Reggie Kray's East End Stories: The lost memoir of a gangland legend by Kray Reggie

Author:Kray, Reggie [Kray, Reggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2010-06-05T22:00:00+00:00

As a family one of the things we looked forward to the most was the annual fruit-picking holiday. This traditional exodus to the fields and orchards of Kent, Surrey, Cambridge and many other parts of the country, had been made by Londoners for generation after generation. Long before the season started, advertisements would appear in the local press inviting families to apply for work. As everyone from grandparents down to sturdy five-year-olds could add some contribution to the collective effort good money could be earned, so naturally they jumped at the chance to get away from the grimy streets of the East End. And although the work was hard and the hours long, the six to eight weeks spent in a rural environment was the highlight of the year.

Our first working trip was to a farm in the fens of Cambridge near the town of Wisbech. Ron, our parents and I were accommodated in long wooden army-type huts, along with all the other workers, in a field near the farmhouse. Inside, they were partitioned off with plasterboard walls to give each family some privacy. It wasn’t long before Ron and I started to need some entertainment, so to keep ourselves occupied we got the gloves on. We got stuck into each other and getting a bit carried away, we ended up splitting some of the panels as we crashed each other into them. That got us a telling off from Mum, so we stuck to sparring outside after that.

The work of picking strawberries was back-breaking and monotonous, but we loved being out in the fresh air. With the younger workers there was a certain amount of friendly rivalry going on as to who could fill the most baskets. We were only paid for the amount we picked, so these races helped us towards a good pay-out at the end of the day. If I remember correctly, each filled punnet was worth about ninepence, so collectively our family could pick up eight or nine pounds for a week’s work on the Saturday night.

Sometimes we would be put onto gooseberry picking, which was not half as back-breaking, but could be painful if your leather gloves were left in the hut. The following year we turned up with our parents and a friend, Pat Butler, to find there was no room in the huts for us boys, so that evening in the pub Mum approached the gangmaster Bill Shippey and asked him what we could do. Without hesitation he said the three of us could move into his home for the season, which began a friendship with Bill and his wife Mavis that has lasted to the present day.

Any reader who imagines that because of our reputation the Kray twins ran riot and generally terrorised the people of Wisbech would be surprised to hear how Bill’s wife described us. On a recent visit to me here at Maidstone, Mavis, who for some reason I’ve always called Mary, told me that Ron and I had been quiet, considerate and polite.

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