Writing for Fun
June 2017
The Twins - Nature and Nurture
For some it was a good time to be born and for others not so good. But the twin boys eventually talking about their childhood said it was the happiest of times. For the adults poverty was horrendous and born in Hoxton was not counted as being born with a golden spoon to say the least. Times were changing, Hitler was on the rise and by the time the twins were three Moseley was marching, he fed off the economic depression, unemployment, nationalism and social crises. There of course was no benefits system and many women stood on street corners to eke out a meagre living and put some food on the table.
Violet now had the twins’ child A and child B together with their elder brother Charlie to look after, but she was homesick for Bethnal Green and wanted to be near her own parents. Violet felt it was a better class of place to live, though as the older twin A later stated ‘As many people died of malnutrition in Bethnal Green as they did in Hoxton’. Violet had what she wanted and with husband Charlie and the three boys all moved into Vallance Road. This small terraced house in a row of four had no bathroom and the toilet was a small wooden hut in the back garden.
The boys loved their family, each having their favourites; Auntie Rose loved Child B the most because he had had diphtheria and she thought he would die, but he was a tough little lad. As with so many families it was a violent culture, grandad Lee was the South Paw Cannonball. Both boys would sit on his lap as he would regale them with details of his fights. Drunken fights and brawls sorting out matters for themselves was the norm with regular battles between villains from other areas. Even the kids had brick fights with kids from other streets. The police rarely came around as they were scared stiff of some of them, and did not want to get hurt themselves. It sounds strange now but this was the normal way of life all over the East End.
Charlie senior was a useless husband, never a fighting man but always a drunkard, small time thief and deserter; he was either wanted by the police or the army or both. For at least the first twelve years of the twins’ lives he was on the run, but coming home frequently; no one in the east end informed on anyone. Violet held it all together and when the sirens went off she would grab each boy’s hand and run with them to the shelters; Grandad Lee would put on a little act with some magic and entertain the kids. Critcha Lee was the twin’s great grandad, a gypsy and a cattle dealer. He was mad and eventually died in Claybury madhouse where his son followed as an inmate and died there. Gypsy blood and insanity ran through the family, and though the brothers were identical this very gene was only deemed to have affected the younger one Child B.
Child A loved his dad and described much happier memories of his father but Child B saw dad as a drunkard who gave him a beating. When he came home drunk he would start shouting and Child B was upset, child A was excited by it all. Child B wrote later on that even then he knew that one day he would give his father a hiding and when he was older that’s exactly what he did. Yet he understood that times had been so hard back then that it was no wonder many men took to the drink.
Violet was adored by both boys and they worshipped her until their dying days. She was softly spoken and as twins they used to compete for her attention and try and get in her good books, but she would have none of it. She was utterly fair, often the boys remembered no money in the home and very little food on the table but the three boys always had something to eat and half decent clothes to wear. Mum was very placid and kind, she never argued and both Child A and child B would never answer her back. Both twins as adults recall that even as children they both would have killed had anyone upset their mum.
Being identical the boys were also telepathic and if one got into trouble then the other would join in too. Child A would not be outdone by Child B and vice versa; this led to both of them doing unnecessary things to show the other they were not chicken. Once war was declared the family were evacuated to Hadleigh in Suffolk. Both twins loved it there running wild in the country and in later years the love of the feel and smells of the countryside remained with them. Violet missed her family and they all returned to the East End. Child B was exhilarated by the sounds of the bombings even then he knew no fear and watched excited whilst others were fearful.
At the end of the war both twins had to go to school but following their freedoms playing and fighting, running wild without much control, school was tame, dull and boring. As common with many identical twins they had learned quickly to play ‘Not me sir,’ always claiming to be the other twin. This trick stood them in good stead for much of their lives. Fights at school were tough and nasty and both boys always made sure they were the last two standing. All brothers thought they would become boxers and their brother Charlie won medals in the navy losing only four out of his twenty odd fights but the problem for him was that he was the ‘easy going one in the family’.
Looking back through the mists of time as child A and Child B left school at fifteen, was or is it now possible to determine that nature or nurture influenced these two boys to develop into the notorious gangsters Reggie and Ronnie Kray.