Fraser died at the age of 91 on November 26, 2014. "At the races, I'd be bucket boy," says Fraser in the documentary, Frankie Fraser's Last Stand, which will be broadcast on the Crime and Investigation network on 16 June at 9pm. Eva knew the Krays well and they treated her with reverence, although she saw them as little more than naughty boys. Yet they fiercely guarded their right to 'earn' their own money. When police visited she showed them ledgers to demonstrate her honest buying. Data returned from the Piano 'meterActive/meterExpired' callback event. The pair were the only ones of the children to embrace a life of crime. While still a teenager, in the spring of 1943, he took part in a daring raid to free an Army deserter from a squad sent to collect him from Wandsworth Prison. 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. Although his parents were not criminals, Fraser turned to crime aged 10 with his sister Eva, to whom he was close. Following a trial at theOld Baileyin 1967, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. His life of crime started aged nine when he worked for the notorious Sabini gang, which ran protection rackets at the racecourses at a time when off-course betting was illegal. In August 1963, invited to take part in the Great Train Robbery, Fraser pulled out because he was on the run from the police. 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. In 1938, she was sentenced for stabbing a policeman in the eye with a hatpin. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused. 'And they were the best fun for a night out.'. In 1996, he played (his friend) William Donaldson's guide to Marbella in the infamous BBC Radio 4 series A Retiring Fellow. 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. Pitts wore a school girl's outfit, complete with straw boater, to act as a decoy. Frank Davidson Fraser (13 December 1923 - 26 November 2014), better known as 'Mad' Frankie Fraser, was an English gangster who spent 42 years in prison for numerous violent offences. Nevertheless he was good at sports, captaining the football team at St Patricks school, Southwark, and boxing as an amateur. 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. But few would perhaps know about the equally incredible lives led by his three sisters. It has emerged that the former gangland enforcer, who has spent 42 years in prison for 26 offences, has been issued with an asbo after an incident in his residential accommodation. Editors' Code of Practice. Shortly afterwards, Fraser kidnapped Eric Mason, a Kray gang member, outside the Astor Club in Berkeley Square, with even direr consequences. After another, the car ran out of petrol in the Rotherhithe tunnel. Profile manager: Evelyn Wolff [send private message] If you are dissatisfied with the response provided you can 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. 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. After Frasers release from the Spot sentence, he was courted by the Kray Twins and the Richardson gang. Francis Davidson "Frankie" Fraser, better known as "Mad" Frankie Fraser,was an English gang member and criminal who spent 42 years in prison for numerous violent offences. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience the local community. Reporters claimed she was 6ft tall - despite police records from 1919 putting her at 5ft9in. Underneath glamorous ensembles the women wore specially-adapted petticoats with hidden pockets or baggy bloomers with elastic at the knee. 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. Born to criminal parents in Southwark, South London, in 1886, her first crimes were aiding and abetting men. He was so attired when, in 1951, he attacked the governor of Wandsworth prison, William Lawton, as he walked his pet terrier on Wandsworth Common. Frankie Fraser, who has died aged 90, was a notorious torturer and hitman for the Richardson gang of south London criminals in the 1960s; he spent 42 years behind bars before achieving a certain cult status in later life as an author, after-dinner speaker, television pundit and tour guide. A mugshot of Forty Thieves' Hughes, who was uncontrollable and dissipated by drink. The following year, the British mobster Jack Spot and wife Rita were attacked, on Hill's say-so, by Fraser, Bobby Warren and at least half a dozen other men. 'Any girl worth her salt in South London in those days was a. Whatever you nicked you could sell, they'd be queuing up to buy it off you.". Fraser had no problem dealing with rival operators whose business was dented as a result. On his release, Fraser joined Richardsons brother Eddie in a company called Atlantic Machines, installing fruit machines at some of Sohos most profitable sites, with Sir Noel Dryden recruited as the respectable frontman. He was a deserter during the Second World War, escaping from his barracks . With Frankie Fraser, Chris Keenan, Steve Box, Michael Boyd. She was still hoisting well into her 70s.'. Fraser was acquitted but received five years for affray. Fraser himself was accused of pulling out the teeth of victims with a pair of pliers. None of the gang were afraid to use razors on those who crossed them. He spent 42 years almost half his life in prison for 26 offences. Descendants . And involvement in such activities often led to his sentences being extended. As an adult she was beaten by one of her boyfriends and the father of five of her seven children, Chris Hawkins, who was a fruit and vegetable seller in Hoxton. [11] In 1942, while serving a prison sentence in HM Prison Chelmsford, he came to the attention of the British Army. The Frasers were both contemporaries of the Hatton Garden heist gang members many of whom also came from south London and who operated on the same bank robbing scene and shared jail cells with the Fraser boys at some point. "Maybe he was bored with going to prison," Ronnie Richardson, Charlie's widow, tells the programme. Fraser was the. His enduring nickname Mad Frank derived from his violent temperament which caused him to attempt to hang the governor of Wandsworth prison (and the governors dog) from a tree, and to be certified insane on three separate occasions. Always well turned out and ineffably polite and punctual, he had a large and appreciative audience, and one woman was so impressed she named her son after him. Keeping My Sisters Secrets was published on July 27 by Pan Macmillan. [12], After the war, Fraser was involved in a smash-and-grab raid on a jeweller, for which he received a two-year prison sentence, mostly served at HM Prison Pentonville. Francis Davidson Fraser, criminal, born 13 December 1923; died 26 November 2014, Gangland criminal and in later life a minor media celebrity, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Frankie Fraser in 2002. The police were cozzers and a burglary was a screwer, hitting someone was a clump, while jewellery was tom as in Tom Foolery, in rhyming slang. Together they set up the Atlantic Machines fruit-machine enterprise, which acted as a front for the criminal activities of the gang. Even decent folk were often only too happy to 'take a bit of crooked' to have something new. The most famous queen,Alice Diamond, was the daughter of a docker and renowned for her row of diamond rings that doubled as a knuckle duster. Fraser spent practically half his life behind bars. [23] In 1991, Fraser was shot in the head from close range in an apparent murder attempt outside the Turnmills Club in Clerkenwell, London. I saved myself from Royal life, Harry says & insists 'sharing's an act of service', Love Island's Olivia Hawkins breaks silence as she returns to the UK, Loose Women star lined up to be Strictly's first contestant in wheelchair, Coronation Street fans horrified as Amy Barlow is raped in disturbing scenes, News Group Newspapers Limited in England No. Fraser was the youngest of five children who were growing up in poverty - he first turned to crime at the tender age of 10, alongside his sister Eva. Nothing ever got to Frankie, wrote Charlie Richardson. 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. Alice herself was famous for clouting three furs in one go: one down each leg and one under her gusset. Frankie Fraser was a notorious torturer and hitman, who worked as an enforcer for some of London's most feared gang leaders, including Billy Hill in the 1950s and the Richardson gang in the 1960s. 'It gave them a life they could never have afforded. 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. 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'. Having chronicled the life of old mad Frank, author Beezy Marsh has turned her pen to Peggy, Kathleen and Eva; in her new book Keeping My Sisters Secrets. When police switched on to the gang's methods they branched out, with trips to Southend, Brighton, Liverpool and Manchester. While serving this sentence, Fraser received 10 years for his part in the so-called Richardson torture trial. Another of Fraser's grandsons, James Fraser, also spent a short time with Bristol Rovers. Their alleged specialities included pulling teeth out using pliers, cutting off toes using bolt cutters and nailing victims to floors using 6-inch nails. The judge, Mr Justice Griffith-Jones, complained of attempts to nobble one of the jurors, but in the case of Fraser, who was tried separately, he directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty. It was during the Second World War that he was branded 'Mad' Frankie, after he feigned a mental illness to avoid being called up to the front line. According to Eddie Richardson, Fraser had Alzheimer's disease for the last three years of his life. Fraser was just 13 when he was sent to an approved school for stealing 40 cigarettes. Over the last decade or so he was on the cabaret circuit and ran gangland tours of the East End, taking in such sights as the Blind Beggar pub, where Ronnie Kray shot dead George Cornell, one of the Richardson gang, in 1966. He stopped following a warning from the Kray Twins. Because of Frasers behaviour in jail over the years, he forfeited almost every day of his remission.