Gypsy Jane. Jane Lee
too proud to admit that, as a woman, a vulnerable heart has almost been my undoing. My dear old dad, Ronnie, always said to me as a kid, ‘Tough times don’t last, girl, but tough people do.’
I’ve never forgotten those words and they have served me well over the years because I am as tough as they come… and I’m still here.
I have lived by the code of the old East End.
A code of honour, morals and loyalty.
Being a gypsy makes you different – and I’m different through and through. It’s in my blood and that’s what makes me who I am. My dad always said he was a gypsy, as were his parents, who had a horse and cart for a home. My dad’s name is Ronnie. He brought me up to believe that as a gypsy you had to learn to take what life threw at you – that no matter how many times you were knocked down you had to get back up again.
‘It don’t matter what life dishes out, my girl. You take it on the chin and just keep going,’ he would say. Simple words but wise words too. Dad is getting on now and has gone straight since the age of 30. After his final stretch he started a trade as a painter and decorator on account of him and my mum, Kathy, having me, my older sister Michelle and my brother John, who is a year older than me. I was the baby of the family.
We had a happy-go-lucky childhood and even now it takes a lot to take the smile off my face. My dad spent a lot of time inside for various bits of villainy but he did his best for us and stayed on the straight and narrow for our sakes. But he had the gypsy spirit in him. He was born on his parents’ cart in 1936 and was one of ten brothers and sisters. They lived in that same cart, roaming around for the first few years of his life, until World War II came. By then they were spending a lot of time in the East End of London in an area called Custom House. Like so many other kids in the war, Dad was evacuated and ended up in Tunbridge Wells.
When the fighting was over, many gypsy families settled in the East End and that is what Dad’s family did. But he never forgot he was a gypsy. It was in his blood and in his ways. He loved horses and loved to travel around. He always said that was when he felt really free. But life had changed after the war for so many gypsies. They were tied down for the first time.
Silvertown was where I grew up, in the London borough of Newham. It is a tough, industrialised district on the north bank of the Thames and is named after Samuel Winkworth Silver who opened a rubber factory there in 1852. One side of Silvertown belonged to all the factories that were built on the banks of the river and the other side is where we lived. When I was a kid, the docks were right behind our three-bed council house in Camel Road. But all that has changed now and it’s City Airport that overlooks the estate. It was nicer when I was a kid. We used to watch the ships come into the docks from our bedroom window. We would watch the dockers unloading the ships and loading them back up with different cargo before they set sail back down the river and into the sea
In those days whatever arrived on the ships in the docks for the shops of the land was always on sale in the streets of Silvertown first. There was a booming black market in the area, purely driven by the docks. There have been all sorts of regeneration projects around there but in many ways it is still the same old Silvertown to me.
I was born on 13 September 1966 and got to know the area well in the 1970s. It was so different then. There were rogues and robbers all over the place. There were all sorts of knock-off gear floating around. It was before the days of CCTV and sophisticated alarm systems and all that sort of stuff. It was much easier for anyone to go out on the rob in those days.
Silvertown was like one big happy family. Everyone knew everyone and if you didn’t fit in, you didn’t last long. You were soon marked out if you were dodgy. But everyone left their doors open and every house was like your own. Stealing off your own or burgling from peoples’ houses had never been heard of then. How life has sadly changed for the worse.
It was in those days that I learned my values. What was right and wrong. When you read my story, you may think I have lived by a villain’s code but that is not true. I have lived by the code of the old East End. A code of honour, morals and loyalty. But as I have grown up I have realised that honour among thieves is just a fairy tale. It’s sad but true that most villains don’t live by the code that said we looked after our own and did what we had to do to keep body and soul together.
I remember, when I was young, going round to an older mate’s house to feed her cat for her while she was on holiday. Her bloke was still there but busy doing his own things and I walked into the living room and there was this massive pallet stacked as high as me with £20 notes. My mouth just dropped open. There must have been millions there. I never touched a note though. I fed the cat and left. We were taught never to steal from our own and I never have. Although we had nothing, I had my self-respect and the trust of everyone and no amount of money would ever change that.
The next day I went back to feed the cat again and the notes were gone. I asked what happened. ‘Don’t worry, Jane,’ he said. ‘It’s not even real. You should have helped yourself to a handful.’ Blimey, I thought to myself. I could have got rich there and then – and I was only a nipper.
My dad had already had a family before he went to prison. He had a girlfriend named Josie who had a son they named after my dad. But Josie couldn’t cope with the years of being on her own when he went to prison. She couldn’t cope with the future of visits and lonely times. I mean, two hours visiting every two weeks for years on end isn’t much of a life, is it? So Dad lost his first family when he was inside. When he got out and married my mum Kathy and had us three, he vowed to go straight. He said no amount of money was worth risking his family. He said it might get hard at times – and it did – but he always reminded us we had each other.
Dad was the pushover in our house. He would always say he was going to tell Mum if we drove him mad and that would always take the wind out of our sales and quieten us. But he never did tell on us. I remember Dad once banging his head on the wall and shouting at the top of his lungs, ‘You kids are driving me mad and will be the death of me.’
John and I cracked up with laughter at him until he once more said, ‘Wait until your mum gets home. She’ll take the smiles off your faces.’
We soon stopped laughing and started begging. As always, he never did tell. Just the thought he might grass us up to Mum got us eating out of his hand. He’s a bit of a softie but us kids were blessed to have a dad so loving and understanding. That may sound odd given his criminal past but my dad is old school – a real gentleman. He knows how to treat people properly. What he wouldn’t do or say to a woman, I don’t expect any man to do or say to me. Dad never laid a finger on any of us. He would beat himself up instead, bless him.
I love my dad because, after Mum hit the booze, he was the saviour of our family and I was and still am his favourite, even though he denies it and says he loves us all the same. I think he loves my personality a bit more because I’ve got more gypsy in me than the others. Dad used to take me to the Epsom Derby in Surrey when I was little. It wasn’t just for the horseracing. Gypsies from all over the land would congregate there for the races, which my dad loved, but he also wanted to remind me where I came from. ‘They are your people, Jane,’ he would say as I stared in wonder at all the caravans and the goings-on around the races. I used to love those trips with Dad.
Michelle, or Shell as I always call her, was Mum’s favourite and couldn’t do anything wrong in her eyes. She was Mum’s little princess and, as John was the only son, they both loved him equally. Me, John and Shell are so close now. John was what every girl would want in a brother.