Mad Frank and friends - Frankie Fraser

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 60s, Fraser remained fiercely loyal to the men of his circle. 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' 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, and tells of how she grew up with a father in prison.Fraser's recollections 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 of the horrors of mid-twentieth century prison life, when defendants would ask judges to give them the 'cat' instead of a long sentence.