Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group. 'Mad' Frankie Fraser: Sweet dapper. New biography of notorious Frankie Fraser promises to reveal the late At least two home secretaries considered Fraser the most dangerous man in Britain, an image which, in old age, he only half-heartedly sought to dispel. There was no evidence that Fraser had fired the fatal shots, and although he claimed to have been fitted up for the killing, he was convicted of affray and sentenced to five years imprisonment. "You name it, we nicked it," he says. Frankie Fraser Biography | HowOld.co 'The other side of the story involves these feisty women and it is perhaps more fascinating given the limited powers such working class girls had to earn a decent wage.'. Mad Frankie Fraser - Everything2.com Eva got six months for stealing stockings from Bentalls in Kingston upon Thames. The Krays, according to Frank, were little more than thieves ponces.. I don't think they felt bad about it. They set up a fruit machine enterprise, which they would sell to pub landlords, to cover up their crimes. Are you sure you want to delete this comment? While serving this sentence, Fraser received 10 years for his part in the so-called Richardson torture trial. It was just what we knew and to be honest, we loved it.. Here are some pictures of Eva Fraser - MAD FRANK and SONS | Facebook Though like Eva, she struggled to come to terms with the choice facing women to work or marry. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. He then worked for legendary Soho crime boss Billy Hill in the 1950s, earning the nickname razor Fraser for his attacks on those who crossed him, before becoming embroiled in protection rackets in the 1960s, rising to the position of the Boss of Soho. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material, visit our Syndication site. [15] In 1966, Fraser was charged with the murder of Richard Hart, who was shot at Mr Smith's club in Catford while other Richardson associates, including Jimmy Moody, were charged with affray. Newsquest Media Group Ltd, Loudwater Mill, Station Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Photograph: Crime and Investigation network. It was during the war that he first became involved in serious crime. 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. MAD FRANK and SONS - Home - Facebook It was during this sentence that he was first certified insane and was sent to Cane Hill Hospital before being released in 1949. Then they were turned over to Fraser. What Fraser invariably threatened was violence. 'Mad' Frankie Fraser handed an asbo aged 90 - the Guardian Prisoners and ex-prisoners all over Britain speak about him with undisguised admiration. When police visited she showed them ledgers to demonstrate her honest buying. From the time of Frankie Fraser's - MAD FRANK and SONS | Facebook Frankie Fraser belonged to a bygone era of crime and was cut from a different cloth than so many other gangsters of his generation. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. Many started as child lookouts. [26] On 21 November 2014, he fell critically ill during leg surgery at King's College Hospital, Denmark Hill[27] and was placed into an induced coma. 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. In 1996 he was cast as the gangleader Pops Den in the film Hard Men, which premiered at the London film festival. Photograph: Alex Segre/Rex. When Mason demurred, Fraser buried a hatchet in his skull, pinning his hand to his head. In 1945, when he was 21, he assaulted the governor at Shrewsbury prison with an ebony ruler snatched from the governors desk, for which he received 18 strokes of the cat. For latest book news including updates on the forthcoming film Mad Frank and Sons please like my page Beezy Marsh. Fraser was the. 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. 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. During his time behind bars he was involved in violence and was a major instigator in the Parkhurst Prison riots in 1969. 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. Fraser also appeared as East End crime boss Pops Den in the feature film Hard Men, a forerunner of British gangster movies such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and had a documentary made of his life, Mad Frank. 'In fact, she was one of the people who spotted his talent for stealing after he pinched a cigarette machine from a hotel as a small boy. It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need as much support as possible during these challenging times. You understand the choices that lay ahead of you if you were a working-class girl. He refused to discuss the shooting with the police. Although his parents were not criminals, Fraser turned to crime aged 10 with his sister Eva, to whom he was close. Notorious for high-speed getaways, she was eventually caught stealing lingerie and sentenced to hard labour in prison. He was given an asbo, one of his sons told film-makers, after getting into an argument with a fellow-resident and is unrepentant about his life of crime. Hughes was famed for her red hair, a love of drink and a violent temper. It spent six weeks in the Sunday Times top ten and held the coveted #1 Globe and Mail chart slot in Canada for three months. 'MAD' Frankie Fraser, was one of the most feared and respected West End crime lords of the 1960s. Frasers partner in this endeavour was Bobby Warren, an uncle of the boxing promoter Frank Warren. Here are some pictures of Eva Fraser of the Forty Thieves and her sister Kathleen. A ponce was someone who thieves looked down on, because they lived by taking a cut from someone elses earnings. It has emerged that the former gangland enforcer, who has spent 42 years in prison for 26. 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. Their loot would be stuffed into these 'hoister's drawers', allowing the women to leave the stores undetected. contact IPSO here, 2001-2023. [28], "Gangland enforcer sets the record straight about 'the bad old days': Rhys Williams meets "Mad" Frankie Fraser, once known as Britain's most violent man", "Find & contact The White Hart in Waterloo", "Local and community news, opinion, video & pictures - Southport Visiter", "Tories condemn prisoners' freedom to read criminal memoirs", "Gangland enforcer 'Mad' Frankie Fraser dies at 90", "Mad Frankie Fraser given Asbo at age of 89 after bust-up at care home", "Gangster 'Mad' Frankie Fraser dies at 90", "Mad Frankie Fraser dead: Notorious gangster dies in hospital aged 90 following leg surgery", Personal website with biography and details of gangland tours, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frankie_Fraser&oldid=1107726220, This page was last edited on 31 August 2022, at 15:09. The youngest of five children, he grew up in poverty in the Elephant and Castle and Borough, areas teeming with moneylenders, prostitutes and backstreet abortionists. He was also tried in court in the so-called 'Torture trial', in which members of the Richardson Gang were charged with burning, electrocuting and whipping those found guilty of disloyalty by a kangaroo court. 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. Theres one account of one of Peggys colleagues pretending to still be single so she could carry on working as a Post Office manager. Whereas for Eva it was about her earning her own money on her own terms. . Because of the type of person I am, he wrote, in the life I led, you learn to shrug off adversity better than people whove worked hard all their lives.. 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. Young Frankie attended local schools, captained the football team, and acted as bookies runner to one of the teachers. The comments below have not been moderated. The family was hard-working and kept themselves clean [out of crime].. The Sun website is regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. He also claimed to have been the first bandit to wear a stocking mask. His last jail term ended in 1989, but in 2011 he was handed an Asbo after getting into an argument with a fellow pensioner at the sheltered accommodation where he lived in Bermondsey. Family ways of 'Mad' Frankie | The Northern Echo Frank's mother, Margaret, was a huge influence on him but his "best pal" and early partner in crime was his sister, Eva. Frankie Fraser - obituary - The Telegraph 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. Her story has been told in The Queen of Thieves, written by author Beezy Marsh, which sheds a light on the lives of the girl gang that gained the respect of male criminals because of their lucrative and violent methods. His fourth son, Francis, in Frasers joking words, let me down by having no criminal career at all. 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. 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. As a subscriber, you are shown 80% less display advertising when reading our articles. [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. However, it was the during the 'torture trial' of the Richardson gang in 1967, that Frankie Fraser become notorious nationally. Beezy reveals how the girls father would beat their mother a big influence on their outlook. Fraser was one of the ringleaders of the major Parkhurst Prison riot in 1969, spending the following six weeks in the prison hospital because of his injuries. At the age of five, he moved with his family to a flat on Walworth Road, Elephant and Castle. Frankie Fraser was a south London gangster who knew no language but violence and spent half his life behind bars. In the second part, she reveals how Frank wasnt the only member of his family with a chequered past. Aged seven, Ms Pitts was stealing milk and bread to provide food for her five siblings. Frankie Fraser - Wikipedia 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. 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. Ancestors . inaccuracy or intrusion, then please 'Mad' Frankie Fraser handed Asbo at the age of 89 | Metro News [23] In 1991, Fraser was shot in the head from close range in an apparent murder attempt outside the Turnmills Club in Clerkenwell, London. She would send her girls out in teams of three or four at least three days a week, to stores all over London and as far afield as Birmingham and Brighton. Fraser, he recalled, was more than capable of doing what he threatened. Bought stolen goods and sold them on in a role known as 'the fence'. Beezy said: "Frank's sister Eva was the one who led him into crime as a small boy. He shot, slashed, stabbed and axed. Fraser treated his various brushes with death as an occupational hazard: his thigh bone was shattered by a bullet fired during the melee in Catford, and part of his mouth was shot away in an incident in May 1991 when someone botched an attempt to assassinate him outside a nightclub in Farringdon. She was an alcoholic and onceran out of a jeweller with a tray of 34 diamond rings and bumped straight into a policeman. 'They didn't see anything wrong in it because these things were too expensive for most people to afford and shops had insurance. 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. An unregenerate villain of the deepest dye, Fraser satisfied the public appetite for vicarious thrill-seeking with a series of self-exculpatory memoirs in the 1990s that launched him on a twilight career as a celebrity criminal. His mother was of Norwegian-Irish stock and his father was half Native American. It will only make me a worse villain! They didnt go to jail, they did bird or got a lagging. He really did live by a code of honour which he took with him to the grave. What saved him I think was the branch; it was supple and it bent. Although Lawton survived, the dog died. He was moved from prison to prison more than 100 times because he was virtually impossible to control. At the same time Fraser was concerned to protect his West End business interests, chiefly the installation and operation (on an exclusive basis) in the clubs of Soho of one-armed bandits, or fruit machines, then growing in popularity. [9] He was a resident at a sheltered accommodation home in Peckham. 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. He received a further five years when, in 1970, he was acquitted of incitement to murder but convicted of grievous bodily harm after he had led the Parkhurst prison riot the previous year. 'Mad Frank' the thug, hitman and enforcer ', The notorious gangster 'Mad' Frankie Fraser's sister Eva had risen through the ranks of the gang after joining in the 1930s. But his greatest moment of national notoriety came a quarter of a century earlier, during what the media billed as the Torture Trial (in fact a series of trials) in 1967 that became one of the longest in British criminal history. She helped support her young siblings by taking milk and bread from neighbour's doorsteps. 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. 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. If you are dissatisfied with the response provided you can He was working all the hours he got sent, but he couldnt make ends meet. The big question everyone has about Frank is Was he really mad? He was certified insane three times once by the Army, twice in prison and he was diagnosed as a psychopath but his family argue, and I tend to agree, that he played the system to suit himself. There were further language difficulties. By 20 she was leader of The Forty Thieves and wore a row of diamond rings that acted as a knuckle duster. Harry Styles bares his impressively toned torso and body art at gig Diamond's second-in-command Maggie Hughes (right) was known as 'Babyface' for her sweet looks and made a habit of cheekily shouting back at the judge when she was sentenced to jail: 'It won't cure me! 'I felt it was time for their story to be told and it inspired my novel, which is the first in a planned trilogy for Orion about the gang, stretching from the 1920s to the 1950s.'. Eva was a leading light in the gang in the thirties and forties, having risen through the ranks of the gang after joining in the 1930s. There was American Indian blood in him; his grandfather had emigrated to Canada in the late 19th century and married a full-blooded American Indian woman. But she was once caught stealing stockings and was sent to prison.. This resulted in Fraser returning to prison once again - this time to serve a seven-year sentence. After another, the car ran out of petrol in the Rotherhithe tunnel. Photos of Frankie "Mad" Fraser - Find a Grave Memorial Fraser was defended by a young solicitor called James Morton, who later became an author and wrote a history of Londons gangland in 1992. 'Any girl worth her salt in South London in those days was a hoister because they could outearn us men two to one,' he said. Borstal was followed by prison, where in 1943 he met the influential London villain Billy Hill, for whom he worked on and off for more than a decade, culminating in his slashing of Hills rival Jack Spot in 1956 after the self-styled kings of the underworld had fallen out. His parents never knew about his illegal activities, and if they ever suspected him apparently turned a blind eye, a habit . 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. As a solicitor, I defended him in the trial following the Parkhurst riot and as a result wrote a number of books with him. Author Beezy Marsh investigates criminal matriarchs of 1950s London The Krays held Eva Fraser in high regard because of her role in the gang and during the 1940s and 1950s, and the Soho gang boss Billy Hill - brother of the fiery Maggie Hughes - was careful not to encroach too much on their territory because he respected their right to earn their own money, free from male interference. What officers didn't know then was that his crime spree would continue over a career spanning seven decades, and his offences only worsened. Once again, he was sent toprison, this timefor taking part in bank robberies. Richardson Gang - Wikipedia Frankie Fraser's Last Stand: Directed by Matt Blyth. ", The new documentary returns to this theme, suggesting he had a hard time in prison because there were no criminals in his family. Who was 'Mad' Frankie Fraser? | The Scottish Sun It was a thief's paradise, Gor blimey! Eva knew the Krays well and they treated her with reverence, although she saw them as little more than naughty boys. in development with Fraser's endorsement. 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. But little by little, over weeks and months of interviews, cups of tea and chats, their life stories emerged and with that came a fascinating insight into the Fraser family history and what really made Frank tick. 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. A Hoisters' Code of loyalty dictated rules such as having an early night before 'going shopping', handing over all they pinched to the Queen in return for generous weekly wages, and never stealing each other's boyfriends (bad for morale). 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. Diamond took her under her wing and showed her how to shoplift in 1947, when Pitts was just 12. Mason was found, barely alive, wearing only his underpants and wrapped in a blanket, on the steps of the London Hospital in Whitechapel. Editors' Code of Practice. [24], Fraser's wife, by whom he had four sons, died in 1999. However, it was in the early 1960s that Fraser began to take on even bigger crimes, when he first met Charlie and Eddie Richardson of the Richardson Gang - rivals to the Kray twins. Diamond's second-in-command Maggie Hughes was known as 'Babyface' for her sweet looks and made a habit of cheekily shouting back at the judge when she was sentenced to jail: 'It won't cure me! She got six months in jail, for stealing stockings from Bentalls in Kingston upon Thames. I dont think people realise how close we came to all-out battles in London between Communism and Fascism, before WW2 brought the country together, Beezy said. An early nickname Razor Fraser reflected his penchant for shivving his enemies faces with a cut-throat blade. Tallymen, who sold goods door-to-door, would shift them across London. We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. It will only make me a worse villain!'. He was still serving his sentence for the Catford affray when he was handed a further 10 years for his part in the Richardson torture case. 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.