Kray’s Marry Flanagan’ postcard goes at gangland auction

A CHRISTMAS card sent by Ronnie Kray to his twin Reggie has reawakened an old story of unrequited love in London’s gangland involving former Page Three model Flanagan. Ronnie urged his brother to ask her to marry him in a hand-written message on the card, which was sold in an auction of Krays memorabilia

By Else Kvist

A CHRISTMAS card sent by Ronnie Kray to his twin Reggie has reawakened an old story of unrequited love in London’s gangland involving former Page Three model Flanagan.

Ronnie urged his brother to ask Flanagan to marry him in a hand-written message on the card which read: “Reg it would do you a lot of good to marry Flanagan.”

The card was sold for �250 in an auction of Krays memorabilia last month.

Flanagan, now 68 and running an East London charity shop in Hackney, would probably have married the notorious gangster had he not been behind bars, she told the East London Advertiser.

“Ronnie was always urging Reggie to marry me,” she said. “Reggie proposed three times when he was inside, but I replied he was not brave enough’ to marry me.”

Flanagan was their mother Violet’s hairdresser and often visited their home in Vallance Road, Bethnal Green.

“If they had let Reggie out earlier, I probably would have married him,” she added. “I would have made sure he went into schools to warn youngsters that crime doesn’t pay, which is what he wanted to do.”

The Krays were the East End gangland’s top guns’ in the 1950s and 60s, whose crime empire collapsed when they were jailed at the Old Bailey for murder in 1969. Reggie was released in 2000, age 66, with terminal cancer, and died shortly after.