Former Northern Echo journalist Beezy Marsh has written a book about London gangster ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser. In the second part, she reveals how Frank wasn’t the only member of his family with a chequered past

AS is the case with so many crime families, the key to understanding the men came through getting to know the women who cared for them. Frank’s mother, Margaret, was a huge influence on him but his “best pal” and early partner in crime was his sister, Eva.

She had died in 2000 but her daughter Beverley, who shared Eva’s reticent nature, agreed to talk to me and that revealed that Eva had been leading criminal in her own right.

Eva was a chip off the old block and as well as being Frank’s first partner in crime, stealing sweets from the corner shop, she had a lucrative career in a daring gang of girl shoplifters, The Forty Thieves, which traced its roots back to Victorian London and cleared many a West End store for furs and luxury goods.

She liked to earn her own money and paid her own way – quite something for a young woman in the 1930s and 1940s.

Frank had been active as a criminal from the 1930s and was given his first prison sentence at the outbreak of the Second World War. He then worked for legendary Soho crime boss Billy Hill in the 1950s, earning the nickname “razor Fraser” for his attacks on those who crossed him, before becoming embroiled in protection rackets in the 1960s, rising to the position of the Boss of Soho.

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.

As he languished in jail, his sons David and Patrick and their older brother, Frank Jnr – currently living quietly on the Costa del Sol – carved their own careers as bank robbers and jewellery thieves in 1970s London.

“It wasn’t that we chose to be thieves,” said Patrick.

“It was just what we knew and to be honest, we loved it.”

There were car chases and bank raids which would not have looked out of place in The Sweeney. When the heat from the cops in London got too much, they headed off to the Costa del Crime to seek their fortunes there.

There was also quite a comeuppance for both Patrick and David who both served their time. 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.

Their view on Hatton Garden was that the world had moved on and robbing banks now was akin to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid trying to get away on horseback, while the police gave chase in cars.

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.

David had perfected the prison whisper – talking very quietly, in case he was overheard by the guards. But little by little, over weeks and months of interviews, cups of tea and chats, their life stories emerged and with that came a fascinating insight into the Fraser family history and what really made Frank tick.

There were further language difficulties. They also spoke, as Frank did, using the prison slang of a bygone era, which they had to translate for me. The publisher also decided to include a glossary for the reader.

They didn’t go to jail, they did “bird” or got a “lagging”. 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. A “ponce” was someone who thieves looked down on, because they lived by taking a cut from someone else’s earnings. The Krays, according to Frank, were little more than “thieves’ ponces.”

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.

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”.

He was very skilled at manipulating people and he played a long game, letting people believe he was mad, with the intention of winning in the end. But the victory was pyrrhic in many senses, because by the time he finally left prison the in mid 1980s, the world had changed and gangland had moved on.

Frankie Fraser belonged to a bygone era of crime and was cut from a different cloth than so many other gangsters of his generation. He really did live by a code of honour which he took with him to the grave.

He was full of contradictions: He hated authority but at the same time he understood the need for society to have rules and was against anarchy. Frank stole because he loved to have money yet when he had it, he gave it all away. It was almost as if the biggest thrill of all was the act of stealing itself.

At his funeral, one of his old prison friends summed him up: “Whether he has gone upstairs or downstairs, I can’t say, but wherever he is, you can be sure of this: he will be protesting about the conditions.”

MAD FRANK & SONS, by David Fraser, Patrick Fraser and Beezy Marsh is published by Sidgwick and Jackson on June 2.