Notorious British gangster Fraser dies

"Mad" Frankie Fraser, an old-school London criminal who spent more than 40 years in prison and became an underworld celebrity, has died. He was 90.

Eddie Richardson, sometime-boss of a crime family with which Fraser was associated, confirmed he died on Wednesday. Fraser had been in a hospital for an operation on his leg.

"He's had a long life and I don't think he's done too bad. He had Alzheimer's for about three years, so I don't think he knew what day it was," Richardson said.

Fraser was among the last survivors of a generation of sharp-suited Cockney gangsters that included the Kray twins, Reggie and Ronnie, who moved between London's East End dives and the society pages in the 1960s.

Fraser worked as a gangland enforcer for the South London-based Richardsons, and earned a fearsome reputation for violence. He was known as "The Dentist" for allegedly pulling out his victims' teeth with pliers.

He served a total of 42 years in prison for a variety of crimesthough never murderand was sent to psychiatric facilities several times after being declared insane.

Once jailed, he was said to be a ringleader of a brutal riot in Parkhurst Prison in 1969.

Starting out as a child thief, Fraser's criminal career took off during World War II when he escaped service as a soldier and took advantage of sparse policing and shortages.

"The war was wonderful, for thievingwise, gangsterwise and everything," Fraser once wrote.

"Clothes were rationed, food was rationed, so all you had to do was nick them commodities and people bit your arm off to buy it off you."

After his final release in 1989, he capitalized on nostalgia for the 1960seven for its shady sideby publishing an autobiography, becoming a television personality, starring in a one-man stage show and leading underworld tours of London.

The world of Fraser and the Krays was mythologized in films such as Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. The gangsters became a symbol of a possibly mythical time when criminals only targeted one another, helped the poor and were kind to their sweet old mothers.

"Sure I was violent," Fraser told the Independent newspaper in 1994, "but only to people like myself".

In his late 80s, he was diagnosed with an antisocial behavior order after flying into a rage at a pensioner who sat in his chair in an old people's home, chasing him down a corridor.

AP - AFP

(China Daily 11/28/2014 page11)