Krayzy Days – Why London gangster Ronnie Kray really shot George Cornell inside the Blind Beggar pub in 1966 | John Fleming's blog - SO IT GOES Krayzy Days – Why London gangster Ronnie Kray really shot George Cornell inside the Blind Beggar pub in 1966 (A version of this piece was also published on the Indian news site WSN ) Malcolm Hardee iconic autobiography Towards the start of comedian Malcolm Hardee ’s autobiography I Stole Freddie Mercury’s Birthday Cake , this passage appears: ______________________________ There was a club in Catford called The Witchdoctor. It was a club we all went to although they didn’t sell drink. Downstairs there was ‘Mr Smiths’ – a gambling casino…. Eddie Richardson was involved in a big shooting at Mr Smith’s, underneath The Witchdoctor. It was a inter-gang thing. They all met down the gaming club and this bloke got shot and was bleeding all over the place from an artery. ‘Mad Frankie’ Fraser (the Richardson’s infamous ‘enforcer’) hit a bloke who subsequently died and ‘Mad Frankie’ himself was shot in the thigh.

He got outside and the police found him lying in a front garden round the corner in Fordel Road, Catford, where my Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Doug were then living. His mates had just left ‘Mad Frankie’ there. A bit inconsiderate to the neighbours. No-one outside South East London knew the Richardsons until they were arrested and there was a lot of publicity at their trial about torturing people in a home-made electric chair. But everyone knew The Krays . As comedian Lee Hurst says, the Blind Beggar must be the biggest pub in the world. Every time you meet a London taxi driver he says he was in the Blind Beggar the day Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell. Some people say the Krays wouldn’t have been big if there hadn’t been the shooting in the Blind Beggar. But these days people are getting shot all the time. In the paper yesterday there was a bloke shot in a pub in Yorkshire at lunchtime. I suppose The Krays were setting a trend. The Krays also had that showbiz thing about them.

They actually owned a club; the actress Barbara Windsor was a girlfriend of Charlie Kray and later married Ronnie Knight who worked for The Krays; and the Conservative politician Lord Bob Boothby, whose mistress had been Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s wife, was having it off with Ronnie, the gay Kray. ______________________________________________________ Micky Fawcett in the May Fair Hotel, London, yesterday Yesterday, I had tea at the May Fair Hotel in London with former Kray Twins associate Micky Fawcett. His new book Krayzy Days is that rare thing – a totally true insight into what it was like being with the Kray Twins – Ronnie & Reggie – and their brother Charlie. “Did the Kray Twins have a sense of humour?” I asked. “Ronnie had a very good sense of humour,” Micky told me, “Reggie had no sense of humour, but Ronnie did.” “What type?” I asked. “Black humour?” “Yes,” said Micky. “Black humour.” “Or maybe black and blue,” I suggested. “He was an Oscar Wilde type,” mused Micky. “I’m not saying he was witty, but he would have loved Oscar Wilde.

The way Oscar Wilde used to carry on.” “Because he felt he was clever and superior?” I asked. Ronnie Kray (left) with boxer Sonny Liston & Micky Fawcett “Well, Ronnie felt superior,” Micky agreed. “He was called The Colonel. He thought he was superior to everything and everybody. As I say in my book, I was round the Twins’ house one day and somebody dropped in a copy of Private Eye . It was about ‘Knacker of The Yard’ (Private Eye’s name for un-named policemen) and all that – I can’t remember exactly what it was about. But Ronnie read it and laughed for the rest of the day. “He used to describe himself as ‘a well-known thug and poof’.” “But,” I said, “he took exception when George Cornell called him a poof.” “No, that’s…” said Micky. “When Ronnie shot him in the Blind Beggar pub,” I added. The Blind Beggar pub in London “Well,” said Micky, “in the book I tell the true reason for that. It has nothing to do with homosexuality at all. It’s in the book. I was visiting someone in Dartmoor Prison.

But, the day before the Blind Beggar shooting, there was the big tear-up at Mr Smith’s in Catford.” “That’s the one mentioned in Malcolm Hardee’s autobiography,” I said. “Yes,” said Micky. “Everybody was Whoa! Did you hear that? Whoa! My God! and all that. Frank Fraser finished up with a bullet in his leg in that front garden. It was a big tear-up between the Richardsons and another local ‘firm’. “The following evening, I was going to Dartmoor, so I went over to the Regency club to meet the fellah I was going with – the Regency being a club in Hackney frequented by the Krays, who had a small share in it. People think they owned it, but the Barry family owned it. “When I got to the Regency, I saw Reggie outside and he said: What about the news! Reggie was a very uptight sort of fellah. He never hardly showed his emotions. But he grabbed hold of me and he was waltzing me round on the pavement saying: What about it, Mick? Wasn’t it great? The Richardsons had been arrested.

“But I didn’t feel very elated by it at all. They had never done anything to me and, as I came away, I thought to myself: I’ve a feeling now that the next thing is going to be them (The Krays). Once these things get underway, the police nick everybody. The Richardsons had been arrested, but it wasn’t something to celebrate. “I met my pal. We went to Dartmoor Prison. Visited a fellah down there. Frank Mitchell was on the visit as well. When we used to go to Dartmoor, we’d get my mate out and say to the screw (the prison guard): Can you get Frank Mitchell too? and he’d get Frank Mitchell.” Nine months later, ‘Mad Axeman’ Frank Mitchell was sprung from Dartmoor Prison by the Kray Twins and subsequently murdered on their orders when they found out he really was uncontrollably mad. “Frank Mitchell would come for a chat at Dartmoor,” explained Micky, “because he didn’t have any visitors of his own. He’d sit down and say to the screw: You look after him, cos he’s a friend of mine and I’m telling you, if you don’t...

and the screw would say Alright, Frank, alright. OK, Frank, keep calm... That’s a fact. They were good experiences when I look back. “Anyway, we come home to London and, early in the morning, I got a newspaper and it said: MAN SHOT DEAD IN THE BLIND BEGGAR PUB. So I get on the phone straight away to Charlie Kray. He says: Meet me outside Mile End station. So I go straight there and I can remember it as if it was yesterday. George Cornell in a police photo “I said to him: Reggie? and he said No, Ronnie. I said Yeah? He said Yeah. What’s happened, Mick… you know that turn-out down there…” (Micky and I agreed that, for the rest of the exact detail of this story, you will have to buy Micky’s book… He’s no fool and I am not going to argue with him. So there is a section of our conversation missing here… Micky then continued…) “So he’s going to throw a petrol bomb into Freddie Foreman ’s pub.

“And Charlie Kray told me I wish you’d been here, Mick, because you’d have been the obvious choice to send over because I would have liaised – I used to – but they sent Nobby and he’s come back and gone Oh, it’s all off again! Murders! We’ve gotta do something! They’re going to burn Fred’s pub down! “And Ronnie’s gone What? And Ronnie’s got all excited, cos he’s mad and he’s gone Give me a shooter! Right! Right! Let’s have a drive round and see if we… and he’s gone into the Blind Beggar and Boom! and that’s it. Just cos Cornell was one of them, cos he was associated with the Richardsons. “I got on well with Georgie Cornell. He came from Stepney but was very friendly with the Richardsons in South London. He wasn’t 100% with them all the time. And all kinds of strange stories have gone on about why he was shot. Micky Fawcett’s new myth-busting book “The strangest of them all is that Georgie Cornell gave Ronnie a terrible beating on some previous occasion. John Pearson says it in his book.

But the fellah who told Pearson is a terrible liar.” “Is he alive?” I asked. “Yes.” “Well I’m not going to print that he’s a terrible liar, am I?” I said. “He might take it amiss.” “Don’t worry about him,” Micky told me. “He’d have trouble getting out of his armchair.” “There are so many stories,” I said to Micky: “The comedian Lee Hurst used to say that the Blind Beggar must be the biggest pub in the world because, every time you met any London taxi driver, he would claim he was in there the night Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell.” “Well,” Micky told me, “in the pub that night there really was this fellah called George The Fib.” “Is he violent, is he still alive and does he live near me?” I asked. “You’re OK,” said Micky, “he’s dead. But he was called George The Fib cos he was known for lying about everything so, when he told people he had been in the Blind Beggar the night of the shooting, no-one would believe him. He was going around afterwards saying What about that turn-out?

I was in there that night… but no-one would believe him. The Old Bill didn’t even interview him.” “Krayzy Days indeed,” I said. Enterprise sells pub where Ronnie Kra... | The Caterer Written by: Neil Gerrard Enterprise Inns has sold an East London pub made infamous by a gangland murder involving the Kray Twins for £1.26m. The Blind Beggar in Whitechapel was the former haunt of Ronnie and Reggie Kray and the site of the murder of George Cornell, a member of the Richardson gang, run by brothers Charlie and Eddie who were scrap metal dealers and criminals. Enterprise sold eight other pubs at the Allsops auction yesterday on a sale-and-leaseback basis, raising a total of around £13m. One, the Old Ship in Hackney, did not sell.

Other pubs sold in the auction included: The Commander, Bayswater: £2.2m (guide price: £1.4m – £1.5m) Belushi’s, Camden: £1.8m (guide price: £1.25m – £1.35m) The Rosslyn Arms, Hampstead: £1.73m (guide price: £1.2m – £1.3m) Nell of Old Drury, Covent Garden: £1.68m (guide price: £1.35m – £1.45m) The Grafton Arms, Kentish Town: £1.27m (guide price: £1.15m – £1.25m) A Bar 2 Far, Tooting: £1.26m (guide price: £1.15m – £1.25m) The One Tun, Hatton Garden: £1.2m (guide price: £1.15m – £1.25m) The Town of Ramsgate, Wapping: £1.11m (guide price: £950,000 –

 £1.05m) The Blind Beggar And The Bloody Killing of George Cornell by Ronnie Kray | Ronnie Kray 1969 – At last in Gaol.

ONE hundred and one years after the evangelist William Booth preached his first open air sermon outside the Blind Beggar Public House on the Whitechapel Road – a sermon which ultimately led to the establishment of the Salvation Army – Ronnie Kray walked into the very same pub. Or at least it would have been the same pub had it not been rebuilt in 1894 by the Mann, Crossman and Paulin’s Albion Brewery at the same address. It was 8.30pm on 9 March 1966 and Kray was accompanied by his right-hand man Ian Barrie, while his driver, John ‘Scotch Jack’ Dickson, was told to wait outside in his Mark 1 Cortina. A pub had been on the same spot in Whitechapel since 1673 and it was named after Henry de Montfort, the son of the Earl of Leicester, who is said to have posed as a blind beggar to escape detection after the battle of Evesham in 1265. Of course Ronald Kray wouldn’t have been the first villain, big-time or otherwise, who had found themselves in that infamous East End pub.

Before the First World War the Blind Beggar was the meeting-place of a gang of pick-pockets and ne’er do wells. One of them called ‘Bulldog’ Wallis got into a fight with a Jewish couple and ended up killing the man by pushing the tip of his umbrella through one of his eyes. The East End code of silence prevailed and ‘no one saw nuffink’ and Wallis had to be released from police custody through lack of evidence. Accompanied by his cheering supporters he returned to the Blind Beggar a hero. There was no cheering when Ronnie Kray arrived at the Blind Beggar, he and Barrie entered the pub quietly and without a fuss. That is until Barrie shot two bullets into the ceiling. Kray had been told that George Cornell, a member of the sadistic and ruthless south London Richardsons’ gang, was drinking in the pub. Not only was Cornell part of a gang who were the Krays’ main rivals he was particularly disliked by Ronnie who would write one day: In front of a table full of villains, George Cornell called me a “fat poof”. He virtually signed his own death warrant.

There were just five people in the pub, Cornell and two of his friends, Albie Woods and Johnny Dale who were all at one end of the bar, a 79 year old man was sitting at the other end reading a newspaper and half watching the television, and also a barmaid who was washing glasses and who had just put on ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ by the Walker Bothers on the pub’s record player. The Blind Beggar didn’t have a juke box. When George Cornell saw Ronnie approaching he said, sarcastically: “Well, look who’s here…”. While Woods and Dale were sloping away to hide in the gents, Ronnie walked over to Cornell, took out a 9mm Mauser from his pocket and shot him through his head at close range. Kray wrote in the twins’ autobiography, Our Story: He fell forward on to the bar. There was some blood on the counter. That’s all that happened. Nothing more. Blood stains on the floor inside the Blind Beggar public house in Whitechapel where George Cornell was killed. View of counter area looking through into lounge inside the Blind Beggar public house in Whitechapel where George Cornell was killed.

A police photograph of the dead man George Cornell who was killed at the Blind Beggar public house in Whitechapel. A police photograph of a very dead George Cornell. PA images. Once outside, and according to ‘Scotch Jack’ the driver, Ronnie Kray was now genuinely excited: ‘I actually shot him,’ Ronnie said, ‘I actually shot him.’ They drove the Cortina back to the Lion pub on Tapp Street about half a mile away. Reggie was was drinking with some of the Firm at the pub and after being told what happened jumped up and shouted: “Drive off the manor. Just drive off the manor.” In various cars and taking different routes the Firm ended up in a back room of the Chequer’s public house on the High Street in Walthamstow. Ronnie’s clothes were burnt and the 9mm Mauser was given to the cat-burglar Charlie Clark to be disposed of. Not particularly well it seems as years later the German 9mm pistol was found in the mud of the River Lee and is now in Scotland Yard’s Black Museum. George Cornell had been left bleeding on the floor of the Blind Beggar.

The manager of the pub, a woman called Patsy Quill, called an ambulance and it wasn’t long before the dying man was being seen by doctors across the road in the London Hospital. They quickly had the patient transferred to Maida Vale Hospital which specialised in brain injuries but at 10.29pm, and roughly two hours after he had been shot, Cornell died before any operation took place. At midnight the Firm gathered round the radio and cheered when the death of George Cornell was announced. ‘Always shoot to kill’ said a relieved Ronnie before adding usefully, ‘dead men can’t speak.’ Police are pictured outside the Blind Beggar Public House, Whitechapel Road. The police found it impossible to find witnesses to the murder. The two friends of Cornell – Albie Woods and Johnny Dale -had quickly slipped away out the back of the pub but not before wiping the glasses on the counter to get rid of any fingerprints. The barmaid at the Blind Beggar said she hadn’t seen who did it.

The old man was asked by the police why he would not help put Ronnie Kray away: “I hate the sight of blood,” he said, “particularly my own.” Although the police led by Detective Superintendent Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read found it impossible to find any witnesses everyone really knew who had committed the murder. George Cornell’s wife Olive certainly did and she turned up at 178 Vallance Road shouting and screaming and threw a brick through the window of the Kray’s family home in anger. Ronnie had now killed someone and thought it was now time Reggie did likewise. Jack “the Hat” McVitie was a small time member of the Kray gang who had reneged on a contract to kill Leslie Payne, a former accountant of the Krays. Jack ‘The Hat’ had been paid in advance but unwisely had been boasting that he had cheated the twins out of their money. McVitie was lured to ‘a party’ taking place in the basement of 79 Evering Road in Stoke Newington. Reggie Kray put a pistol to McVitie’s head and pulled the trigger twice, but it just clicked and nothing happened.

Ronnie Kray then held McVitie and Reggie, with a large knife, stabbed him in the face and stomach before driving the blade deep into his neck. One of the gang would later say, “when Reggie was stabbing Jack, his liver popped out and they had to flush it down the toilet.” McVitie’s body has never been found. It was to be over two years before the Kray Twins were arrested for the two murders which eventually became their downfall. It didn’t take long for the accountant Leslie Payne to realise he might as well talk to the police. The code of silence that had protected the twins for so long was slowly being broken down. Late in the evening of May 8th 1968 a huge team of nearly 100 armed police officers arrived at Tintagel House in Vauxhall for a final briefing. Tintagel House had been Nipper Read’s headquarters specially chosen to be away from Scotland Yard and any of the Krays’ paid informers. At dawn the next day the team simultaneously arrested the twins and twenty-four other members of the Firm.

The twins were found at Braithwaite House in Finsbury (their mother’s council flat as Vallance Road had been demolished as part of the East End slum clearances) where they found Ronnie curled up with a young fair-haired man and Reggie sleeping with a girl from Walthamstow. On July 6th, 1968 the twins appeared at a hearing in front of the Metropolitan Chief Magistrate, Mr Frank Milton, at Old Street Court. Among the witnesses, at last, was the barmaid from The Blind Beggar – known, as far as the court was concerned, as ‘Mrs X’. Although she had been unable to identify the killer of Cornell on the night of the murder, now under police protection she felt safe enough to point out Ronnie and Ian Barrie as the two men who had walked into the bar that evening. There was now enough evidence against the twins and the case was referred for trail at the Old Bailey. An anonymous letter sent to Scotland Yard about the Krays. One of many. A police Black Maria van is escorted from Bow Street Magistrates Court, taking Ronald and Reginald Kray back to Brixton Prison after they were remanded in custody, charged with murder.

PA/PA Archive/Press Association Images After eight months on remand, the Twins went to trial in January 1969. It was the longest and most expensive criminal case in British history and continued for several weeks. On March 8th, 1969, after six hours 55 minutes the jury unanimously found the Ronnie and Reggie Kray guilty for the murders of Cornell and McVitie. Mr Justice Melford sentenced the twins to thirty years on gaol with no chance of parole. For years the Krays’ supporters, of which there were many, maintained that the only people who suffered during their ‘reign’ were other villains and members of the East End underworld. For the ordinary person the East End was safer back then they would say. When the broadcaster, photographer and writer Dan Farson once told the Cockney actor Arthur Mullard that the Krays ‘only killed their own kind’, Mullard responded in his distinctive voice, ‘Yus, ‘uman bein’s! It has often been written that one of the bullets used to shoot George Cornell ricocheted and hit a juke box while ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ by the Walker Bothers was playing.

The pub didn’t have a juke box back then only a record player but it seems the song was playing when Ronnie Kray walked into the Blind Beggar. However no one really knows whether the story is true that while Cornell lay dying a bullet made the record jump leaving it playing: ‘the sun ain’t gonna shine anymore, anymore, anymore, anymore, anymore…’ Scene outside the Blind Beggar pub on Whitechapel Road, Stepney, where Richardson gang associate George Cornell was shot in March 1966. Ronnie Kray was charged with his murder. The car parked outside belongs to Mr Cornell. 11th March 1966. Share this: The Krays: Murder at the Blind Beggar|MurderMap - London Homicide Reported Direct from The Old Bailey Categories: Gang Case synopsis: The Blind Beggar public house in Whitechapel was the scene for an infamous gangland murder by one of the Kray Twins. At around 8.30pm on 9 March 1966 George Cornell was sitting at the saloon bar drinking a light ale when he was approached by Ronald Kray.

When Cornell dismissed him with the words 'Look who's here', Kray pulled out his 9mm Luger and shot him once in the forehead. Cornell, an associate of the rival Richardson gang, died in hospital at 3.30am the next morning. The feud between the Krays and the Richardsons had started in Christmas 1965 when Cornell called Ronnie Kray a 'fat poof.' Although Kray was identified by several witnesses at the pub, they refused to testify against him and he was not arrested until 1968. Ronald Kray was convicted of the murder of George Cornell at the Old Bailey on 4 March, 1969 and jailed for life. He was still behind bars when he died in 1995.

‘Kraysy’ rush for Kray memorabilia at Blind Beggar where Cornell was shot - Arts - East London Advertiser ‘Kraysy’ rush for Kray memorabilia at Blind Beggar where Cornell was shot 19:29 10 November 2015 Memorabilia of the Krays era Archant A-List associates of ‘The Firm’ and crime fans from all over the country turned a Krays’ charity fundraiser at Whitechapel’s Blind Beggar pub into a ‘Kraysy’ rush for memorabilia of the notorious gangster family who ruled gangland from London’s East End. Ex-Page 3 tabloid pin-up Maureen Flanagan, now in her 70s and running a charity shop in South Hackney, staged the memorabilia fair at the pub where Ronnie Kray shot dead rival gangster George Cornell in 1966. Email this article to a friend To send a link to this page you must be logged in.

Maureen Flanagan with a Kray memorabilia mug advice: 'Keep Calm, Ron's not in the Blind Beggar' Followers who weren’t even born when the twins went down for life in 1969 for murder and conspiracy rolled up to grab momentos such as mugs, T-shirts, prints and books as well as family photos of Ron, Reg and older brother Charlie. Callenders were sold out with pictures of the Krays’ growing up in Haggerston and Bethnal Green from the 1930s to the 50s, with family dates of births, marriages, funerals and the murders they committed. Flanagan also sold out of copies of her book about her 40-year friendship with the Krays which started in 1961 when she did their mum Violet’s hair each week at their home in Vallance Road. A portrait of the Krays was auctioned for £750 to a fan who turned up from Doncaster. The Kray brothers... Reg, Charlie and Ron Good prices were also fetched for original letters written by Ron and Reg from behind bars.

Kray fan Anne Smith has a treasured original from Reggie sent in 1998 wishing her luck when she arrived to live in Shadwell after fleeing from her ex-husband in Brighton who was threatening to murder her. She came to buy Maureen’s book and get it signed. All the glitterati linked to the 1960s’ Underworld turned up for Sunday’s fundraiser, like flamboyant Toby Von Judge, now 75—the posh barrister associate of ‘The Firm’ who studied criminology at Cambridge. “The only way to know more about criminology is to be mixed in with criminals,” he confided. “I met Ronnie who I could get a lot of criminal education from because he was a psychopath, a complete nutter.” Kray fan Anne Smith gets her copy of '40 Years with the Krays' signed by author Maureen Flanagan Von Judge got to know the Krays, but says he “never crossed the line” and always spoke his mind, giving as good as he got. “Lots of times Ronnie told me he was going to kill Cornell because he called him a fat poof,” Toby recalls.

“I said, ‘Ron, you are a fat poof—does that mean you’re coming to shoot me? Get over it’. “In those days, of course, you weren’t allowed to be homosexual. You were put in prison.” 'Posh' Kray associate Toby von Judge at the Blind Begger Toby frequently visited the Krays at 178 Vallance Road and “always got the posh cutlery, the ‘Auntie Rose’ cups that Violet’s sister gave her”. Another A-Lister on Sunday from the Fifties and Sixties was Eileen Sheridan, now 79, the first ‘Miss UK’ in 1958 and ‘Miss GB’ in 1960. She was introduced to two “businessmen” at Churchill’s nightclub in Soho—Charlie and Reggie Kray. “Meeting them was like meeting Frank Sinatra,” Eileen remembers. '1958 Miss UK' Eileen Sheridan, now 79, at the Blind Begger “But they were playing at gangsters, especially Ronnie who could have hired someone to kill Cornell in the Blind Beggar—but wanted to be seen doing it, like a gangster movie.

“It went a bit messy with Reggie killing Jack ‘the Hat’ in Stoke Newington when his gun jammed.” Years later, she was called as a character witness when Charlie Kray was busted for drugs in 1997, claiming he was “set up” by police because he “stupidly pretended he had a drugs connection and just wanted to make a few bob”. Charlie got 12 years for that. Money raised at the Blind Beggar fair is going to the Ley Community charity that former Krays’ henchman Chris Lambrianou helps run for young offenders in Oxfordshire. 1960s pin-ups Sheridan and Flanagan at the Blind Beggar, both now in their 70s Maureen Flanagan, who runs Hackney’s Paragon Trust charity shop in Wells Street raising funds for St Joseph’s Hospice, said: “I have been to the Ley community and seen how the young offenders have given up drugs and crime and settled down with jobs. “Any money we can give helps. Chris Lambrianou is the link. “Young guys like to talk to someone who was notorious.

They don’t listen to parents, teachers or even a priest, but to a man who has served time who will tell them crime isn’t glamorous.” Lambrianou disposed of Jack ‘the Hat’ McVittie’s body after Reggie stabbed him to death in 1967. It got him 15 years. George Cornell (1928 - 1966) - Find A Grave Memorial London Borough of Tower Hamlets Greater London, England Villain of London's East End during the 1960's and former associate from childhood of the legendary Kray twins. His birth name was George Myers. Cornell moved to South London, and joined the gang of "Mad" Frankie Fraser and Eddie Richardson, arch enemy of the Kray's. Cornell would often talk down to the Krays whenever they tried to muscle in on any dealings with Fraser and Richardson. This displeased the Kray's, particularly Ronnie. Rumour was spreading that Cornell had been calling Ronnie Kray terrible names and mocking him. When Ronnie got word of this it finally made his mind-up that Cornell was to be killed.

On the night of the 9th March, 1966, Ronnie got word that Cornell was drinking in the Blind Beggar pub, in the heart of the East End. Ronnie summoned one of his drivers, John 'Scotch Jack' Dickson to take him there along with Ian Barrie his right-hand man. When they arrived at The Blind Beggar, Dickson waited outside while Ronnie and Ian Barrie went inside. Cornell and Albie Woods (fellow Richardson gang member) were seated at the bar. When Cornell saw Ronnie he calmly said, "Well look who's here" in a sneering sort of way. Ronnie did not say a word. He took a 9mm Mauser pistol from his pocket and shot Cornell. Ian Barrie fired some shots into the ceiling. They both turned around and walked out as calmly as they had walked in.There was a record playing on the juke box that had been hit by one of the ricocheting bullets.

It was 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore' by the Walker Brothers and it kept repeating, "the sun ain't gonna shine any more...any more...any more..." It wasn't long before Ronnie was arrested and put on an identification parade. The witnesses couldn't (more likely wouldn't) identify Ronnie and he was released, a sign of the hold and respect East Ender's had for the Kray Twins. Kray was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder three years later and remained in prison until his death in 1995. (bio by: Kieran Smith) Cause of death: Shot by Ronnie Kray Still no pity for Cornell murder at Whitechapel’s Blind Beggar by Kray family 50 years on - News - East London Advertiser Still no pity for Cornell murder at Whitechapel’s Blind Beggar by Kray family 50 years on 15:14 14 March 2016 Reggie and Ronnie Kray and (inset) East London Advertiser's front page reporting their downfall in March, 1969.

Archant There seems no pity for George Cornell’s murder at Whitechapel’s Blind Beggar pub by notorious gangster Ronnie Kray half-a-century later. Email this article to a friend To send a link to this page you must be logged in. Blind Begger Killing of George Cornell by Ronnie Kray in March, 1966, by artist Joe Machine Yesterday’s 50th anniversary of Cornell’s killing at the bar was marked by a charity memorabilia sale organised by friends of the Kray family to raise money for Bethnal Green’s famous Repton boxing club, where Ronnie and his twin Reggie and older brother Charlie once trained. Kray fans who weren’t even born when the crime family dominated London’s shadowy underworld in the 1950s and 60s arrived at the Blind Beggar from all over the country—many with young children—from as far as Wolverhampton, Bristol and Worcester.

They came for souvenir mugs, T-shirts, photos and books on the Krays, have their pictures taken in the bar where Ronnie blasted Cornell with a bullet to the head and to mingle with former underworld figures who turned up like Toby Judge, Steve Wrath and “Dodger” Steve Tully, the ex-bank robber from Bow who became Reggie Kray’s “pupil” and cellmate in prison. Charlie Kray’s former business partner John Corbett also arrived. Kim Peat... Krays' second-cousin Five decades have passed since Cornell’s shooting, but relatives of the Krays living today in Bethnal Green feel no remorse. “I stand by my cousin—if Ronnie hated the man there was a reason,” Kim Peat told the East London Advertiser. “We don’t feel guilty. If Cornell was an innocent, nice bloke, then probably. Maureen Flanagan and copy of front-page from 1969 when Krays were sent down at Old Bailey “But he was a flash bloke who threatened the twins and the family and got what was coming to him. “It may seem harsh and unforgiving—but I’m like that.” Kim, 55, remembers the twins as a child during those troubled times.

She grew up on tales her mother Rita Smith told her of her younger days going to dances with the twins. Rita—their first cousin—died last year aged 79. Repton Boxing club's chairman Dave Robinson shows picture of Krays in the ring to Maureen Flanagan “I don’t care what they done—whatever happened, happened,” Kim tells you. “They done it for a reason. “Ronnie was asked before he died if he ever regretted killing Cornell and he said he didn’t. Ronnie hated Cornell, so he killed him—and that’s that.” Sunday’s fundraiser was the brainchild of former Page 3 pin-up Maureen Flanagan, now 75, who was the twins’ mother Violet’s hairdresser calling at the Krays’ home in Vallance Road each week. John Corbett... Charlie Kray's former business partner She launched her own book about her friendship with the family at the Blind Beggar last summer, with many of their gangland henchman now in their 70s and 80s turning up.

One of the henchmen was Chris Lambrianou, who stayed away from the Blind Beggar on Sunday “out of respect for Cornell” who he knew long before joining the Krays’ gang. But Maureen insisted: “We’re not celebrating Cornell’s murder. Painting of Krays "dealing with a liberty taker" by artist Joe Machine (inset) “I’m doing it for the Repton club, where the Krays learned how to look after themselves, like we’re trying to do for the young people in the East End.” Her Paragon charity shop in Well Street, South Hackney, had already raised £500 for the Repton last week and she handed club chairman Dave Robinson a cheque yesterday. She also handed another £150 raised from an auction of Krays souvenirs to the club today. “We’re not celebrating anyone’s death,” Flanagan insisted. “Ronnie Kray was determined to kill Cornell. He thought it would be the perfect murder, because no-one would talk.

But it took a year for police to work on the barmaid—they got here as a witness in the end.” Cornell grew up in Bethnal Green with the Krays—but they never forgave him for joining up with their rival Richardson mob in Elephant & Castle. Turning up in Whitechapel was “too much” for Ronnie Kray, who walked into the pub and shot him at point-blank range. Another bullet fired by an accomplice into the wall of the pub still lodges in the brickwork, long-since plastered over. George Cornell's son breaks 50-year silence: "I hate the Krays but people who hero worship them are worse" - Mirror Online News George Cornell's son breaks 50-year silence: "I hate the Krays but people who hero worship them are worse" Billy has told how his dad's shooting in the Blind Beggar pub in the East End wrecked his family and haunted him ever since Share Billy hates the Kray twins' celebrity (Photo: Ian Vogler/Daily Mirror) Share Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing!

Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email The family of a man murdered by Ronnie Kray in the Blind Beggar pub have broken their 50-year silence over the killing. George Cornell’s son Billy has told how his dad’s shooting at the East End boozer wrecked his family and has haunted him and younger sister Rayner ever since. Billy, 58, says: “ The Krays widowed my mother and orphaned two children, and my daughter and nieces and nephews never met their grandfather. My father was not the only victim that night. “I hate the Krays and anyone who is part of their family – and worse, the people who hero-worship them today as some kind of glamorous Robin Hoods of the East End. They were vicious and evil.” The slaying of his father, which has been re-enacted countless times in films about the Kray twins – most recently in Legend, starring Tom Hardy – is one of Britain’s most famous murders. Video Loading Share this video Watch Next It illustrated the power the Krays believed they had, and demonstrated psychopath Ronnie’s warped thirst for violence.

But it also signalled the beginning of the end of the twins’ violent stranglehold over the East End of London. Ronnie Kray was jailed for life for the killing and died behind bars. His brother Reggie, who went on to kill Jack “The Hat” McVitie in Stoke Newington, North London, also got life for that murder. George Cornell had known the Krays since childhood, when the three of them were growing up on the streets around Whitechapel, and for a time they even did business together. Ronnie and Reggie Kray (Photo: Mirrorpix) George worked as a Billingsgate fish porter from the age of 12, and then at the nearby docks where he ran credit rackets. Billy says: “Dad knew all the traders in Mile End and the guvnors of all the pubs. He made his money setting up warehouses and buying in goods on credit then selling them cheap and folding the business without paying his bills. “He was from a very poor family but was physically strong and good with his fists. When people saw he could fight he got respect, they were afraid to challenge him.

Billy tells how, aged four, he went to the Krays’ East London home with his dad for a business meeting. He says: “I recall being in the front room and them drinking tea. “Ronnie was very edgy, like he could snap at any point and his brother was flash with a nice suit and slick way about him.” George Cornell and Olive at their 1950s wedding He says his father grew to despise Ronnie in particular, and refused to show deference to the twins. He says: “Ronnie was gay and liked being with young boys and to my dad, who was a gentleman who wouldn’t let anyone swear in front of a woman, in those days that was unacceptable.” Cornell left the East End in the mid-1950s when he married wife Olive from Camberwell, South London, and set up his family in two flats there. Billy says: “He made a success of himself in the most difficult circumstances. He was always well turned out in Aquascutum suits, Burberry raincoats and crocodile skin shoes.

“We had money and nice food at Christmas and he had a car and we lived in two flats in south London and had a house in the countryside.” George became close to the Krays’ arch rivals, South London’s notorious Richardson gang – who, with their enforcer “Mad” Frankie Fraser terrorised London in the 1960s and 1970s. And Cornell could look after himself. “Dad wasn’t scared of anyone,” says Billy. “I recall more than one occasion where he came home bashed up after a fight. “One time we were in Maidstone, where we had a bungalow, and we’d stopped in the town centre so mum could get some cakes. BIlly with dad George “My dad parked his Austin 11, and we were waiting in the car when a bloke came over and told him not to park where he had as it was for cabs. “My dad told him to ‘leave off’ and said he was only waiting for his wife but the bloke wouldn’t let it go and three other men came over and were getting on to dad.

“He got out of the car and took all four of them on and gave them a hiding.” But it was Cornell’s refusal to show fear to Ronnie Kray that was to sign his death warrant. On March 8 1966 there was a bloody confrontation between the Kray gang and the Richardson gang at Mr Smiths nightclub in Catford, South London. Richard Hart, a friend of Ronnie and Reggie , was shot dead outside the back doors. But the next day George Cornell went to the Krays’ territory in the East End with two associates to visit a shot pal being treated at the Royal London Hospital. Billy says: “My dad went into the Blind Beggar opposite the hospital for a pint after he had seen his mate. “I’d seen him earlier that evening as I’d been a naughty boy and he’d given me a clip around the ear and sent me to bed. Dad was talking to someone he knew in the pub but they said they had to go – I think West Ham had just qualified for Europe and the only place you could get coverage was on the radio and he said he was going to listen to that.

“He didn’t though, he went outside and called the Krays and told them dad was in the pub.” Blind Beggar after George was shot (Photo: PA) The Kray twins drove to the pub, stopping to pick up a gun on the way. Billy says: “Dad was drinking and turned as the door opened and saw Ronnie, and said: ‘Look what the cat’s dragged in.’ “Ronnie pulled out a gun and as dad went to get off his stool he shot him in the head.” Legend has it that the juke box in the pub was playing the Walker Brothers song The Sun Ain’t Going to Shine Anymore and a warning bullet which ricocheted off the ceiling made the record stick, playing the chorus over and over again. Billy says: “I think dad probably knew what was coming when Ronnie walked in but he wasn’t afraid of anyone. The twins drove off and my father was taken to the hospital but although they tried to save him he died two hours later. “The two men he was with had to leave London as they knew they would be next as witnesses.” Back at the Cornell family home, young Billy was woken by the sound of his mum answering the telephone.

Read more: The Krays wanted to 'rub out' Birmingham nightclub boss, new book claims He says: “I could hear her saying ‘who is this? What is your name?’ “She put down the phone and called my auntie Pat and told her a fella had phoned up and said dad had been shot. “I must have gone back to sleep but when I woke up a couple of hours later and went into the lounge it was full of men sat smoking. “People were talking to me, asking me about football and how I was, but no one said dad was dead – but I knew he wasn’t coming back again. “It was mum who told me, she said: ‘Your dad went out and there was a fight, it was with someone he has been angry with for a while, someone he worked with, he got killed.’ “It didn’t really sink in, I don’t know when it did. I know there was a big funeral and I wasn’t allowed to go. I remember looking out the window of our flat at the square of green outside and it being covered in bunches of flowers, like a carpet.

“My father was liked and respected and people showed their respect.” But that was the end of the life young Billy had known. His mother, widowed in her 20s with a son of seven and six-month-old baby daughter, “never recovered”, he says. She died from cancer aged 59, 20 years ago. He says: “She loved dad from the moment they met to the day she died, she never got over his death.” George Cornell In the hours after George died, Olive is said to have gone to the Krays’ family home in Bethnal Green and thrown a brick through the front window. He says: “She hated them more than anything in the world from the day he died.” Former market trader Billy, who now lives in Bermondsey, South London, fell into crime and was jailed for pick-pocketing several times. He once served a 14-month term in Camp Hill Prison on the Isle of Wight, next door to Parkhurst Prison – home at the time to Ronnie Kray. He says: “Mother begged me not to do anything if I ever saw him.

“I used to dread her coming to visit me in case she bumped into any of his family on the ferry crossing, she would not have handled it well.” Billy’s sister Rayner has had her own brush with the law, pleading guilty in 2011 to money laundering in relation to a plot to traffic more than a tonne of cocaine worth £375million. Read more: Kray twin's former probation officer says killer Reggie should have been freed Her husband Robert went on the run but was caught by police two years ago and is 18 months into a 10-year sentence for possession of 3kg of the drug. She says: “I guess I’m like my mum and married a villain but you can’t help who you love.” Billy said he has avoided the TV shows and films about his father’s death. He says: “I can’t watch the films, people making money from those two killers makes me sick. When they died I wanted to go down to the funerals and tell all those people who have their faces tattooed on their arms what they were like, but my mum begged me not to.

“My sister got sick of being known around here because of dad’s death and moved to Spain to try and protect her children from it as they grew up. “I used to see a lot of the old faces around, Frankie Fraser knew my dad and said he was a good guy to me and people say I look like him. But no one ever wants to hear our story, it’s always about them – but they wrecked our lives. “People should remember they were killers and not be fooled by the pictures of them in suits with celebrities.” Like us on Facebook

Question: In which London pub did Ronnie Kray murder George Cornell?
Answer: The Blind Beggar