"The Little Big Man of the London underworld"
November 27, 2014 10:32 AM Subscribe
RIP 'Mad' Frankie Fraser aka The Dentist, ex enforcer for the Richardson gang and declared Britain's 'most dangerous man' by two Home Secretaries, spending 42 years in prison. In his later years he found work as an after dinner speaker, television personality and tour guide (last year he received an Asbo after an argument in his old people's home over someone sitting in his favourite chair)
Can we please not glamourise this idiot thug? Thanks.
posted by Paul Slade at 10:58 AM on November 27, 2014 [24 favorites]
posted by Paul Slade at 10:58 AM on November 27, 2014 [24 favorites]
Fuckeuology due.
A cowardly deserter, a wartime looter, a violent thug and an unrepentant torturer who spent his later life dining out on giving pathetic suburban nothings a cheap frisson, all the while excusing and glamorising his crimes.
Fuck you, Fraser, you dead piece of shit
posted by howfar at 11:00 AM on November 27, 2014 [26 favorites]
A cowardly deserter, a wartime looter, a violent thug and an unrepentant torturer who spent his later life dining out on giving pathetic suburban nothings a cheap frisson, all the while excusing and glamorising his crimes.
Fuck you, Fraser, you dead piece of shit
posted by howfar at 11:00 AM on November 27, 2014 [26 favorites]
Shortly afterwards, Fraser kidnapped Eric Mason, a Kray gang member, outside the Astor Club in Berkeley Square, with even direr consequences. When Mason demurred, Fraser buried a hatchet in his skull, pinning his hand to his head. Mason was found, barely alive, wearing only his underpants and wrapped in a blanket, on the steps of the London Hospital in Whitechapel. “Eric wasn’t a bad fellow,” Fraser later explained, “but that particular night he was bang out of order.”I had always thought The Piranha Brothers were just a fictionalized version of the Krays, but I see the London crime scene had a pretty deep bench.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:03 AM on November 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
Luvvly fella, used to buy his mother flowers an' that.
posted by sobarel at 11:05 AM on November 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
posted by sobarel at 11:05 AM on November 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
howfar, thank you for introducing me to the word 'fuckeuology'. What a useful term.
posted by daisyk at 11:06 AM on November 27, 2014 [4 favorites]
posted by daisyk at 11:06 AM on November 27, 2014 [4 favorites]
May you be cared for in hell by your 20 year old self.
posted by benzenedream at 11:23 AM on November 27, 2014 [8 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 11:23 AM on November 27, 2014 [8 favorites]
Brass Eye's zeit guest interview was enlightening.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:44 AM on November 27, 2014 [5 favorites]
posted by a lungful of dragon at 11:44 AM on November 27, 2014 [5 favorites]
Is it safe?
posted by furtive at 11:59 AM on November 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
posted by furtive at 11:59 AM on November 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
Reminds me of the "Don Logan" character in "Sexy Beast." Everyone was terrified of the little creep because he was so insanely violent.
posted by Tullyogallaghan at 12:05 PM on November 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Tullyogallaghan at 12:05 PM on November 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
Isn't ASBO an acronym?
posted by localroger at 12:09 PM on November 27, 2014
posted by localroger at 12:09 PM on November 27, 2014
It's more like a way of life in some places.
posted by Segundus at 12:28 PM on November 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
posted by Segundus at 12:28 PM on November 27, 2014 [1 favorite]
Came in to post the Brass Eye interview too. 'Fondled by a nonce'... It's how I'll always remember him.
posted by Mocata at 12:29 PM on November 27, 2014
posted by Mocata at 12:29 PM on November 27, 2014
"An anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) /ˈæzboʊ/ is a civil order made in the United Kingdom against a person who has been shown, on the balance of evidence, to have engaged in anti-social behaviour."-Wikipedia
posted by blueberry at 2:21 PM on November 27, 2014
Isn't ASBO an acronym?
It is, but your apparent pedantry is misplaced, as it is one accepted standard usage to not apply all capitals to acronyms, but only to initialisms. See the Guardian style guide on this point:
posted by howfar at 3:05 PM on November 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
It is, but your apparent pedantry is misplaced, as it is one accepted standard usage to not apply all capitals to acronyms, but only to initialisms. See the Guardian style guide on this point:
Use all capitals if an abbreviation is pronounced as the individual letters (an initialism): BBC, CEO, US, VAT, etc; if it is an acronym (pronounced as a word) spell out with initial capital, eg Nasa, Nato, Unicef..Although interestingly...
...unless it can be considered to have entered the language as an everyday word, such as awol, laser and, more recently, asbo, pin number and sim card.So probably just take your pick, to be honest.
posted by howfar at 3:05 PM on November 27, 2014 [3 favorites]
I lived for a while in east London, in the heart of the old Kray territory and still infested with a lot of villany. A family member was a barmaid in one of the pubs known for its criminal clientèle (The Cock on East Ham High Street), and while I had the usual massive middle class horror of such things I did know a few of them through her. The integration of the demimonde with the law-abiding was surprisingly complex, especially to someone like me who had previously had almost no contact with career criminals.
It's hard to accept, but there was a lot of status among the working class in being part of a known family, or being involved in the business in some way. People, especially the elderly, talked with a mixture of horror and pride about the exploits of even the nastiest thugs of the past. Some of that was a reaction to modern East Ham trends, with the sense that wave after wave of immigrants had dispossessed the white working class of control of its own society, and some of it was in reaction to perceptions of persecution and repression by police and corrupt politicians both local and national. There was - is - a lot of poverty and violence, and kudos for those who succeed, outside the rules or not. And knowing someone who'd be able to sort out a problem for you where the law couldn't or wouldn't get involved had a lot of practical value, and could even save your life.
The gangsters had real local celebrity, and not through the romanticised misapprehension of what they were really like and what they really did.
The way the media glommed onto this, and the way that outsider elites emjoyed being seen to mix with gang leaders, was and is extremely distatesful. Nobody should make a hero of violent psychopaths. But there are reasons why it happens, and they're not all due to fuckwittery.
posted by Devonian at 5:03 PM on November 27, 2014 [8 favorites]
It's hard to accept, but there was a lot of status among the working class in being part of a known family, or being involved in the business in some way. People, especially the elderly, talked with a mixture of horror and pride about the exploits of even the nastiest thugs of the past. Some of that was a reaction to modern East Ham trends, with the sense that wave after wave of immigrants had dispossessed the white working class of control of its own society, and some of it was in reaction to perceptions of persecution and repression by police and corrupt politicians both local and national. There was - is - a lot of poverty and violence, and kudos for those who succeed, outside the rules or not. And knowing someone who'd be able to sort out a problem for you where the law couldn't or wouldn't get involved had a lot of practical value, and could even save your life.
The gangsters had real local celebrity, and not through the romanticised misapprehension of what they were really like and what they really did.
The way the media glommed onto this, and the way that outsider elites emjoyed being seen to mix with gang leaders, was and is extremely distatesful. Nobody should make a hero of violent psychopaths. But there are reasons why it happens, and they're not all due to fuckwittery.
posted by Devonian at 5:03 PM on November 27, 2014 [8 favorites]
it is one accepted standard usage to not apply all capitals to acronyms, but only to initialisms
OK, cool. This modern world and all that.
Also that asbo thing is some fucked up governmental shit.
Colin Wilson talks about the Krays and their lot in rather hilarious terms in A Criminal History of Mankind.
posted by localroger at 6:08 PM on November 27, 2014
OK, cool. This modern world and all that.
Also that asbo thing is some fucked up governmental shit.
Colin Wilson talks about the Krays and their lot in rather hilarious terms in A Criminal History of Mankind.
posted by localroger at 6:08 PM on November 27, 2014
People, especially the elderly, talked with a mixture of horror and pride about the exploits of even the nastiest thugs of the past.
I find it really curious how people can't say the name Jimmy Savile without spitting, and yet aren't in the least bit bothered by the Krays, despite the fact that it's been common knowledge for the last fifty years that they were a pair of child rapists who made much of their money from servicing certain establishment figures with child prostitutes.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:12 PM on November 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
I find it really curious how people can't say the name Jimmy Savile without spitting, and yet aren't in the least bit bothered by the Krays, despite the fact that it's been common knowledge for the last fifty years that they were a pair of child rapists who made much of their money from servicing certain establishment figures with child prostitutes.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:12 PM on November 27, 2014 [2 favorites]
Also that asbo thing is some fucked up governmental shit.
You wouldn't be saying that if you were an old age pensioner, scared to leave your house because gangs of little savages terrorize you on a daily basis.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:14 PM on November 27, 2014
You wouldn't be saying that if you were an old age pensioner, scared to leave your house because gangs of little savages terrorize you on a daily basis.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 9:14 PM on November 27, 2014
There was - is - a lot of poverty and violence, and kudos for those who succeed, outside the rules or not. And knowing someone who'd be able to sort out a problem for you where the law couldn't or wouldn't get involved had a lot of practical value, and could even save your life.
The parallel for me growing up in Northern Ireland is with paramilitaries. You could write everything you said, Devonian, about the IRA or UVF. It's interesting to me how the British media didn't glamourise them in the same way as the Krays et al. And nor should they, because the flip side of people able to "sort out a problem" for you is the debt you then owe them, the silence imposed on communities, the power that they wield when local people can't challenge that power because they'd be touts or grasses. The reasons such people gain power is not all down to fuckwittery of course, but in any sphere power corrupts, and more so when those in power are utterly untouchable.
posted by billiebee at 4:01 AM on November 28, 2014 [3 favorites]
The parallel for me growing up in Northern Ireland is with paramilitaries. You could write everything you said, Devonian, about the IRA or UVF. It's interesting to me how the British media didn't glamourise them in the same way as the Krays et al. And nor should they, because the flip side of people able to "sort out a problem" for you is the debt you then owe them, the silence imposed on communities, the power that they wield when local people can't challenge that power because they'd be touts or grasses. The reasons such people gain power is not all down to fuckwittery of course, but in any sphere power corrupts, and more so when those in power are utterly untouchable.
posted by billiebee at 4:01 AM on November 28, 2014 [3 favorites]
Also that asbo thing is some fucked up governmental shit.
I had never heard of an asbo/ASBO (or Fraser, for that matter) before this thread and came to the exact opposite conclusion. It seems similar to the restraining orders we have in the states, but with a good bit more flexibility for adaptation to a given situation.
Horrid person, interesting story.
posted by TedW at 7:02 AM on November 28, 2014
I had never heard of an asbo/ASBO (or Fraser, for that matter) before this thread and came to the exact opposite conclusion. It seems similar to the restraining orders we have in the states, but with a good bit more flexibility for adaptation to a given situation.
Horrid person, interesting story.
posted by TedW at 7:02 AM on November 28, 2014
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posted by Catblack at 10:37 AM on November 27, 2014 [1 favorite]