Mad Frank's Britain By Frankie Fraser and James Morton

Publication Date: 7th November 2002 Price: £18.99

 

'Mad' Frankie Fraser has seen over forty years behind bars and has spent a night in every prison in the country. No-one is better qualified to present this tour of the nation's criminal hotspots. In Mad Frank's Britain, Frankie takes us on a tour of the country's villainous world from Bournemouth to Durham. Towns and cities throughout the country have a story to tell about gangsters long or recently dead in this underworld survey of the country. Mad Frank delivers this overview in his inimitable style with unique insights on famous or lesser-known crimes and their perpetrators.

Following the hugely successful Mad Frank's London, Frankie Fraser casts his net wider to look at the criminal past of regions or towns in England, Scotland and Wales, as well as across the sea in Dublin. Britain's underworld is affectionately billy hill revoked in stories of grand thefts, killings and treachery of all sorts from the Victorian era to the 1960s and the present day. With tragic tales of children sent to Broadmoor for the most minor of Jack Spot crimes and shocking stories of gangland etiquette - human heads in fridges, Mad Frank's Britain offers an absorbing look at the history of local areas. Frank recounts stories Charlie Richardson of crimes and villains that he knew personally and even sheds light on unsolved crimes based on his own lifelong experience.

'Mad Frankie Fraser' is one of London's most notorious gangsters. After a turbulent life of crime, most of which was spent 'doing time', Frankie now leads darby sabini a quieter life walking his dog and coming and going as he pleases. He is especially proud of his personal Gangland tour of London that takes in all his former haunts, many of which are included in this book.

James Morton, once Frankie's lawyer, has worked on previous books of Frank's and has published a number of successful crime titles of his own including Bent Coppers and the hugely successful Gangland.


MAD FRANK'S LONDON available from all good bookshops

Published 8th November 2001

London's always had more than its fair share of villains, but few have the knowledge and experience to chart the capital's history of crime. Frankie Fraser shares his experiences, recalling London crimes, both notorious and unheard of, from his childhood to the modern day.

From the Publisher

This book began when Frank was talking before one of his 'evening with' events. We were in a trendy West London bar, the kind that has stripped out and completely remodelled an already existing one. I asked Frank if he'd been here before. Oh yes, he replied. It was quite a popular hang-out for the chaps in the old days; and he went on to tell us about the night he watched someone being beaten up and knifed there. London, we quickly realised, may have changed on the surface, but underneath all the old haunts were still there, and the crimes committed long time past still had their place. So was Mad Frank's London born. You won't find refereence to a blue plaque here - this is a record of life lived on the streets. In truth, Frank's been doing this for years - taking people for tours of criminal London - but this is the first time it's been done in a book. From Soho to Waterloo, Bayswater Road to High Holborn, London is awash with memories of crimes committed and their residue; this is a book for anyone fascinated by crime and fascinated by the unwritten history of the capital city.

 

Frank's book is now available from all good bookshops

MAD FRANKIE FRASER has become a household name, known to millions as one of London's most notorious gangsters. His shocking stories of his life of crime have become the stuff of legend, but Mad Frank's Diary delves into areas he has never chosen, or never dared, to talk about before.

Taking the form of a diary, the book chronicles Frank's memories from various days of the year, recalling incidents from throughout his eventful life and criminal career in a way that is both revealing and compulsive.

While this book gives Frank the chance to respond to statements made in other books written by his contemporaries, the main focus is on stories which are previously unpublished: stories about his family and the underworld; being brought up in the midst of gangland; prison escapes; unsolved murders; police corruption; bribery; extortion; wrongful convictions and even sex in prison.

As with any diary, the reader has the strange feeling that he or she is taking an illicit peek into someone else's life.

You are spying on the writer.

For God's sake don't let him catch you at it....

 

In the spring of 1943 Frankie Fraser took part in a daring raid to release an army deserter from a squad collecting him from Wandsworth prison. The exercise left two people dead.

From these earliest criminal forays to the influential role he played in the gangland wars of the 1950s and 1960s, Fraser remained fiercely loyal to the men of his circle- the bosses for whom he worked, and the gang members who became his accomplices. In this his second extraordinary volume of memoirs, he looks back at friendships with figures such as Ruby Sparks, the famous pre-war burglar, and Sparks's girlfriend, the 'Bobbed-Haired Bandit', the first woman on a smash and grab team, with Billy Hill and Bert Marsh, the self styled Bosses of the Underworld. and with the thieves they employed.. He introduces his girlfriend Marilyn Wisbey, the daughter of a Great Train Robber, who tells how she grew up with a father in prison.

 

 Now in his mid seventies, Fraser can still use his name to 'see things right'. Others were not so lucky. He recounts the fates of the friends who have suffered violent deaths at the hands of gangland culture, a number of whom were hanged; those involved in the Dartmoor mutiny and the jail sentences being served by his most illustrious peers Reggie Kray and Eddie Richardson.

Fascinating in their own right, Fraser's recollections also provide a compelling portrait of life growing up in poverty in south east London, with its money lenders, prostitutes and abortionists; of the days of the great shoplifters, and the horrors of mid-twentieth century prison life, when defendants would ask judges to give them the 'cat' instead of a long sentence.

Frankie Fraser made hundreds of enemies over his fifty year career; his memoirs explain why the criminal code to which he belonged produced loyalties that were equally as powerful and far more enduring.

Frankie Fraser's book MAD FRANK charts the life and times of this one time gangster. Horrific, brutal and at times funny. One of Britain's most dangerous men. Violence was his trademark. This book gives an insight into who and what moulded MAD FRANK. Did the system make him or break him? Over 40 years in prisons and mental Institutions.

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