shot, slashed, stabbed and axed. Beezy a former Sunday Times journalist whose biography Mad Frank & Sons was published last year was given unprecedented access to interview the family and learn about the three bold women, who grew up in Howley Terrace, in Waterloo during the 1930s. [9] ", 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. While the award-winning TV show Peaky Blinders was inspired by the all-male Brummagem Boys gang from the same period, the Forty Thieves make some of even their escapades seem tame by comparison. 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. By Emer Scully and Beezy Marsh for MailOnline, Published: 10:41 GMT, 4 November 2021 | Updated: 13:07 GMT, 4 November 2021. Although his parents were not criminals, Fraser turned to crime aged 10 with his sister Eva, to whom he was close. 'In fact, she was one of the people who spotted his talent for stealing after he pinched a cigarette machine from a hotel as a small boy. In the second part, she reveals how Frank wasnt the only member of his family with a chequered past. Fraser was acquitted but received five years for affray. Nevertheless his campaigns and, on the outside, those of Eva, did bring the attention of the general public to the unpalatable conditions in which prisoners served then their sentences. Their alleged specialities included pulling teeth out using pliers, cutting off toes using bolt cutters and nailing victims to floors using 6-inch nails. Fraser, who was jailed for 10 years in the so-called "torture trial" in 1967, is now frail and in poor health. Fraser was jailed along with other members of the Richardson gang for violently punishing people whom the Richardsons believed owed them money. Hughes was famed for her red hair, a love of drink and a violent temper. Fraser himself was accused of pulling out the teeth of victims with a pair of pliers. Shortly afterwards, Fraser kidnapped Eric Mason, a Kray gang member, outside the Astor Club in Berkeley Square, with even direr consequences. The Soho gang boss Billy Hill - brother of the fiery Maggie Hughes - was also careful not to encroach too much on their territory because he respected their right to earn their own money, free from male interference. Had it all gone to plan, she could have inhabited a very different side of the West End to her little sister Eva. Shegot her first criminal record aged just 14 and, in 1923, she was jailed after running out of a jeweller's with a tray of 34 diamond rings straight into the arms of a policeman. A feature film production is currently[when?] The gang probably had its roots in the Victorian slums around Seven Dials, near Covent Garden, infamous in Dickens's day. Frankie Frasers wife Doreen, with whom he had four sons, died in 1999. His fourth son, Francis, in Frasers joking words, let me down by having no criminal career at all. Please report any comments that break our rules. [23] In 1991, Fraser was shot in the head from close range in an apparent murder attempt outside the Turnmills Club in Clerkenwell, London. In 1996, he played (his friend) William Donaldson's guide to Marbella in the infamous BBC Radio 4 series A Retiring Fellow. Fraser treated his various brushes with death as an occupational hazard: his thigh bone was shattered by a bullet fired during the melee in Catford, and part of his mouth was shot away in an incident in May 1991 when someone botched an attempt to assassinate him outside a nightclub in Farringdon. Facebook gives people the power. [16], Fraser's 42 years served in over 20 different prisons in the UK were often coloured by violence. Harry Styles put on an animated display as he took to the stage for a second night at the Accor Stadium in Sydney's Olympic Park on Saturday.. She helped him sell on his loot. At the same time Fraser was concerned to protect his West End business interests, chiefly the installation and operation (on an exclusive basis) in the clubs of Soho of one-armed bandits, or fruit machines, then growing in popularity. Ms Marsh said it 'was time to reappraise London's gangland' when she wrote The Queen of Thieves. Born 1920s. When police visited she showed them ledgers to demonstrate her honest buying. What officers didn't know then was that his crime spree would continue over a career spanning seven decades, and his offences only worsened. He really did live by a code of honour which he took with him to the grave. His mother was of Irish and Norwegian descent, while his father was halfNative-American. Comments have been closed on this article. He was full of contradictions: He hated authority but at the same time he understood the need for society to have rules and was against anarchy. It was not that he thought he was Napoleon. None of the gang were afraid to use razors on those who crossed them, Some of London's The Forty Thieves' antics made the Peaky Blinders look like choirboys. By 20 she was leader of The Forty Thieves and wore a row of diamond rings that acted as a knuckle duster. 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. Nothing ever got to Frankie, wrote Charlie Richardson. Pitts wore a school girl's outfit, complete with straw boater, to act as a decoy. Fraser became a minor celebrity of sorts, appearing on television shows such as Operation Good Guys,[18] Shooting Stars,[19] and the satirical show Brass Eye,[20] where he said Noel Edmonds should be shot for killing Clive Anderson (an incident invented by the show's producers), and writing an autobiography. She operated out of Walworth, South East London and her home was called an 'Aladdin's cave of loot'. He was given an asbo, one of his sons told film-makers, after getting into an argument with a fellow-resident and is unrepentant about his life of crime. [11] In 1942, while serving a prison sentence in HM Prison Chelmsford, he came to the attention of the British Army. The family was hard-working and kept themselves clean [out of crime].. 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. But little by little, over weeks and months of interviews, cups of tea and chats, their life stories emerged and with that came a fascinating insight into the Fraser family history and what really made Frank tick. Fraser, tried separately, was jailed for 10. Indeed, his criminality was closely bound up with what one criminologist described as an overt almost Samurai vindication of violent action in pursuit of inverted honour. However, it was the during the 'torture trial' of the Richardson gang in 1967, that Frankie Fraser become notorious nationally. Fraser has complained in the past that "I had no help from my family; my mother and father were dead straight so I had to make my own way. Fraser was part of Britain's Underworld between the 1940s-1960's. He was a known associate of gangster Billy Hill throughout the 1950s. The years just after World War II were a boom time for the gang, as clothing was rationed until 1949. He was a rock.. 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. The Guardian, October 12 1980 Frank Fraser is a thorn in the Prison Department's side - a thorn so big that he is possibly the only British criminal who has become a legend simply by serving time. Those ads you do see are predominantly from local businesses promoting local services. It was a thief's paradise, Gor blimey! News reports were checked to see how much was owing. 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.. With Warren at his heels, Fraser ambushed Spot in a Paddington street, knocking him to the ground with a shillelagh. When he was 10, the pair stole a cigarette machine from a local pub, hauled it to some waste ground and jemmied it open. Fraser received seven years. Mothers would hide hoisted clothes in their prams and move them to pubs, where they were sold on. 'And they were the best fun for a night out.'. At least two home secretaries considered Fraser the most dangerous man in Britain, an image which, in old age, he only half-heartedly sought to dispel. The pair were the only ones of the children to embrace a life of crime. He refused to discuss the shooting with the police. Part of his mouth was shot away in the incident. Members of The Forty Thieves, whose mugshots were captured by the Police Gazette ahead of regular stays at Holloway Prison, often wore beautifully designed hats, coats and dresses in order to fit in - known as 'putting on the posh'. She helped him sell on his loot. At the age of five, he moved with his family to a flat on Walworth Road, Elephant and Castle. Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription you will not receive any newsletters until your subscription is confirmed. Young Frankie attended local schools, captained the football team, and acted as bookies runner to one of the teachers. Newsquest Media Group Ltd, Loudwater Mill, Station Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. However, according to a new documentary, he is clearly not going gentle into any good night. Join Facebook to connect with Frankie Fraser and others you may know. 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. End-right girl on the back row is Eva.. Every old-school south Londoner knows the folklore of cockney criminal Frankie Fraser, whose violent tendencies were infamous on the streets of Walworth. Profile manager: Evelyn Wolff [send private message] 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. Fraser earned his mad nickname during the second world war, when he managed to get himself out of military service by pretending to be mentally ill. To prove his unsuitability to the force, he assaulted a doctor before jumping out of the window at the Bradford assessment centre where he had been sent. The publisher also decided to include a glossary for the reader. Their view on Hatton Garden was that the world had moved on and robbing banks now was akin to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid trying to get away on horseback, while the police gave chase in cars. She liked to earn her own money and paid her own way quite something for a young woman in the 1930s and 1940s. Fraser spent practically half his life behind bars. At signing sessions of his books he was always willing to be photographed pretending to extract a tooth with pliers brought by the fan. The Krays held Eva Fraser in high regard because of her role in the gang and during the 1940s and 1950s, and the Soho gang boss Billy Hill - brother of the fiery Maggie Hughes - was careful not to encroach too much on their territory because he respected their right to earn their own money, free from male interference.