Spitalfields Antiques Market 1
Today we commence an occasional series introducing the traders in the weekly Spitalfields antiques, vintage and collectors’ market, held every Thursday. This is quickly becoming London’s pre-eminent antiques market and I love the way the traders carefully lay out the items on display upon their stalls, providing an endless source of fascination for browsers. To me, every one is a work of art and for a long while I have been eager to record them all, so I am delighted to collaborate with photographer Jeremy Freedman (who is himself a trader in the market) to bring you these first portraits that initiate our project.
This is Dale Stephens who has been trading in the Spitalfields Market for a year. “It feeds my own collecting habit”, Dale confessed to me cheerfully, explaining that he is a trained cabinet maker and furniture designer, which makes him especially appreciative of the skill and technique that went into the manufacture of even the most run-of- the-mill artifacts in the past. As Dale was speaking, my eye fell upon some lovely old handmade bone rulers and I knew exactly what he meant.
This is Karen Beardsmore who has been trading in the Spitalfields Market for six months. “I used to manage a pub”, Karen explained recklessly,“but I gave it up to do the things I liked. I’m doing pottery courses and having a lazy year!” Karen can regularly be seen mudlarking at Wapping and sells exquisite old matchboxes full of seventeenth century china fragments from the Thames for just £4. In fact, everything on Karen’s stall fits into one suitcase which she drags along each week. It must be quite a large one.
This is Brian Oxley who has been collecting for forty-five years and is currently selling off some of his precious things to fund an extension to his home on Romney Marsh, creating an additional room with a view over the marsh for his wife who has MSA. An experienced painter and teacher of art, Brian restores and reframes old paintings, and is also selling a wonderful collection of fine nineteenth century artist’s paint boxes. You can learn more about Brian’s own paintings here and here. What a gentleman.
This is Jess Collins who trades in vintage clothing and accessories with her boyfriend Oliver Stannion. Surrounded by a mind-boggling array, dating from the nineteenth century up until the nineteen eighties, Jess rolled her eyes around in amusement as she revealed where it all came from, “We started collecting in Manchester at car boot sales but we got so much stuff we began selling it. Then Ollie moved to London and I followed. We’ve only been doing it for year but we’ve already got enough stock to last a lifetime!”
Billy Frost, The Krays’ Driver
After my conversation with Lenny Hamilton, the jewel thief, I went back on another afternoon to the Carpenters Arms in Cheshire St (the pub that once belonged to the Kray twins) to meet Billy Frost who was Ronnie and Reggie Kray’s driver. I recognised him at once by his pinstripe suit, which must be the preferred uniform for senior reprobates and, sure enough, he asked for a double Corvoisier and lemonade too, exactly as Lenny had done.
Already, Billy had discovered through the grapevine that I had been consorting with Lenny, so he went straight for the jugular, challenging me,“You’ve been talking with Lenny, haven’t you? “ I could not deny it, so Billy put me straight, “Lenny’s very prejudiced, just because Ronnie burnt him a bit with a poker, but the twins, they could be very kind to a lot of people – like old people and kids – and they did a lot of charitable work.” Then Billy clarified his statement, for the sake of a balanced argument, “Obviously, they could be very nasty too, if you got on the wrong side of them.”
Vividly outlining the full extent of his experience, “I knew them over a period of twenty years from when they were very young boxers, and Ronnie hit the referee and quit the boxing club.” Billy said, including an inconsequential detail that appeared entirely characteristic of his former employer, before setting out a lively account of his own conscientiously thorough apprenticeship in crime.
“When I was young I used to go to a dance hall in Tottenham called the Royal and that’s where I first met Ronnie and Reggie. Everyone used to go there each weekend. That’s when Ronnie got his first conviction – he beat up a fellow with a chain off a machine for manufacturing furniture (there were a lot of furniture factories in Bethnal Green at the time). When I met him I was on the run from the army. Saturday night at the Royal was the top night, people came from all over and we used to hang around the dance floor.
Then I lost touch with them because I had to go back to the army and I deserted again and I got caught stealing a truck load of metal and I got sent to borstal and from borstal I went back to the army and then I was arrested for stealing a car. I was on a licence from borstal and after I done my prison sentence they revoked my licence from borstal and I done a further eleven months.
When I come out, I was in the 181 Club in Gerrard St in the West End where I met Charlie Kray by chance. I asked him how Ronnie and Reggie were, and he said they were working with Jack Scott and Billy Hill. Later, I met the twins in the West End and they told me they didn’t want to be used by Jack and Billy any more and they were going out on their own. And that’s what they did.
I used to be with them. And I got arrested for something I actually never did! I was trying to help someone out, selling a bit of gear – cigarettes which came from Lee Green in South London. And then, mysteriously, the police found the same red glass substance in my trouser turn-ups from the rear of a Wolsey car that was used to ram the shop the cigarettes came from. It was a fellow called Terry Barnes who pleaded guilty to it, but I was found guilty and I got two years. When I came out, I caught up with Ronnie and Reggie again, by then they were involved in the race tracks, protection rackets and all that.”
Once he had dictated thus far, I had acquired a good sense of the general picture and was in awe of Billy’s ability to spin a sentence too. Though occasionally, to my alarm, he became a little impatient when I didn’t quite follow his drift. There was an attractive young couple at the next table who were curious of my charismatic guest speaking in such animated fashion. When they went out to the garden to have a smoke, leaving all their valuables, the young woman leaned across sweetly, asking Billy “Would you mind watching our things?” I was dumbstruck at the irony, thinking, “If only you knew…”
But now that Billy had declared himself to me, fair and square, it was time for me to get him another Corvoisier and lemonade before he settled down to recount the story of the murder of Georgie Cornell – whom Lenny Hamilton described to me as “the hardest man on the cobbles.”
“The argument was over a fellow named Mickey Morris. Georgie Cornell told Nicky’s mum, May, that Ronnie was after Mickey and ‘You know he’s a fat pouf,’ and this got back to Ronnie and Ronnie was furious. He had word with Georgie about it, but then Georgie started telling other people, ignoring Ronnie.
One night, I drove Ronnie & Reggie to The Stork Club in Swallow St. When they got inside , Georgie Cornell was sitting at a table on his own. Reggie went over and spoke to Georgie, but Ronnie wouldn’t go and sit with him (I never knew what it was really about at the time). Me and Ronnie sat at another table opposite and we got a couple of drinks. Ronnie was mumbling but he was incoherent and I couldn’t hear a word he said. Then we left The Stork Club after thirty minutes and went back to The Grave Maurice in Whitechapel. As we were driving back, they never said a word to each other, Ronnie and Reggie, and when we got into The Grave Maurice, they sat on their own and had a private conversation.
The day that Ronnie shot Georgie I had a day off. It was about a week later, when Ronnie and Scotch Jack were driving round to the widow’s pub in Bethnal Green, Ronnie saw Georgie Cornell’s car parked outside The Blind Beggar in Whitechapel High St. And he told Scotch Jack to turn round and go to the Green Dragon where someone was keeping a gun for him. Then Ronnie walked into The Blind Beggar and shot Georgie Cornell in the head.
Afterwards, I was present when Ronnie said ‘Has anyone got Mickey Morris’ phone number? Will you tell him to come over, I want to give him a nightcap?’ Nicky came over and I personally poured him out a gin and tonic. The next thing I knew, Ronnie punched Mickey in the face. And Mickey said, ‘I thought you was my friend, Ronnie?’ Reggie got hold of him and I expected he was going to let him go, but instead Reggie pushed Mickey into a storeroom. Then Ronnie got Mickey in a headlock and Reggie pulled out a big hunting knife and pushed it straight through Mickey’s arm. Ronnie said to Reggie, ‘Do it properly, stick it up his fucking guts!‘ Mickey howled when the knife went through his arm.
I said to Reggie, ‘Look, there’s people on the balcony opposite looking over and there’s people in the bar who can hear, they’re wondering what’s going on.’ I wanted to save the guy, I liked him, he was a nice boy. I said, ‘Come into the bathroom, Mickey, and I’ll do you up in some towels,’ but he was scared because he was bleeding buckets. I couldn’t take him to the London Hospital myself, in case the police got involved, because I had a warrant out for my arrest. Another member took him to the hospital.
A couple of days later, I was driving along the Lea Bridge Rd and Ronnie asked me to stop at Mickey Morris’ house and he said to Mickey, ‘Next time, it’ll be done properly.'”
Strangely, Billy appeared not to comprehend Mickey Morris’ reluctance to enter the bathroom. I thought of asking Billy if, in retrospect, he thought his logic for not taking Mickey Morris to the London Hospital was admirable but it was a redundant question, so instead I asked Billy if he was ever scared of Ronnie and Reggie.“Once I stayed the night at their house in Vallance Rd and I fell asleep on Reggie’s bed, and I woke to find him standing over me with a big Wilkinson’s sword that he had.” he replied, enacting the fierce gesture of raising the sword with the practised conviction of a Shakespearean actor.
As someone with an aversion to violence, I barely knew how to react to Billy’s stories and I think he could read it in my face at that moment, because he admitted quietly with a gentle smile, “They were good times, though personally I didn’t like all the violence, but if you’re going to do protection and be a villain then it comes naturally.” – as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
Billy was on his third Corvoisier and lemonade, and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He was polite and he was personable, and it was decent of him to grant me an interview but, considering what he had told me, I could not but wonder what there was that did not bear telling. I respect Billy greatly for his nerve – having the guts to survive the viper’s nest – living through so much brutality to reach this current point of benign equilibrium. Equally, I can never know whether those experiences induced in Billy a certain degree of acceptance of the long pitiful catalogue of cruelty that was inflicted by his employers, the psychopathic twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray. It is a private question for Billy to reconcile with his conscience and we shall not be party to it.
I left Billy Frost in conversation with the young couple from the next table who were captivated by his charms. Running back in the dusk, through the rainy streets, thankful to arrive at the safety of my house in Spitalfields, the afternoon’s experience grew strangely familiar in my mind. It touched a chord of familiar unease, and I realised that I could now better appreciate Pip’s mixed emotions when he met the enigmatically fearsome convict Abel Magwitch in those brilliant early terrifying chapters of Great Expectations.
Mark Jackson & Huw Davies, Photographers
In the last eighteen months of the Fruit and Vegetable Market in Spitalfields, young photographers Mark Jackson & Huw Davies set out to record the life of the market that operated on this site for over three centuries, before it closed forever in 1991. As recent graduates, Mark was working in a restaurant at the time and Huw was a bicycle courier. Without any financial support for their ambitious undertaking, they saved up all their money to buy cameras and rolls of film, converting a corner of their tiny flat into a darkroom.
“It was quite a struggle,” Mark Jackson confided, when I spoke to him yesterday, “because we weren’t earning a lot of money. But Spitalfields fired our imaginations. We caught the last tube to Liverpool St and spent the night there taking photographs, before heading into work next morning.”
The result of their passionate labours is an unparalleled archive of more than four thousand images that has recently been acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute and will be shown there in a major exhibition later this year. It is my privilege to be able to show you a small selection of these phenomenal pictures that have never been seen before, the first glimpse of an undiscovered photographic treasure trove.
I have the greatest respect for anyone who sets out to pursue idealistic projects such as this at great cost to themselves of money, time and labour. In this case, I am equally impressed by the quality of Mark & Huw’s photographs as distinguished social documentary, unsentimental yet infused with affectionate poetry too. Today, we are the fortunate beneficiaries of their selfless enthusiasm over all those months when they stayed up each night to take pictures and worked each day to buy film. It sounds like a beautiful story in retrospect but I have no doubt it took plenty of determination to carry the project through in isolation. I know that the market traders warmed to the young photographers and I think, in part, this accounts for relaxed intimate nature of some of these images, because the traders respected the commitment that Mark & Huw demonstrated, turning up night after night.
This particular set of images take us on a cinematic journey from the busy nocturnal world, when the market was active, through dawn into the early morning when the drama subsided. Mark & Huw photographed a dignified gallery of both the market traders and the homeless people, who were drawn by the fire that always burned to alleviate their discomfort ever since the market was granted its charter. We no longer see any of these characters in Spitalfields. These men would look displaced here in the renovated market today, they are soulful faces from a universe that is gone. When I walk through the Spitalfields Market at night now, it feels like an empty theatre, lacking the performance of the nightly drama that ran from 1638 when Charles I signed the licence to commence trading.
Even though Mark & Huw took their pictures only twenty years ago, they describe a society that feels closer to the world Dickens knew than our own present tense, ten years into the twenty-first century. Inspired by Tom Hopkinson and Bert Hardy’s work at Picture Post, these photographs were to become the first of a series documenting all the markets of London, that might have been a lifetime’s vocation for Mark & Huw. It was not to be. Life intervened and without any support the projected sequence was abandoned. Mark became a writer and Huw is now a teacher – they each have lives beyond their nascent photographic enterprises – but they deserve to be proud of these vital pictures because they are an honourable contribution to the worthy canon of British documentary photography.
All pictures © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
Willy Moon, songwriter
Let me introduce Willy Moon, who has been sitting alone in his room for more than a year to write songs. Although the world has yet to hear Willy Moon, I am familiar with his music because Willy Moon is my neighbour. Over this time, I have heard him in the distance while I am writing at my desk, as he sits at his keyboard singing to himself, exploring the emotional subtleties of his lyrics in the deliberate careful way you might feel your way into a new pair of gloves.
If I had not revealed that I took this photo of Willy Moon yesterday, you might think, perhaps, this was an old postcard I found somewhere, but this is how he actually looks. If you meet Willy Moon in the street in Spitalfields or even if you see him weeding his garden, this is how he will be. Like Gilbert & George, his flawless demeanour is reassuringly consistent. Fastidiousness is an under-rated virtue these days and Willy Moon has it in spades. This weekend, we spent a happy Sunday afternoon together taking hundreds of pictures in between cups of tea and animated chat, until we chose this single photograph to show you as the fruit of our collaboration.
Willy Moon’s songs interest me because they are irresistibly jangling pop tunes that persist in the mind vividly and then grow in emotional resonance upon further listening. They have the rare authority of nursery rhymes – even when you hear Willy Moon’s melodies for the first time, you feel you already know them, as if they had always been around. Last November, Willy Moon posted a demo recording of one song on MySpace and in December a second one, and he did not have to wait long before he received approaches from a whole series of major record companies, managers and music industry lawyers.
Millions of people sit in their bedrooms humming and strumming to themselves for years, hoping this might happen and knowing that it can only be a dream. But the attention Willy Moon drew is not accidental. Willy Moon knows what he is doing. Through his talent, tenacity and intelligent application, he has brought this situation about. Willy Moon has drawn these people to him with the magnetic force that the silver orb in the sky controls the tides. Happening at twenty years old, this is a beautiful moment in the life of Willy Moon because the possibilities are infinite. Let us celebrate it with him.
“I found it odd – unexpected – not that I don’t see the value of my work but I thought I would have to struggle for five years before I got any attention paid to me,” Willy Moon admitted in amused reflection, before revealing a characteristically rigorous attitude to the pursuit of songwriting. “I’m putting myself to the test, to see what I can do – it’s a challenge and a means to evolve. I am never happy with anything unless it is better than I did before.” he said.
The first demo of a song Willy Moon posted on MySpace was “Girl, I wanna to be your man.“It took a long time to record because I’m doing it all on my own and I had to work out how to use the recording software.” he confessed to me with amiable levity, introducing the song, as we sat and listened together. “Girl, I wanna to be your man” appears to be a bright innocent song of unrequited love with a brittle sheen and a catchy melody that carries you through. But as the title lyric persists through repetition, accumulating emotional impact, the longing becomes frantic. With a vocal line balanced at the edge of optimism and self-deception, this is simultaneously the ballad of a hopeful extroverted young man and of an introverted secret obsessive too. And it is this tension that makes the number so compelling.
Willy Moon is a classical songwriter, powerfully aware of his predecessors, learning by immersing himself in the work of those he admires most, in particular the Beatles and those who influenced them, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, James Brown and the entire canon of early Motown artists. All Willy Moon’s songs are based upon dramatic progression, structured upon the essential poetic elements of bridge, verse and chorus, “I like to play with an idea and put the pieces together. I write parts of the song separately and combine them – different ideas that come together to form one whole.”
Next, Willy Moon posted a demo recording of “She says she loves me”on MySpace, a delirious celebration of emotional fulfillment, in jubilant contrast to the earlier song and a work of greater musical ambition too. There is an authentic danceable exuberance here that affectionately declares its musical influences while refashioning them into something vibrantly contemporary. On consideration, it is no surprise that Willy Moon has drawn all this heat with his home-made recordings because they are an accomplished pair of love songs that anyone can relate to, counterpointing each other to create a complete emotional drama in microcosm.
What planet did Willy Moon come from that has endowed him with this singular charm and Bowie-esque other-worldliness? The answer is New Zealand. Growing up with parents who were both teachers, he was encouraged to be independent, read widely and think for himself from an early age. When his mother and father decided to travel the world, taking jobs as supply teachers in different capitals, Willy Moon and his elder sister came along too. Willy Moon remembers sharing a single room in the Rotherhithe YMCA years ago, when his parents slept in the bed, and he and his sister slept on the floor. “It was all very much on the cheap,” he recalled happily, telling me they lived on bread and cheese. “It was exciting – especially coming from Wellington, New Zealand – we went out and saw all the sights in London.” he added, explaining how when he was nine and his sister was twelve, they were free to explore the city by day while their parents where at work.
As soon as he was old enough, Willy Moon came back to London and today Spitalfields is his home. So now I have done the neighbourly thing and made the introductions, you can hear Willy Moon’s songs for yourself by clicking here.
Columbia Road Market 23
The market was quiet this morning after a night of rain, though there was a brief respite which permitted me to walk there and back before the day’s imminent storms broke. When there are less customers the prices at the market are keener so, perversely, I am always especially eager to get there when there is bad weather. Today I bought these five pots of Anemones from a nursery in Chingford for £13 which far exceeds my usual budget for the window box, but it was a good price because there are more than a dozen plants here.
This box on my bedroom window sill is the first sight I see when I wake each morning and the white Cyclamen I planted last Autumn have been a sorry picture for months, so I have been longing to replace the scene of Winter’s devastation though wary to replant the box with anything that is not hardy. These Anemones fit my requirements and the box perfectly, and I can transplant them into my garden in the Spring to enjoy them again next year. I think, if pushed, I should have to admit that the rich deep blue of Anemones is my favourite colour in the whole world, and these plants have plenty of new buds coming to greet me each morning with new flowers for many weeks to come.
Mr Pussy thinks he is a dog
Mr Pussy thinks he is a dog, it all began with chewing my slippers. When I come home in the evening and sit down in the wing chair to eat my supper next to the fire, it is Mr Pussy’s custom to lie at my feet, extending his claws like gleaming steel fishhooks. At this time of day, I am usually wearing my felt slippers and Mr Pussy cannot resist stretching out to hook a slipper, interrupting me painfully from my meal when his sharp claws pierce my skin. Compliant, I kick the slipper off and then Mr Pussy grips it triumphantly, holding the toe in his front paws, while kicking delightedly at the sole with his powerful back legs in the manner of a dog. Getting roused with excitement as the kicking accelerates, Mr Pussy flattens his ears, growls and turns to me with fierce eyes as if to say, “Look at me, I’m a dog!” Then he chews the slipper, just like a dog.
I have learnt to remove both my slippers as soon as Mr Pussy approaches, allowing him to undertake the usual dinner theatre performance without drawing blood from my feet. This slipper business was just the first of Mr Pussy’s canine traits that became apparent. Although, ever since he was fully grown, people proclaimed, “He’s so big, he looks like a dog!” In fact, Mr Pussy is larger than many dogs and is not in the least challenged by my neighbour’s Jack Russell, he just looks down his nose at the mutt.
Unlike most felines but in common with most canines, Mr Pussy loves water. Never concerned about getting his feet wet as cats usually are, he likes to roll in wet grass, then come into the house and shake off the raindrops. One day, when he came in soaked from the rain, I produced a towel and gave him a rub down. Mr Pussy craves this now, and will go out and get wet just to have the rub down afterwards, demanding this service with insistent miaowing that has more in common with the repeated barking of a dog than the delicate whisper of a pussycat. Once I knew Mr Pussy liked water, I gave him towel baths in Summer, to cool him when he languished in the heat. Standing him on the garden table, I soaked Mr Pussy with a wet flannel or sponge, gave him a good brushing and then towelled him down. The experience was a powerful one for Mr Pussy and sometimes his emotions got fixated on the brush, which he grasped in his paws with the same tender intensity that Elvis grasped his microphone. Afterwards, Mr Pussy ran around the garden steaming in the heat before taking a deep sleep in the shade.
Mr Pussy reminds me of my father’s Ginger Tom that once fell from the branch of an old oak at the bottom of our garden directly into the River Exe and swam confidently to the shore. In Devon, Mr Pussy used to go roving for miles and return days later with a dead rabbit in his mouth. In Spitalfields, he commands an alley instead, walking up to anyone that comes along, scrutinising them in the manner of a guard dog before greeting them affectionately. He has traded the life of an explorer and wild game hunter for that of a greeter and security guard. I do wonder if this altered circumstance created his curiously hybrid nature.
Mr Pussy likes humans because he has always been treated well and experience tells him they pose no threat. For Mr Pussy, any stranger is potentially another source of the adulation he needs to reinforce his ego. To be honest, there is an element of showing off. Mr Pussy likes to play to camera. Give him a ball and Mr Pussy will chase it up and down the house, bouncing it off the walls with the judgement and skill that indicates a simultaneous talent at both snooker and football – as long as there is an audience. Just stopping now and again, to touch up his grooming and check the spectators are giving him their full attention, like Cristiano Ronaldo, Mr Pussy possesses the killer combination of vanity, quick reflexes and powerful legs.
The canine trait that I appreciate most is Mr Pussy’s loyalty. He follows me around the house, running at my ankles just like a dog and sleeping contentedly beside my desk all day while I am writing. Whenever I leave the house, Mr Pussy walks out with me, hoping to follow at my heels. Always disappointed when I hasten my footsteps along the pavement to leave him behind, Mr Pussy does not understand why he cannot accompany me beyond Spitalfields into the city. Instead he consoles himself with his daily patrol of the territory whilst I am doing my errands – but makes absolutely certain to be there, poised for an emotional reunion upon my return, bounding to greet me. I am sure Mr Pussy thinks he is a dog.
Lenny Hamilton, Jewel Thief
Mid-afternoon on a weekday is a good time for a discreet liaison at The Carpenters Arms in Cheshire St (the pub that used to belong to the Krays), especially if you are meeting a jewel thief. Lenny was initially averse to the location, “What do you want to go to that filthy old place for?” he complained, until I reassured him they had cleaned it up nicely, though when he told me the story of his personal experience of the Kray twins I came to understand why he might harbour an aversion.
“I used to go round to their house in Vallance Rd on and off for three years, until Ronnie burnt me with the pokers, and his mother and Charlie had a go with him over it.” said Lennie with a pleasant smile, introducing his testimony, before taking a slug of his double Corvoisier and lemonade. It was a story that started well enough before it all went so horribly wrong.
“I was just six weeks out of the army, doing my National Service (I used to box for the army), when I went back to work in Billingsgate Fish Market at the age of twenty six. Georgie Cornell looked after me – he was the hardest man I ever saw on the cobbles but he had a heart of gold as well. He gave me five pounds to buy my mother some flowers and said ‘Make sure you give her the fucking change!’ He was a nice fellow. He used to line up all the tramps at the market and give them each half a crown and make sure they got a mug of tea and two slices of dripping toast. Then with the change, he’d say ‘Now go down and buy yourselves a pint.’
Leaving work, I was walking down Maidment St, and on the corner I saw this big fellow wrestling with these two little fellows. So I went to help them, they got away and I got arrested, because the guy I was wrestling with was a police officer. When I got taken down to Arber Sq police station, he said to me, ‘Do you know what you’ve done? Them two young fellows was the Krays and now they’ve got away. They’re on the run from the army.’ I apologised and they let me go.
Later, when the Krays got control of a snooker hall, The Regal, I was playing snooker there and they came in and this fellow put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You don’t know who I am do you? I am Reggie Kray – and this is my brother Ronnie.’ I thought I was seeing double, you couldn’t tell them apart. They took me across the road to a pub called The Wentworth to buy me a drink because I did them a favour. They liked me at first. That’s how I came to be going round their house for nearly three years.
One day, I was down the Regency Club working for Harry Abrahams, he had his own “firm” and Albert Donahue was part of it. One of the Krays’ “firm”, Pat Connolly was there and he was drinking with a young couple. Then some fellows arrived from South London and sent us all a drink over. I ordered one for myself and the young fellow, but I didn’t know what the girl was drinking, so I asked her, ‘What do you want, love?’
The fellow that was with her went to cut me with a razor! Pat Connolly said ‘You don’t do that to Lenny.’ So, the fellow asked to have a talk with me in the toilet and I thought he wanted to say sorry. As I went into the toilet, walking in front of him, someone said, ‘Watch your back!’ and he went to cut me down the back with his cut-throat razor. I dived down to the cubicle door, and ducked and dived, as he came at me with the razor. Then I got up and smashed him in the face and I didn’t realise that I broke his nose. I also didn’t realise he was Buller Ward’s son, Bonner – and Buller was friends with the Krays.
My pal Andy Paul was living with me at the time because his wife had thrown him out, and he worked with the Krays as a doorman. Once, he came home at one in the morning when I was in bed and said ‘Ronnie wants you on the phone at Esmerelda’s barn. You’d better phone him up because you know what he’s like, he’ll come round and smash the place up.’ So I got a cab all the way to Knightsbridge to Esmerelda’s in Wilton Place and asked the cab driver to wait.
I went in and walked upstairs. All the gambling tables were closed down and there were seven or eight people standing on either side. They told me to go in the kitchen and when I opened the door Ronnie Kray was standing opposite. He said,‘Nothing to worry about, Lenny.’ He had a big armchair next to the cooker and he invited me to sit down, asking ‘What’s going on Lenny? You caused a bit of trouble in the Regal. We get protection money from them.’ I sat down.
He said, ‘Alright, you can go now.’ I stood up again and, as I turned to leave, I was wondering what was going on, when he said, ‘Get hold of him.’ Two geezers grabbed hold of me and then I saw it. I thought they were pokers but there were steels that are used to sharpen knives, Ronnie had them on the gas and they were white-hot. They had wooden handles and the first one Ronnie picked up he dropped because it was so hot, so he went and got an oven glove. Then he picked one up and came over to me, to frighten me, I imagined. He singed my black curly hair. I pissed myself. I was terrified. Next he started setting fire to my suit that I only had made two weeks before.
Then he went back and got another hot poker, and dabbed it on my cheeks and held it across my eyebrows and burnt my eyebrows off. I’m half-blind in this eye because of it. Then he went back and got another poker and, as he came back, he said, ‘Now I’m going to burn your eyes out.’ and he really meant it. As he came towards me, Limehouse Willy called out from the crowd, ‘No Ron, don’t do that!’ (A nice fellow he was.) Ronnie switched, he turned and walked away.
They let me go and I hurried out, and the cab driver was still waiting outside. When he saw the state of me, he wanted to take me to Scotland Yard but I said, ‘No mate, don’t do that, just take me home.’ Then as we were driving along, he said, ‘I think there’s a car following us,’ and it was one of the Krays’ cars. They were following to see where I as going, so I went round to my friend Harry Abrahams’ house. When he came home with his friend Albert Donahue, he said, ‘There’s only one person who would do that.’ So he and Albert went round the twins home with guns next morning, and the twins told him they did it because I got too flash – too big for my boots.
About two days later, my protector from Billingsgate, Georgie Cornell, came round and gave Harry Abrahams’ wife two hundred pounds with instructions to take care of me, “Look after Lenny, take the expenses out of that.’ A day later, a big surprise, Charlie Kray came round and gave her a hundred pounds and said, ‘Don’t let my brothers know.’ Finally, Dr Blaskar, the Krays’ doctor came round – he liked to drink and gamble – he treated me, gave me stuff for the burns.
But then in 1967, when the police were after the Krays, I was in Wandsworth Prison and they got a message smuggled in to me. I was in a single cell and when I returned from the doctor one day there was an envelope on the table. (It’s in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard now) The note read, ‘If the Old Bill comes round, keep your mouth shut or we are going to shoot your kids.’ My children were six and seven years old and living with their mother in Poplar. I’m not a grass but I couldn’t risk my kids being shot, so I went to see the governor and gave him the letter. Within two hours, the police were round, they said, ‘Look Lenny, if you help us, we’ll help you. We’ll give your children twenty-four hour police protection.’ which they did. They moved me to Eastchurch prison on the Isle of Sheppey and then to Bow St to give evidence against Ronnie Kray. On my evidence, he got committed to the Old Bailey.”
We were all alone in the empty barroom and, when Lenny told the part about the poker, he fixed me eye to eye and, extending a single finger, pushed his fingertip into my face. I was speechless. It was extraordinary to hear a first hand account of the reality of characters that have become mythical. I think it is easier to accept the East End’s history of violence as mere fiction, even when you know the truth. Ironically, Lenny’s volatile experiences have fused his emotional story into a powerful narrative with an effective literary structure.
Lenny has no patience with those who seek to romanticise the Krays as working class heroes,“They were scum. The lowest of the low. You never robbed or hurt your own people, that was the old East End code. The Krays controlled people through fear. They hurt so many people. I’ve been in a saloon bar when they were there and people would arrive, order a drink, then go out to the toilet and walk straight out the back door to escape.”
Today, after plastic surgery, and many years on the straight and narrow since doing time, Lenny is a different man. Though, even walking with a stick, he retains a powerful physical presence as a legacy of his boxing years. Yet, behind this assured facade, I sensed something else, an intensity in his eyes, his “snake eyes” he calls them, that indicates a spirit forged in a dark world of violence.
Lenny doesn’t pretend to be a saint. “I’m not proud of what I done,” he admitted openly, speaking of his days blowing safes and thieving jewels. “I used to have a friend in Hatton Garden who bought all the gear off me and gave me good deal. I took him a £680,000 job one day and, after he’d melted down the gold and recut the diamonds, I got £100,000. He asked me to push my finger through a card, and then he made me this,” revealed Lenny with relish, displaying the dazzling ring upon his finger with its single glittering diamond. Always keen to emphasise that he only stole from those with insurance, Lenny even managed to make it sound like he was doing a favour for people sometimes. “There was a man whose business was going under. He came to me and said ‘There’s nothing in the safe but if you blow it up, I can claim there was.’ I felt sorry for him so I blew the safe while he was away for the weekend. Then he took the insurance payment and moved to Brighton.”
Lenny could have talked all day but after three double Corvoisiers and lemonade, I called a taxi to take him on to a pub in the Roman Rd where his pals were waiting to continue the long afternoon of storytelling. When I enquired about some recent scars on his head, he explained that he had been beaten up on the street by muggers, but he shrugged it off lightly. You have to credit Lenny for his resilience, he still possesses undaunted enthusiasm and appetite for life.
Standing up to leave, Lenny caught sight for the first time of the painting of Ronnie and Reggie Kray that hangs on the barroom wall in The Carpenters and brandished his stick in a flash of emotion. For a moment, I was expecting the sound of broken glass, but Lenny quickly relented, turning away with a grin and a wave to me, because the taxi was waiting outside and he had better things to do.
