The world light heavyweight champion from 1948 to 1950, Mills became in retirement a nightclub owner and friend of the Krays, who were two crime leaders. He was, like so many Kray 'associates', found shot in the head, in Soho in 1965. The police said suicide, but several lurid theories sprang up: such as that Mills, married with children, had been arrested in a public toilet and charged with indecency; or that his suicide was staged by Chinese gangsters who were after his club. A recent book even claimed Mills had murdered eight prostitutes found in the Thames between 1959 and 1965, then killed himself when the net began to tighten.
FreddieMills was the first world champion that I'd ever heard of from my father, just about the time he (my father) was trying to get me to put on the old horse hair filled gloves he's brought back from India whilst living in a tenement flat in Kilmahew Street in Ardrossan.
Freddie had little use for finesse, he captured the public imagination and admiration by his guts as a fighter who would accept punishment without flinching and still fight back until he got on top, all of which combined with an innate sense of chivalry endeared him to the fans as well as his opponents.
Freddie was scheduled to have a rematch with Lesnevich, but displacement of the vertebrae at the base of the skull meant that it had to be postponed for treatment.
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