He also claimed to have been the first bandit to wear a stocking mask. But she was once caught stealing stockings and was sent to prison.. In 1969 Fraser led the Parkhurst prison riot on the Isle of Wight and found himself back in court charged with incitement to murder. 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. Ancestors . He appeared on pop records and in television documentaries, toured his one-man show of criminal reminiscences (flexing a pair of gilded pliers), and found himself invited into bookshops to sign copies of his memoirs. Whatever you nicked you could sell, they'd be queuing up to buy it off you.". After trying his hand at crime as a child, Fraser then continued into his later life. 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. 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. I don't think they felt bad about it. Part of his mouth was shot away in the incident. The Forty Thieves, a London-based exclusively female gang whose exploits were worse than those depicted in BBC drama the Peaky Blinders, posed as wealthy housewives innocently browsing the rails of the UK's most luxurious clothing stores. It will only make me a worse villain!'. David had perfected the prison whisper talking very quietly, in case he was overheard by the guards. Notorious for high-speed getaways, she was eventually caught stealing lingerie and sentenced to hard labour in prison. Mad Frank. As a young woman, Eva became an accomplished hoister (shoplifter). 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. 'It gave them a life they could never have afforded. 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. Last seen in public in October at the funeral of his former boss, Charlie Richardson, Fraser is one of the few remaining members of a generation of "celebrity criminals". 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). Petite shoplifter Bertha Tappenden stood just over 5ft 2in tall, but was convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm on a man in Lambeth, after kicking down his front door and attacking him with razors and knives, to settle a score, aided by Diamond and another gang girl, Gertrude Scully. His mother was of Norwegian-Irish stock and his father was half Native American. Fraser was part of Britain's Underworld between the 1940s-1960's. The Richardson Gang was an English crime gang based in South London, England in the 1960s.Also known as the "Torture Gang", they had a reputation as some of London's most sadistic gangsters. With Warren at his heels, Fraser ambushed Spot in a Paddington street, knocking him to the ground with a shillelagh. Although his parents were not criminals, Fraser turned to crime aged 10 with his sister Eva, to whom he was close. [14] According to Fraser, it was they who helped him avoid arrest for the Great Train Robbery by bribing a policeman. In 1969, Fraser was one of the ringleaders of the major Parkhurst Prison riot, which resulted in him spending the six weeks in the prison hospital due to his injuries. 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. 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. She once stabbed a policeman in the eye with a hatpin, blinding him. When the heat from the cops in London got too much, they headed off to the Costa del Crime to seek their fortunes there. However, according to a new documentary, he is clearly not going gentle into any good night. Following a trial at the Old Bailey in 1967, he was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. During World War 2 he was a deserter - escaping from his barracks on several occasions. Frankie Fraser was a notorious torturer and hitman for the Richardson gang of south London criminals in the 1960s. If you love GANGLAND and women in crime who rubbed shoulders with Frank and the Krays, you're going to QUEEN OF CLUBS my new book set in seedy 1950s Soho and inspired by the Forty Thieves hoisters gang including Frank's sister Eva Fraser and the notorious hoister Shirley Pitts from Walworth who grew up with his sons David and Patrick. 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. In 1996, he played (his friend) William Donaldson's guide to Marbella in the infamous BBC Radio 4 series A Retiring Fellow. The notorious gangster 'Mad' Frankie Fraser's sister Eva had risen through the ranks of the gang after joining in the 1930s. It was during this sentence that he was first certified insane and was sent to Cane Hill Hospital before being released in 1949. An early nickname Razor Fraser reflected his penchant for shivving his enemies faces with a cut-throat blade. [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. But by the time of his death at the age of 90 from complications following leg surgery, Fraser had become something of a minor celebrity. Born on Cornwall Road, Waterloo, Lambeth, South London, Fraser was the youngest of five children and grew up in poverty. Pitts wore a school girl's outfit, complete with straw boater, to act as a decoy. Eva knew the Krays well and they treated her with reverence, although she saw them as little more than naughty boys. He was a rock.. His first conviction was for stealing cigarettes, and with the second he was sent to an approved school. The pair were the only ones of the children to embrace a life of crime. The women, who carried razors wrapped in lace handkerchiefs, were known for violent outbursts - including one furore that resulted in a woman blinding a police officer by stabbing him in the eye with her hatpin. Mad Frank: Memoirs of a Life of Crime appeared in 1994, with two further volumes following in 1998 and 2001. For a time he was engaged to Marilyn Wisbey, daughter of the Great Train Robber Tommy Wisbey, with whom he briefly ran a massage parlour in Islington, in which Fraser made the tea. Her wartime experience was spent on the switchboards during the Blitz. "You name it, we nicked it," he says. Getting them to relive their exploits had its own difficulties at the start the only time they had ever been interviewed was by the police and they were used to keeping their own counsel. Newsquest Media Group Ltd, Loudwater Mill, Station Road, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. "As I was growing up, I never had to buy a shirt Eva made sure she nicked them for me. 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. Frankie Fraser was born on Cornwall Road inWaterloo,London on December 13, 1923. When he was 10, the pair stole a cigarette machine from a local pub, hauled it to some waste ground and jemmied it open. Sometimes the hoisters' lives became entangled with those of underworld bosses through affairs, family ties or marriage. [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. Comments have been closed on this article. Moment brazen thieves jump behind counter at Chicago Drug baron, 58, who 'hid 198MILLION fortune from police' is Isabel Oakeshott receives 'menacing' message from Matt Hancock, Dozens stuck in car park as staff refuses to open gate for woman, Incredible footage of Ukrainian soldiers fighting Russians in Bakhmut, Pro-Ukrainian drone lands on Russian spy planes exposing location, 'Buster is next!' Throughout his life he denied the justice of this conviction, but he was happy to trade off it. To see all content on The Sun, please use the Site Map. 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Once he said he would do something, he did it, and he despised others who backed down. ", The new documentary returns to this theme, suggesting he had a hard time in prison because there were no criminals in his family. Mad Frank (1994), which went on to sell around 100,000 copies, was the first in a successful series. 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. 'You name it, we nicked it,' he tells the . The violent thugs, the Kray twins, held The Forty Thieves member Eva Fraser in high regard during the 1940s and 1950s. Because of Frasers behaviour in jail over the years, he forfeited almost every day of his remission. This service is provided on News Group Newspapers' Limited's Standard Terms and Conditions in accordance with our Privacy & Cookie Policy. Fraser, tried separately, was jailed for 10. She was an alcoholic and onceran out of a jeweller with a tray of 34 diamond rings and bumped straight into a policeman. They enjoyed buying nice things with the money and putting on the posh. [16], Fraser's 42 years served in over 20 different prisons in the UK were often coloured by violence. 'MAD' Frankie Fraser, was one of the most feared and respected West End crime lords of the 1960s. Before then, Fraser had been involved in smash-and-grab raids and wages snatches. Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription you will not receive any newsletters until your subscription is confirmed. 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. [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. For latest book news including updates on the forthcoming film Mad Frank and Sons please like my page Beezy Marsh. Frank's mother, Margaret, was a huge influence on him but his "best pal" and early partner in crime was his sister, Eva. He also ran a coach tour pointing out to a spectrum of customers the old criminal London. After being sent to HM Prison Durham for taking part in bank robberies, he was again certified insane and this time was sent to Broadmoor Hospital. 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. He claimed to have no regrets about his criminal life, apart from being caught. He was a deserter during the Second World War, escaping from his barracks . By the 1950s, the gang were facing ever-present store detectives and had to rely more on disguises. She was chauffeured in a Bentley and always wore a sable coat. Their alleged specialities included pulling teeth out using pliers, cutting off toes using bolt cutters and nailing victims to floors using 6-inch nails. Francis Davidson Fraser was born on December 13 1923 in Cornwall Road, a slum area of south London on the site of what is now the Royal Festival Hall. She lived an unashamedly lavish lifestyle and splashed her money around. Fraser, whose health has been deteriorating in recent years, turned to crime aged just nine when he and his sister, Eva, became petty thieves. Had her first criminal conviction aged 14 and went on to become Diamond's accomplice. The Forty Thieves posed as wealthy housewives innocently browsing the rails of the UK's most luxurious clothing stores before shoving stolen items down their undergarments. He was still touring clubs and pubs in 2011. A ponce was someone who thieves looked down on, because they lived by taking a cut from someone elses earnings. She also passed on her 'wisdom' to a future queen, Shirley Pitts. Please report any comments that break our rules. Charles Richardson was a criminal businessman who reputedly specialised in various tortures administered at secret courts at which he presided, sometimes robed like a judge, a knife or a gun to hand. In 1996 he was cast as the gangleader Pops Den in the film Hard Men, which premiered at the London film festival. Are you sure you want to delete this comment? 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. 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. The cells did not have a reforming effect on her character or on that of her gang leader Diamond, who was arrested on numerous occasions over the following decade. 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. 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. You understand the choices that lay ahead of you if you were a working-class girl. 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. 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. 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. '", Frankie Fraser's Last Stand will be broadcast on the Crime and Investigation network on 16 June at 9pm, New TV documentary shows ex-gangland enforcer is far from mellowing with age and has few regrets about his life of crime, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Frankie Fraser has no regrets over his life of crime, which involved him being jailed for a total of 42 years for 26 offences. 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. Had it all gone to plan, she could have inhabited a very different side of the West End to her little sister Eva. Here are some pictures of Eva Fraser of the Forty Thieves and her sister Kathleen. His wife, Doreen, whom he married in 1965, and who with Eva loyally toured the prisons to visit him, died in 1999. None of the gang were afraid to use razors on those who crossed them. 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. Fraser was the. With Frankie Fraser, Chris Keenan, Steve Box, Michael Boyd. [5][6][7][8] His mother was of Irish and Norwegian descent, while his father was half Native-American. 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. He had an ungovernable temper and an inability to think through the undoubted consequences of his proposed actions. According to Eddie Richardson, Fraser had Alzheimer's disease for the last three years of his life. And I felt the same way,' she said. 'And they were the best fun for a night out.'. 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. 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! The grim terraces of Waterloo and the tenements of Elephant and Castle provided plenty of girls desperate enough to join The Forty Thieves. Eva got into shoplifting, but had a heart of gold. '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. 'They didn't see anything wrong in it because these things were too expensive for most people to afford and shops had insurance. [10], In 1941, Fraser was sent to borstal for breaking into a Waterloo hosiery store, then given a 15-month prison sentence at HM Prison Wandsworth for shop-breaking. The reader is also introduced to the girls brother Jim, who became a sergeant in the army and fought in North Africa. Join Facebook to connect with Frankie Fraser and others you may know. Another of Fraser's grandsons, James Fraser, also spent a short time with Bristol Rovers. It was a thief's paradise, Gor blimey! Joining the Forty Thieves was something of a right of passage for Eva Fraser. 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. '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. [25] In June 2013, the 89-year-old Fraser was served with an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) by police after a row with another resident. Bought stolen goods and sold them on in a role known as 'the fence'. Together they set up the Atlantic Machines fruit-machine enterprise, which acted as a front for the criminal activities of the gang. He undoubtedly had a wicked temper and a lack of empathy as seen in his capability for violence but he described that to me in terms of a soldier doing his job. 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. The singer, 29, bared his chest and showed off his . Jack 'Spot' Comer showing the scar on his face left by Frankie Fraser and Alf Warren (GETTY), By 1956, Fraser had racked up 15 convictions and had twice been certified insane. Even the gangster 'Mad' Frankie Fraser, whose sister Eva was a leading light in the gang in the thirties and forties, spoke with great reverence about Alice Diamond. Frankie Fraser was tried at the Old Bailey for Harts murder, while six others, including Eddie Richardson, faced lesser charges. In 1991, while emerging from Turnmills nightclub in Clerkenwell, London, he was shot at by an unidentified gunman. pre order Queen of Thieves now for just 2.99. On the morning of Derek Bentleys execution at Wandsworth in 1953, he spat at the executioner Albert Pierrepoint and tried to attack him. 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. Even decent folk were often only too happy to 'take a bit of crooked' to have something new. 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.
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