The Profession of Violence Read Online Free PDF Page B

big fellow, took out a knuckleduster in Epsom Downs Station an’ sploshed Dodger straight on the nose. It made no difference.’
    Originally the villains came from the very poorest parts of the East End. There were the Bethnal Greeners proper, who were considered ‘flash’, arrogant men. Then there were Watney Streeters from Whitechapel, and the local gangs from Brady Street and Dossert Street, which has still the highest number of murders of any street in London. ‘In the old days you’d see the worst of the poverty here and the worst ignorance. You’d see the old women sitting in the streets, smoking their pipes. Often the woman’d keep the family alive by making brushes or matches. And this was where the poorest Irish married the poorest of the Jews. Watney Street produced the most uncaring villains of them all.’
    Most of the fights were pub fights or full-scale gang fightsbetween the Bethnal Green villains and the men of Watney Street. For the true Bethnal Green criminal, Watney Street was the traditional enemy, even more than the police. This was a part of London where policemen still went warily, and generally in twos.
    â€˜The police just didn’t want to be involved. I’ve seen a villain stab another in front of a policeman in the old days and the copper walk away. As long as straight folk weren’t molested, all the Law really bothered with was where the gear was hid if there’d been a robbery. Otherwise they left us to get on with it.’ The old-time villain was a law unto himself where other criminals were concerned. Then in the mid thirties East London violence was boosted by the rise of fascism: many top East End villains were employed by Mosley; anti-Semitic rioting occurred in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green was briefly known as ‘the fascist manor’.
    The one thing East End violence failed to produce was large-scale organized crime. The rackets were petty ones, and up until the war the racketeers kept clear of the East End. ‘Derby’ Sabini, the grey-bowler-hatted ‘king of the racecourses’ was the nearest Britain got to an organizing gangster. But he organized his famous ‘racecourse gang’ at Saffron Hill, and the attempt by Watney Street to oust him one year at Brighton races was so inept that no one tried again.
    The German bombs of 1940 seemed to have finished off the villains’ world of the old East End. During the massed raids on the docks, whole districts died. In Bethnal Green alone, ten thousand dwellings were destroyed; the heart of the East End became a wilderness.
    When the bombing began, Violet moved into the country with her three children: first to Hampshire, where the twins proved too much for the doctor’s family with whom they were billeted, then to a more resilient family at Hadleigh in Suffolk. The twins enjoyed the country, ran wild, stole apples from the Rothschild estate near Tringand picked up a Suffolk burr over their native cockney: for some time, Aunt Rose became ‘Aunt Rawse’. They also both developed a taste for the country, Suffolk in particular.
    But no real cockney buries himself in the countryside for long, and the Krays missed the talk, the cups of tea, the smells of the streets and the constant activities of Vallance Road. So Violet gathered up young Charlie and the twins. She had their fare to Liverpool Street. They wore their best clothes; the rest of their possessions went into a suitcase and two carrier bags. Someone gave them a lift to the station in a van. And back they came to Vallance Road and the bombing.
    Violet and the Lees survived, drawing together ever closer as a family. Charles appeared from time to time, but most of his energy was spent dodging the police and keeping on the run. Persistent, neat, respectful as ever to his customers, he was making a good living as he went flitting like some old cockney starling round the suburbs and back to the East End and