Famous London gangster enforcer has died age 90
Last year he was given an ASBO following a row over a chair int he care home where he lived..
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30218842
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 26 Nov 14 at 22:00
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>> Good riddance.
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Quite agree. Died after an op on his leg; had he been nicked a few years earlier he'd likely have died after an operation on his neck.
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Hew was a mate of Dinsdale Piranha and shared his fear of Spiny Norman.
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He nailed my head to the floor...but 'e was a lovely fella...used to give 'is Mam flowers and stuff !
Mad as a snake ! Looking forward to a good ole east end funeral on the news.
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It is easy for us to judge Dinsdale Piranha too harshly. After all he only did what many of us simply dream of doing... I'm sorry. After all we should remember that a murderer is only an extroverted suicide. Dinsdale was a looney, but he was a happy looney.
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Wed 26 Nov 14 at 23:17
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He and his like were feared for their indiscriminate use of sarcasm and hyperbole.
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..... feared for their indiscriminate use of sarcasm and hyperbole......
Yes very true Duncan ........,old fashioned sarcasm is much more cutting than an axe or indeed a shivving to the face .... one of Frankies favourite means of attack.
I see from the Telegraph he once waited on the common for the governor of Wandsworth Prison who was walking his dog and attacked and hung them both from a tree .....the governor survived only because the branch was too bendy ... the dog died...
Good riddance....
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A complete nutjob, one of the Mitchell brothers enforcers during the sixties. One of their techniques, among other things, was pulling a victims teeth and toenails out with a pair of pliers.
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You wouldn't want to meet him on a professional basis. Those people don't suffer anyone gladly but they don't usually maim civilians unless they interfere.
Fraser was with the Richardsons at the Mr Smith's Club shoot-out in Catford, and was shot in the leg by a Kray associate. He was also the person who had carved up Jack Spot (Comer).
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>> You wouldn't want to meet him on a professional basis. Those people don't suffer anyone
>> gladly but they don't usually maim civilians unless they interfere.
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Or won't pay protection, or have something they want and won't hand it over. The wife of a guy I worked with had a badly scarred face inherited from the days they ran an East End pub. Her crime was to decline Ronnie and Reggie's offer of their "Insurance scheme".
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>> Fraser was with the Richardsons at the Mr Smith's Club shoot-out in Catford, and was
>> shot in the leg by a Kray associate. He was also the person who had
>> carved up Jack Spot (Comer).
I worked up just the road (The Car Mart Sales , Austin distributors for London at the time, @ 163 Bromley Rd. Catford SE6 )from Mr. Smith's club from 1964 to 1966 and visited a couple of times. Never saw violence there, though, although I seem to remember Elaine Delmar singing there.
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The Krays tried to extend their empire into Manchester in the 60s. They were met off the London train and put back on the next one South.
Although Manchester's Quality Street gang tried to claim they got rid of them, it was actually Det Chief Superintendent Douglas Nimmo and a dozen burly uniformed officers who met them at Piccadilly station and kicked ass !
I know this first hand.
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>> I know this first hand.
Not doubting your story Ted, but how did you know they were coming? Did the Met (or equivalent in those days?) keep a permanent watch on them?
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I was just a grunt then...not privy to the ' upstairs ' stuff. I remember having to remove my ' collar ' numbers first, as we all did. I think the BTC police were there too...lurking.
I assume the Met kept a sharp eye on them and had men at Euston and, probably, on the train. Or perhaps a snout, living dangerously, told them.
Westpiglet will know...he was a young peeler then ! :-)
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The old man used to tell me some stories when he visited pubs near the docks in London.
That was around 1959 1960.He liked his drink and fitted in ok with the locals.Some people you don't get on the wrong side of.Frankie Frazier was one of them.
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Just remember when you're slashing faces chaps: cut down, not across or up.
Murder's for mugs.
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....and put 2 blades in the Stanley knife. So much harder to stitch the wound.
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>> ....and put 2 blades in the Stanley knife. So much harder to stitch the wound.
Does not go so deep and less likely to kill someone.
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Never kick a man unless he is down.
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Saw a leering hood on the box (can't remember who, perhaps Jack Comer), many years ago now, describing the delicate use of a cut-throat razor to cut someone from ear to ear, via the chin, to leave a permanent enormous scar without causing really serious injury to anything vital.
'We call it the scenic route,' he chortled juicily. Goodness how I miss Soho in the old days...
Saw a bloke leaving a house in Notting Hill back in the sixties who had just been razored. He was accompanied by friends and didn't seem unduly bothered, but his face looked like a plate of raw liver. Shook me up a bit... probably a property dispute. All our landlords were hoods, no kidding.
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>> probably a property dispute.
There's another possibility actually: a dispute between gangs of pimps, numerous in the quarter at that time. I've also remembered that a school friend who was with me when I saw the guy who'd been cut up wanted to go over and intervene, and I had some trouble dissuading him. 'D'you want to end up looking like that bloke?' I said among other things.
I knew some tarts and pimps socially being a naïve youth. Some were charming of course, but they seemed a bit too grown-up for me to tell the truth, although they could be very helpful in one's perpetual quest for marijuana.
My parents were very worried about me for a while back then.
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A favourite with some heavies was to slash someones buttocks. No danger of killing them but excruciatingly painful as the could not sit down without opening the wound up again.
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There was a letter in yesterday's i from someone who claimed to have served as a copper in the east end in the 60's and 70's. He said he'd met all of those characters and they only gave aggro to other criminals. Everyone, including the police, felt safer with them around. Makes you wonder if he had one of those insurance policies too.
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>> A favourite with some heavies was to slash someones buttocks.
The bebop trumpet player Dizzy Gillespie, whose public persona was that of a very genial and amusing clown, did that one day to the big bandleader Cab Calloway. No idea what the beef was, perhaps some authoritarian attempt to make him play the same notes as the rest of the band instead of improvising, but it showed Gillespie in an unexpected light. He was a hell of a musician anyway.
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"After a short stay with the band including a tour through Europe, Dizzy freelanced for a year and found his way to Cab Calloway in 1939. It was with this premier band that Dizzy began to develop a style more his own and less like Roy Eldridge, as you can hear in "Pickin' the Cabbage."
Calloway, annoyed by Dizzy's risky style, was not particularly fond of Dizzy and called his solos "Chinese music." Despite this, Dizzy stayed with the band until 1941, when there was an on-stage occurrence that, although resolved, prompted Dizzy to leave the band.
During a concert, a band member shot spitballs at Cab's back when he faced the audience. Cab accused Dizzy of being the culprit and upon Dizzy's vehement denial, the two began to fight. Dizzy grabbed a knife and actually cut Cab. Although the two made up after Jonah Jones and Milt Hinton came forward as the perpetrators, Dizzy was fired.
The real legacy of his time in the band would only be realized decades later for, having roomed the whole time with Mario Bauza, Dizzy had begun to take an interest in Afro-Cuban music... "
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>> Dizzy grabbed a knife
'Grabbed'? I think 'drew' may be more accurate. But thanks for the research CGN.
When Dizzy was touring here I remember crowding round a telephone to hear Dizzy warming up or practising riffs at some big venue, where an excited habitué of the Fiesta One restaurant in Westbourne Park Road was listening in the wings and dialled the Fiesta from a public phone there.
Dizzy came to the Fiesta too, but I missed him being out of town. He was quoted to me by someone who was present as saying admiringly of a huge joint someone had just rolled: 'Ain't that a bitch!'
Sorry. But old men tend to maunder on about things.
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Mad Frankie Fraser - MD
