44 Facts About Kray twins

Ronald James and Reginald Kray twins were born on 24 October 1933 in Haggerston, East London, to Charles David Kray twins and Violet Annie Lee.

The brothers were identical Kray twins, with Reggie born 10 minutes before Ronnie.

The Kray twins contracted diphtheria when they were three years old.

The Kray twins household was dominated by their mother, who remained the brothers' most important influence during their childhood.

The Kray twins first attended Wood Close School in Brick Lane and then Daniel Street School, Bethnal Green.

Mrs Kray was regarded as a minor celebrity in Bethnal Green for giving birth to and raising a healthy pair of twins at a time when the child mortality rate was high among the British working class.

Kray twins spent the next 15 years living as a fugitive, being finally arrested in 1954.

Meanwhile, the Kray twins were evacuated to East House in Hadleigh, Suffolk, with their mother and their older brother.

The family remained in Hadleigh for about one year before moving back to London, as Mrs Kray twins missed her friends and family.

Ronnie was considered to be the more aggressive of the Kray twins, constantly getting into street fights as a teenager.

The Kray twins were called up to do National Service in the British Army in March 1952.

The Kray twins adopted a norm according to which anyone who failed to show due respect would be severely punished.

The twins were assisted by a banker named Alan Cooper who wanted protection against the Krays' South London rivals, the Richardson Gang.

Raban called Ronnie the "dimmer" of the two Kray twins, writing that he was "a man whose grasp on reality was so slight and pathologically deranged that he was able to live out a crude, primarily coloured fiction, twisting the city into the shape of a bad thriller".

Part of the Krays' newfound celebrity status was due to the widespread perception that the twins were men who had risen out of poverty into positions of great wealth and power due to their own efforts.

The Kray twins greatly valued their image and cultivated the media by inviting journalists to take photographs of them with other celebrities at nightclubs or in donating to charity.

The Kray twins were viewed in certain quarters as "Robin Hood"-type criminals whose crimes were seen as acceptable.

Jenks and Lorentzen wrote the Kray twins became symbols in the public mind of British organised crime itself as the brothers were associated with "tales of excessive and gratuitous violence and to a time when London criminality appeared not only as organised as never before, but integrated into the Establishment and the vanguard of popular culture".

At least some critics of the Krays made xenophobic arguments that the twins were not of English stock but were instead the products of a mixture of Ashkenazi Jewish and Romany descent.

Finally, Jenks and Lorentzen argued that the rareness of identical Kray twins made the brothers seem especially malevolent, giving them the "freak show" image as many found viewing two men who looked and sounded precisely the same to be disturbing and unnerving.

The fact that the Kray twins were successful gangsters while not subscribing to the standard heteronormative "hard men" or "lovable rogue" stereotypes associated with their criminal peers, while rejecting the popular effeminate stereotype of gay men, led to a sense there was something unnatural about them.

The Kray twins sent over a corrupt businessman, Leslie "the Brain" Payne, to pick up the bonds for transport.

Kray twins went to the Blind Beggar with his driver, "Scotch Jack" John Dickson, and his assistant, Ian Barrie.

Kray twins was a large man with a mental disorder, and he was difficult to control.

Kray twins disappeared, but the Krays were acquitted of his murder.

Freddie Foreman, a friend of the Krays, claimed in his autobiography Respect that he shot Mitchell dead as a favour to the twins and disposed of his body at sea.

Kray twins then stabbed McVitie in the face and stomach, driving the blade into his neck while twisting the knife, not stopping even as McVitie lay on the floor dying.

Bender then went on to phone Charlie Kray twins informing them that it had been dealt with.

Kray twins then informed Read via his mother that he was ready to cooperate.

Ronnie and Reggie Kray twins were allowed, under a large police guard, to attend the funeral service of their mother Violet on 11 August 1982, following her death from cancer a week earlier.

Ronnie Kray twins was a Category A prisoner, denied almost all liberties and not allowed to mix with other prisoners.

Kray twins was eventually certified insane, his paranoid schizophrenia being tempered with constant medication; in 1979 he was committed and lived the remainder of his life in Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire.

Reggie Kray twins was locked up in Maidstone Prison for eight years.

Also, extracts are mentioned in Ronnie's own book, My Story; and in Kate Kray twins's books, Sorted; Murder, Madness and Marriage; and Free at Last.

Kray twins referred to her as "my little angel" and "my little doll".

Kray twins was helping to publicise a film she was making about Ronnie, who had died in the hospital two years earlier.

An inquest came to the conclusion that she had committed suicide, but in 2002 an ex-lover of Reggie Kray twins's came forward to allege that Frances was murdered by a jealous Ronnie.

Kray twins would get really deep and open up to me.

Kray twins put his head on my shoulder and told me Ronnie killed Frances.

Kray twins told Reggie what he had done two days after.

Kray twins died in prison of natural causes on 4 April 2000, aged 72, with Reggie allowed out of prison to attend his older brother's funeral.

Kray twins was diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer in 2000.

Kray twins was released from Wayland Prison on 26 August 2000 on compassionate grounds, at the direction of Home Secretary Jack Straw.

The Kray twins have seeded an extensive bibliography leading to many autobiographical accounts, biographical reconstructions, commentaries, analysis, fiction and speculation.