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Prisoners and ex-prisoners all over Britain speak about him with undisguised admiration. Fraser was part of Britain's Underworld between the 1940s-1960's. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. Nevertheless he was good at sports, captaining the football team at St Patricks school, Southwark, and boxing as an amateur. 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. They worked department stores including Selfridges in teams of three or four during hoisting trips up to three times a week. Once he said he would do something, he did it, and he despised others who backed down. '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.'. 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. [22], Fraser gave gangland tours around London, where he highlighted infamous criminal locations such as The Blind Beggar pub. At the age of five, he moved with his family to a flat on Walworth Road, Elephant and Castle. 'It was not just a man's world, despite the countless column inches still spent poring over the phenomenon that was the Kray Twins,' she added. He later joined the notorious Richardson gang, formed by brothers Eddie and Charlie, and began carrying out more criminal activities. On this release, he determined to write his memoirs. People shook his hand in the street, others kissed him or asked for his autograph and taxi drivers honked their horns. The Sun website is regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. "You name it, we nicked it," he says. 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. Dubbed 'The Most Dangerous Man in Britain' by two Home Secretaries, Francis Davidson Fraser was born on the 13th of December 1923, and grew up in Waterloo, London.He and his sister, Eva started their life of crime at a young age, stealing from handbags and pickpocketing. '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. The thieves' earnings allowed them to live like upper-class debutantes. 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. Daughter. He spent more than 40 years in prison. 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. She got six months in jail, for stealing stockings from Bentalls in Kingston upon Thames. Tallymen, who sold goods door-to-door, would shift them across London. Descendants . At 17 he was sent to Borstal for breaking and entering a hosiery shop in Waterloo and was then given a 15-month prison sentence for shopbreaking. His greatest moment of national notoriety came during what was known as the 'torture trial' of the Richardson gang in 1967, which became . On the night of March 7 1966 Fraser and Eddie Richardson were badly hurt in a brawl at Mr Smiths club in Catford, the incident that broke the Richardson familys grip on south London. There was Eva, the naughty girl of the three, who became a key figure in the all-girl gang, the Forty Thieves, who targeted the West Ends big department stores. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group. 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. Eva was a chip off the old block and as well as being Franks first partner in crime, stealing sweets from the corner shop, she had a lucrative career in a daring gang of girl shoplifters, The Forty Thieves, which traced its roots back to Victorian London and cleared many a West End store for furs and luxury goods. ', As the photographs show, the women often wore beautifully designed hats , coats and dresses in order to fit in, known as 'putting on the posh'. This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy. 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. 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. Notorious for high-speed getaways, she was eventually caught stealing lingerie and sentenced to hard labour in prison. Facebook gives people the power. Those ads you do see are predominantly from local businesses promoting local services. The trial which became one of the longest in British criminal history. 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. When Mason demurred, Fraser buried a hatchet in his skull, pinning his hand to his head. He emerged from jail in 1989 and has not been back since. contact IPSO here, 2001-2023. 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. 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. 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. He stopped following a warning from the Kray Twins. 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! His parents never knew about his illegal activities, and if they ever suspected him apparently turned a blind eye, a habit . His first conviction was for stealing cigarettes, and with the second he was sent to an approved school. In the second part, she reveals how Frank wasnt the only member of his family with a chequered past. Because of Frasers behaviour in jail over the years, he forfeited almost every day of his remission. Those who had incurred Richardsons displeasure were wired up to a sinister black box with a wind-up handle that administered severe electric shocks to the genitals. Two people were left dead. They stole to put food on the table. Before World War Two, if you got married you were expected to leave work and stay at home, Beezy said. To evade discovery they posted the stolen items back to London or depositing a suitcase of loot at the railway station's left luggage office, to be collected later. She is thought to have killed herself in the 1970s. Fraser earned his mad nickname during the second world war, when he managed to get himself out of military service by pretending to be mentally ill. To prove his unsuitability to the force, he assaulted a doctor before jumping out of the window at the Bradford assessment centre where he had been sent. [4] He was involved in riots and frequently fought with prison officers and fellow inmates. It will only make me a worse villain!'. ", Of the war years, when he was heavily involved in theft from bombed-out stores, he says: "You wanted to win the war but you wanted it to go on for ever. The first came when he was in the army during the second world war, the second time when he was sent to Cane Hill psychiatric hospital in Coulsdon, Surrey, and the third when he was transferred from Durham prison to Broadmoor. Notorious gangster 'Mad' Frankie Fraser died in hospital today aged 90, relatives have revealed. It has emerged that the former gangland enforcer, who has spent 42 years in prison for 26. 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. Fraser was seen kicking Richard Hart, a Kray associate, as he lay on the pavement outside. She helped support her young siblings by taking milk and bread from neighbour's doorsteps. She was still hoisting well into her 70s.'. 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. Fraser was defended by a young solicitor called James Morton, who later became an author and wrote a history of Londons gangland in 1992. But few would perhaps know about the equally incredible lives led by his three sisters. But Hill was already an admirer: a picture taken at a party to launch Hills ghosted autobiography in 1955 shows Fraser draped artistically over a piano. 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. 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. 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. After the war he was involved in a smash-and-grab raid on a jeweller's and was given a two year prison sentence. Despite this, or possibly because of it, newspapers of the day were tipping him as Spots natural successor. But by the 1930s, the breeding ground for its recruits was South London. She helped him sell on his loot. Afraid of being heavily medicated for bad behaviour, Fraser stayed out of trouble and was released in 1955. The notorious gangster 'Mad' Frankie Fraser's sister Eva had risen through the ranks of the gang after joining in the 1930s. Their alleged specialities included pulling teeth out using pliers, cutting off toes using bolt cutters and nailing victims to floors using 6-inch nails. Though like Eva, she struggled to come to terms with the choice facing women to work or marry. The violent thugs, the Kray twins, 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 Ms 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. Although he was never convicted of murder, police reportedly held him responsible for 40 killings, but the bluster and bravado of a media-savvy gangland relic almost certainly inflated this tally, the actual scale of which remains unfathomable. [21] In 1999, he appeared at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London in a one-man show, An Evening with Mad Frankie Fraser (directed by Patrick Newley), which subsequently toured the UK. Each incident added more time to his sentence. 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. 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. Fraser was placed into an induced coma, but just five days later, on November 26, 2014, Fraser passed away after his family made the decision to turn off his life-support machine. Even decent folk were often only too happy to 'take a bit of crooked' to have something new. Morton was relieved that, rather than remonstrating, Fraser wanted him to write his life story. His new career took off and he was in regular demand as a radio and television pundit. Fraser, whose health has been deteriorating in recent years, turned to crime aged just nine when he and his sister, Eva, became petty thieves. 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). Before then, Fraser had been involved in smash-and-grab raids and wages snatches. For further details of our complaints policy and to make a complaint please click this link: thesun.co.uk/editorial-complaints/, 'Mad' Frankie Fraser was a notorious English gangster, Funeral of South London enforcer, FRANKIE FRASER at Honour Oak Crematorium, Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). 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 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. However, it was the during the 'torture trial' of the Richardson gang in 1967, that Frankie Fraser become notorious nationally. What Fraser invariably threatened was violence. The comments below have not been moderated. The gang passed on their secrets from mother to daughter, aunt to niece, so whole generations of families saw crime as a way of life. [9] He was a deserter during the Second World War, escaping from his barracks on several occasions. Photograph: Alex Segre/Rex. During his time in prison, Fraser was involved in a number of riots and frequently fought with prison officers, fellow inmates and governors. 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. Police reveal more details, as man remains at large after brutal attack outside school, Interview with MP Neil Coyle after Commons suspension: Why the drinking has stopped having started in childhood, but the swearing wont, plus deliberately avoiding Labour leader Keir Starmer, Read our print products (Digital Editions). 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. Are you sure you want to delete this comment? He was then then given a 15-month prison sentence atHMP Wandsworthfor shop-breaking - this was just the first of 20 prisons Fraser would be sent to. A feature film production is currently[when?] A Gannett Company. 'It was incredibly subversive to go against the class system and steal furs and luxury items and swan about like they were rich - but that is exactly what they did. After another, the car ran out of petrol in the Rotherhithe tunnel. With Warren at his heels, Fraser ambushed Spot in a Paddington street, knocking him to the ground with a shillelagh. The years just after World War II were a boom time for the gang, as clothing was rationed until 1949. 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. Some became pals with young actresses as they partied in Soho nightclubs and stole dresses to order for them to wear on the red carpet. 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. It was just what we knew and to be honest, we loved it.. He was a deserter during the Second World War, escaping from his barracks . By 20 she was leader of The Forty Thieves and wore a row of diamond rings that acted as a knuckle duster. '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. Fraser was released in 1988 and almost immediately served a two-year sentence for receiving. He may be in his 90th year but "Mad" Frankie Fraser is still causing mayhem. She was taught by Alice Diamond in the 1930s and a very senior member throughout the. Fraser himself was accused of pulling out the teeth of victims with a pair of pliers. These adverts enable local businesses to get in front of their target audience the local community. In the summer of 2013 it emerged that, at the age of 89, Fraser had been served with an Antisocial Behaviour Order (Asbo) after another incident, this time at his care home in Peckham, south London. As he languished in jail, his sons David and Patrick and their older brother, Frank Jnr currently living quietly on the Costa del Sol carved their own careers as bank robbers and jewellery thieves in 1970s London. After three years in jail she tookpart in the Lambeth riot at Christmas 1925. Fraser, who was jailed for 10 years in the so-called "torture trial" in 1967, is now frail and in poor health. It was a thief's paradise, Gor blimey! In 1966, Fraser was charged with the murder of Richard Hart - who was shot at Mr Smith's club inCatfordwhile other Richardson associates, includingJimmy Moody, were charged withaffray. Frank had been active as a criminal from the 1930s and was given his first prison sentence at the outbreak of the Second World War. 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. While serving this sentence, Fraser received 10 years for his part in the so-called Richardson torture trial. On 26 November, Fraser died after his family made the decision to turn off his life-support machine. Fraser was part of Britain's Underworld between the 1940s-1960's. He was a known associate of gangster Billy Hill throughout the 1950s. 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. Fraser was jailed along with other members of the Richardson gang for violently punishing people whom the Richardsons believed owed them money. 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. Eva Brindle formerly Fraser. 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. '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.'. Tue 11 Jun 2013 11.55 EDT He may be in his 90th year but "Mad" Frankie Fraser is still causing mayhem. You understand the choices that lay ahead of you if you were a working-class girl. His fourth son, Francis, in Frasers joking words, let me down by having no criminal career at all. This resulted in Fraser returning to prison once again - this time to serve a seven-year sentence. This site is part of Newsquest's audited local newspaper network. Nevertheless his campaigns and, on the outside, those of Eva, did bring the attention of the general public to the unpalatable conditions in which prisoners served then their sentences. What saved him I think was the branch; it was supple and it bent. Although Lawton survived, the dog died. Members of The Forty Thieves worked department stores including Selfridges in teams of three or four during hoisting trips up to three times a week. Comments have been closed on this article. He had an ungovernable temper and an inability to think through the undoubted consequences of his proposed actions. Frankie Fraser's Last Stand: Directed by Matt Blyth. Frankie Fraser was a notorious torturer and hitman for the Richardson gang of south London criminals in the 1960s. 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. Shortly afterwards, Fraser kidnapped Eric Mason, a Kray gang member, outside the Astor Club in Berkeley Square, with even direr consequences. 'MAD' Frankie Fraser, was one of the most feared and respected West End crime lords of the 1960s. Her brother was the notorious gangster 'Mad' Frankie Fraser, who joined turf wars between London gangs in the sixties. He spent 42 years almost half his life in prison for 26 offences. pre order Queen of Thieves now for just 2.99. Eva knew the Krays well and they treated her with reverence, although she saw them as little more than naughty boys. Reporters claimed she was 6ft tall - despite police records from 1919 putting her at 5ft9in. Born 1920s. 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. 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.