It’s impossible to talk about Broadmoor and not talk about Ronnie Kray, the most famous high dependency inmate of them all. He is someone still almost obsessively alluded to by virtually everyone that we interviewed in the course of researching this book, such as Dr Gwen Adshead, who was on his ward, and his story, from the glamorous world of 1960s Swinging London to his death of a heart attack in Broadmoor in 1995, takes in what was also the most notorious period of Broadmoor’s history: the 1980s.
Ronnie Kray and his twin brother Reginald must be the most infamous figures in the history of British gang crime. During the 1950s and 1960s their gang, The Firm, were the power behind much of the organised crime in the East End of London. Their nightclub circuit and celebrity network took in actors, singers, boxers, peers and politicians. The Krays associated with everyone from Judy Garland to Frank Sinatra. They were media savvy well before social media, working TV interviews and leaking juicy stories to the press.
An early warning sign of their life in violent crime was their poor record during National Service. Having been called up in 1952, they often deserted before getting collared and sent back to the army. Ronnie had punched a corporal in the face on his first day, and subsequently, while AWOL, the twins attacked a police corporal. This landed them with a jail stint at the Tower of London, of all places. They ended up with dishonourable discharges. Both violent and unpredictable, Ronnie was also starting to show signs of mental illness, with hunger strikes, abrupt, unprompted violent episodes and arson.
Ronnie was first diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic at the age of 22. It was when he ended up in a mental hospital for respite care during a three-year prison sentence he was serving for grievous bodily harm.
Ronnie Kray’s rap sheet includes murder and vicious assaults. An early but notorious crime took place in 1954 when he used a cutlass to attack members of a rival Maltese gang. When a jewel thief broke a Kray gang member’s nose in 1962, Ronnie’s vicious retaliation was to brand him, causing partial sight loss.
The Krays believed their own hype, and acted like they were above the law. In 1966, Ronnie entered the Blind Beggar pub and shot George Cornell dead in front of dozens of witnesses. Such was the Krays’ East End reign of terror, they knew noone would come forward readily to testify. Even so, by 1969, Ronnie and Reggie Kray were on trial at the Old Bailey for the murders of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie and George Cornell. Their 39-day trial, which caused a sensation, was then the longest and most expensive murder trial in English history. They were sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 30 years to be served.
Medical reports during their Old Bailey trial revealed that Reggie Kray took Valium for anxiety. The conclusion of the reports’ author, Dr Denis Leigh, on Ronnie, however, was that he had been suffering with schizophrenia for over 16 years. He was heavily dependent on medication to manage his condition.
Speculation over the source of Ronnie Kray’s lifelong mental health issues ranges from infant diphtheria to a head injury sustained during a fight with Reggie, aged nine. Regardless of what separated the brothers’ mental states, what is clear is that their mental states were what led to their physical separation. While the two were originally held in the same prison, in 1979, Ronnie was moved to Broadmoor. He was held in a standard assertive rehab ward. The brothers did not have a straightforward relationship. On the one hand, they enjoyed that twin cliché of an almost telepathic bond. Following his release from prison, Reggie was permitted to visit Ronnie in Broadmoor but the meetings would often pass in eerie silence.
There, Ronnie very much missed his brother. He also, though, seemed much happier, according to his friend and connection with the outside world, Maureen Flanagan. He took pleasure in simple things. Being able to decorate his room how he wanted, including, apparently, the addition of a gramophone and fancy curtains. Freedom to dress as he pleased, in sharp suits, monogrammed handkerchiefs and cufflinks. He was dapper and flashy in Broadmoor, with diamonds and gold jewellery.
Ronnie Kray’s second wife Kate thought that his fondness for Broadmoor above all was grounded in something more poignant and personal. Ronnie understood that Broadmoor was good for his mental health and stability, and the right place for him to be.
Reggie Kray missed his brother so badly that his own mental health took a nosedive. He self-harmed, slicing himself with bits of a broken watch in a failed suicide attempt. In the end, Reggie was allowed regular visits to Broadmoor to visit Ronnie.
Reggie Kray might have been one of Ronnie’s most regular visitors but he wasn’t the only one. He was also visited by Richard Burton, Ronnie’s wife, the actress Barbara Windsor and Debbie Harry, lead singer of the band Blondie.
Ronnie left Broadmoor on just one occasion: for his mother Violet’s funeral in 1982. Violet was very close to Ronnie, in almost daily contact with him by phone, and had also been a frequent visitor to Broadmoor.
Even in Broadmoor the twins made a mint from their lucrative brand, selling the rights to their story and hawking memorabilia. Maureen Flanagan would bring Ronnie Kray creature comforts and gifts for his fellow patients. She would also sell stories about him to the national newspapers, which filtered back to the twins via their older brother Charlie, who was also effectively their agent. According to Maureen Flanagan, a Kray family friend who styled their mother’s hair weekly, the twins hated the film, particularly scenes in which Violet swore.
In 1985, Ronnie married someone who had been writing to him in Broadmoor, Elaine Mildener. They got hitched in Broadmoor chapel. The Sun newspaper paid a cool £10,000 to have access to the wedding. He and Elaine divorced in 1989. Rates had gone up by the time Ronnie married Kate Howard in 1989. He scored £25,000 for the guest list, wedding photos and a short interview with the bride.
Our contributor Clive Bonnet is in a press picture of Ronnie Kray’s wedding.
Pat McGrath, legendary superintendent of Broadmoor, recalled to his writer son Patrick that Ronnie’s dodgy East End associates would visit and hand out hefty tips to patients. The staff then had to go around collecting all the wads of cash from the gutted and confused patients.
Many of our contributors have remarked on Ronnie Kray’s celebrity presence. Pete Turner, Head of Violence Reduction, recalled that ‘Ronnie Kray would stand rigidly and say hello to frighten new recruits.’
When Dr Gwen Adshead started at Broadmoor as a trainee psychiatrist she remembers that she worked on a ward with Ronnie Kray. He was on the same ward as Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, at this time: Henley Ward. Gwen explained that at that time there was a lot of discussion about whether to put all the high-profile guys in one place or to scatter them about the hospital and it was decided to keep them all together and the ward was staffed by quite tough men.
Gwen described how institutionalised Ronnie Kray had become when she first met him: ‘Your identity, who you were, is taken away and you are given a new identity, which is to be a patient in Broadmoor and so you become men who do as they are told at least on the surface and they spend a lot of time working out who is important and who is not. Mr Kray was superficially charming, he had an East End charm. All eyes were on him and he knew it.’
It would be easy to regard Ronnie Kray’s life in Broadmoor with the same sensationalist hysteria that greets descriptions of his life as a gangster. The truth is more complicated. While Ronnie did maintain a figure in the press that portrayed him as an eccentric and successful criminal, his time in Broadmoor was affected by periods of really bad mental health, with visits to more high secure wards such as Abingdon. In one particular incident, it was reported that he was assaulted and thrown against a wall by Peter Sutcliffe.
Sutcliffe wasn’t the only infamous inmate Ronnie interacted with. He reportedly became good friends with Charles Bronson, who he had known from their stint together in Parkhurst in 1976. After Bronson’s attempt to kill another prisoner failed because the tie he was attempting to strangle him with snapped, Ronnie attempted to cheer him up by arranging a visit from boxer Terry Downes.
When speaking about Ronnie over a decade after his death, Bronson said that their friendship was based on what they had in common – they were in Broadmoor and certified insane. They related to each other, their illness, their medication, their incarceration, and had a deep bond of empathy.
Bronson reportedly gave many of his artistic pieces to Ronnie Kray as presents. In a letter to Kate Kray, written in 2014 after a fight with prison officers, he said, ‘I swear I see Ron’s face. I know the mind plays games in moments of mad events but it is still a comforting thought Ron’s still around. Made me feel happy.’
The Sun brought out a piece during the media frenzy surrounding Jonathan’s two-part primetime documentary. It quoted a letter that Bronson sent to a pen pal about Ronnie Kray’s stash of cigarettes and food: ‘It was like a f*****g corner shop. Ronnie was living the life of a lord. I’d never seen nothing like it. I’d just had a load of years in prison with nothing. All of a sudden I’m sitting there and eating tins of salmon.’
Ronnie Kray made use of the art therapies in Broadmoor, and was especially fond of painting. He missed his twin brother and wife and in that sense wanted to leave but also knew it was the best place for him. First and foremost he was a Kray though, so he wanted to glamorise his time there and his own incredible gangster persona and myth-making too, though. Ronnie had a heart attack in Broadmoor and died two days later at Wexham Park Hospital, Slough on 17th March 1995. Reggie was allowed to attend his brother’s funeral in handcuffs on prison leave.