Fraser was part of Britain's Underworld between the 1940s-1960's. By the 1950s, the gang were facing ever-present store detectives and had to rely more on disguises. For latest book news including updates on the forthcoming film Mad Frank and Sons please like my page Beezy Marsh. Women carried tools needed for burglaries so the police had no evidence if they stopped the men following the crime. In 1991, while emerging from Turnmills nightclub in Clerkenwell, London, he was shot at by an unidentified gunman. But when her brother Frankie was in prison, she helped to run his protection rackets in Soho and even sent her daughters to collect payments, as the police would not stop a child. His parents never knew about his illegal activities, and if they ever suspected him apparently turned a blind eye, a habit . Despite this, or possibly because of it, newspapers of the day were tipping him as Spots natural successor. Following the Frankie Fraser story is akin to re-tracing the history of gangland London throughout the 20th Century. Throughout his life he denied the justice of this conviction, but he was happy to trade off it. [6] Fraser was the youngest of five children and grew up in poverty. [5][6][7][8] His mother was of Irish and Norwegian descent, while his father was half Native-American. When shoplifting she used a number of techniques including: wearing different wigs, putting stolen items under her skirt and the use of barrier bags lined with tin foil to prevent the detection of security tags. When Mason demurred, Fraser buried a hatchet in his skull, pinning his hand to his head. Such were the criminal opportunities during the war, Fraser joked in a television interview years later, that he had never forgiven the Germans for surrendering. During the 1940s it was not unusual for 'hoisters', a historical term for shoplifters, to be paid a hundred pounds a week - out earning men's average wages ten-to-one. 'Any girl worth her salt in South London in those days was a. She was taught by Alice Diamond in the 1930s and a very senior member throughout the. 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. Young Frankie attended local schools, captained the football team, and acted as bookies runner to one of the teachers. Francis Davidson Fraser, known as Mad Frankie Fraser, was the scourge of prison governors and warders up and down Britain during the periods when he served a total of more than 40 years imprisonment. Eva got six months for stealing stockings from Bentalls in Kingston upon Thames. In 1996, he played (his friend) William Donaldson's guide to Marbella in the infamous BBC Radio 4 series A Retiring Fellow. Sometimes the hoisters' lives became entangled with those of underworld bosses through affairs, family ties or marriage. A machine costing 400 could quickly recoup its cost if well-sited, and Frasers company offered club owners 40 per cent of the take rather than the standard 35 per cent as an inducement to install their machines. A famous Monty Python sketch featuring the Piranha brothers, Doug and Dinsdale, has often been associated with Fraser and the Kray twins and some aspects of the new documentary may add to this impression. The pair were the only ones of the children to embrace a life of crime. While serving this sentence, Fraser received 10 years for his part in the so-called Richardson torture trial. 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. Mad Frank: Memoirs of a Life of Crime appeared in 1994, with two further volumes following in 1998 and 2001. His decision to join the Richardsons rather than their rivals, the Krays, has been described as "like China getting the atom bomb". He also claimed to have been the first bandit to wear a stocking mask. Getting them to relive their exploits had its own difficulties at the start the only time they had ever been interviewed was by the police and they were used to keeping their own counsel. From the time of Frankie Fraser's sister Eva and the gang of hoisters The Forty Thieves, comes a book which will have you gripped this summer. His wife, Doreen, whom he married in 1965, and who with Eva loyally toured the prisons to visit him, died in 1999. The family was hard-working and kept themselves clean [out of crime].. The most famous 'queen', Alice Diamond (left), was the daughter of a docker and renowned for her row of diamond rings that doubled as a knuckle duster. "Maybe he was bored with going to prison," Ronnie Richardson, Charlie's widow, tells the programme. Following a trial at theOld Baileyin 1967, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. He refused to discuss the shooting with the police. inaccuracy or intrusion, then please Many of the Forty Thieves were noted for their beauty as well as their shoplifting skills, such as Madeline Partridge and her sister Laura, whose mother was often used by Diamond to sell stolen goods. Franks mother, Margaret, was a huge influence on him but his best pal and early partner in crime was his sister, Eva. They would go through Selfridges department store in the West End and steal furs and expensive clothes. Newsquest Media Group Ltd, Loudwater Mill, Station Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. But Beezy said: [Kathleen] experienced the slums of Waterloo as a place buzzing with excitement and the tight-knit community, with its Catholic Church parades, which gave her the chance to shine, though she instead works at the old Hartleys jam factory in Bermondsey. His major stretch in prison came at the end of the Swinging Sixties, shortly before his rivals, the Krays, were jailed, but he was so badly behaved behind bars that he lost every day of remission and even had five years added to his sentence for one of the worst riots in prison history at Parkhurst in the Isle of Wight. Fraser, who was jailed for 10 years in the so-called "torture trial" in 1967, is now frail and in poor health. The thieves' earnings allowed them to live like upper-class debutantes. 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. 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. Charles Richardson was a criminal businessman who reputedly specialised in various tortures administered at secret courts at which he presided, sometimes robed like a judge, a knife or a gun to hand. It will only make me a worse villain! Frankie Frasers wife Doreen, with whom he had four sons, died in 1999. Photo taken in the late 1940s on a pub Beano (day out) in Walworth, before the group travelled to Margate On the back row: the girls mum, Margaret, next to daughter Kathleen. By Emer Scully and Beezy Marsh for MailOnline, Published: 10:41 GMT, 4 November 2021 | Updated: 13:07 GMT, 4 November 2021. Aged seven, Ms Pitts was stealing milk and bread to provide food for her five siblings. Fraser was jailed along with other members of the Richardson gang for violently punishing people whom the Richardsons believed owed them money. But by the time of his death at the age of 90 from complications following leg surgery, Fraser had become something of a minor celebrity. The two Richardson brothers were convicted, and the elder, Charles, sentenced to 25 years. Various members were eventually caught, though and served their time in Holloway prison, where rations were meagre and they slept on boards. 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. 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. HP10 9TY. Nothing ever got to Frankie, wrote Charlie Richardson. Before then, Fraser had been involved in smash-and-grab raids and wages snatches. View our online Press Pack. They set up a fruit machine enterprise, which they would sell to pub landlords, to cover up their crimes. Francis Davidson Fraser was born on December 13 1923 in Cornwall Road, a slum area of south London on the site of what is now the Royal Festival Hall. In 1966 he was charged with the murder of Richard Hart, who was shot at a club in Catford, but the charges were dropped when a witness changed their testimony. When the heat from the cops in London got too much, they headed off to the Costa del Crime to seek their fortunes there. Mother of [private daughter (1940s - unknown)] Died 2000s. Frankie Fraser was known anotorious torturer and hitman, who worked as an enforcer for some of London's most feared gang leaders. The trial which became one of the longest in British criminal history. It will only make me a worse villain!'. The women were completely faithful to their leader, known as the queen, who doled out harsh punishments and carried strict rules including not helping police officers by informing. This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy. 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. He was a member of the Richardson gang or the 'torture gang', led by brothers Charlie and Eddie Richardson, and were widely feared in Londons underworld. Tony Lambrianou, a one-time henchman of the rival Kray brothers, was also a fan. 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. Two people were left dead. She lived an unashamedly lavish lifestyle and splashed her money around. "Hill paid by the stitch if you put 50 stitches in a man's face, you could expect 50," says James Morton, Fraser's biographer. And involvement in such activities often led to his sentences being extended. She had died in 2000 but her daughter Beverley, who shared Evas reticent nature, agreed to talk to me and that revealed that Eva had been leading criminal in her own right. A witness changed his testimony and the charges were eventually dropped, though Fraser still received a five-year sentence for affray. Even the gangster 'Mad' Frankie Fraser, whose sister Eva was a leading light in the gang in the thirties and forties, spoke with great reverence about Alice Diamond. But after shoving their stolen goods into waiting cars the women would head back to the grotty slums of Waterloo and Elephant and Castle - where their 'queen' exchanged the expensive items for a generous weekly wage. His first conviction was for stealing cigarettes, and with the second he was sent to an approved school. [9], Fraser was an Arsenal fan, and his grandson Tommy Fraser is a professional footballer. of James Fraser and Margaret Alice (Anderson) Fraser. Prior to that he was a bodyguard to notorious gangland leader Billy Hill, where he took part in bank robberies and and carried out razor blade attacks - which earned him 50 a time. "The Sun", "Sun", "Sun Online" are registered trademarks or trade names of News Group Newspapers Limited. Yet they fiercely guarded their right to 'earn' their own money. Pictured, Marble Arch and Oxford Circus in the 1920s, Petite shoplifter Bertha Tappenden (right) stood just over 5ft 2in tall, but was convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm on a man in Lambeth, after kicking down his front door and attacking him with razors and knives, to settle a score, aided by Diamond and another gang girl, Gertrude Scully (left). The comments below have not been moderated. Had it all gone to plan, she could have inhabited a very different side of the West End to her little sister Eva. Together they set up the Atlantic Machines fruit-machine enterprise, which acted as a front for the criminal activities of the gang.
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