The Profession of Violence Read Free Page A

seeing him off. The old Irishman laughed at the idea of Charles of all people sacrificing a good trip for his family; as the train steamed off, he leaned from the carriage window and shouted, ‘My love to Violet. Hope she has those twins this time. Then you’ll have something to worry about, me boy.’ That night, 17 October 1934, at 64 Stene Street, Hoxton, Violet Kray surprised the midwife by giving birth to two male children within an hour of one another. The first she called Reginald, the second Ronald.
    Charles remembered Kenny’s warning and did find the twins’ arrival a financial problem. But his wife was thrilled with her two babies and that was what mattered. For Violet the arrival of the twins was the greatest event in her life. The last few years had been a struggle.
    She had been one of three good-looking sisters living on the corner of Vallance Road in Bethnal Green; she was headstrong and had eloped romantically with Charles. ‘Iwas just young and silly and my head was full of all the nonsense of young girls of seventeen.’ When she found out more about her new life there was no point complaining. Her husband would not change. He had to have his beer and gambling and male company. Some men were like that.
    So she made the best of things. She was a good wife. According to her sister May, ‘She always kept herself nice, Violet did. Never let herself go, like most women once they’re married. She was a quiet one.’ With the quietness went great strength of purpose; with twins she finally had something to be purposeful about. ‘I never seen no babies like the twins,’ she said proudly. ‘They was so lovely when they was born, the two of them, so small and dark, just like two little black-haired dolls.’
    Their brother, nearly four, was a placid, easy child, with his mother’s personality and looks. The twins were different: they were demanding and brought out all their mother’s deep protectiveness. They did something more: for the first time they gave Violet’s life a touch of the glamour she had dreamt of when she eloped. Nobody else had twins; they were something special, and when she pushed them out in the big double pram they conferred on her the final accolade of cockney motherhood. It was a pretty sight; blonde young mother, gleaming pram and these two beautifully dressed little dolls, making their way past the pubs and stalls of the Bethnal Green Road. People would stop and look, neighbours inquired about them; her two sisters begged for a chance to take them out on their own.
    â€˜In those days everybody loved the twins and wanted a go with them,’ says Violet.
    Hoxton, where the twins were born, lies just outside the City up the Hackney Road. A depressing hinterland of dead grey streets and tenements, it was famous in its day for pubs and pickpockets. One of their father’s favouriteHoxton pubs was The Eagle; for years children have been singing about it in the old nursery rhyme:
    Up and down the City Road
    In and out The Eagle
    That’s the way the money goes
    Pop goes the weasel.
    Hoxton’s tailors often ‘popped’ or pawned their ‘weasels’ or flat-irons at the countless pawnbrokers along City Road to pay for beer when the money ran out, and The Eagle was one of the places where the Hoxton ‘Whizz Mob’ came to drink. This was the biggest gang of pickpockets in London; from Hoxton they would work the race-tracks and the Cup Final crowds, operating as a team and often picking up hundreds of pounds at a time. But Hoxton was a lifeless place; even its pickpockets were despised by the rest of the criminal East End.
    As the East End had grown from the ancient villages along the river, so much of the village atmosphere remained. Each quarter kept its name and its identity, and Bethnal Green, where Violet Kray had lived, looked down its nose at Hoxton, barely half a mile away. Certainly Bethnal Green