Roy Shaw

Royston Henry Shaw (11 March 1936 – 14 July 2012), also known as Roy "Pretty Boy" Shaw, Roy "Mean Machine" Shaw and Roy West, was an English millionaire, real estate investor, author and businessman from the East End of London who was formerly a criminal and Category A prisoner. During the 1970s–1980s, Shaw was active in the criminal underworld of London and was frequently associated with the Kray twins. Shaw is best remembered today for his career as a fighter on the unlicensed boxing scene, becoming an arch-rival with Lenny McLean.

Shaw was born in Stepney, London, to a working-class family and from an early age was involved in illegal activities. He was acquainted with the Kray twins since at least the very early 1960s; Shaw attended the funeral of Reggie Kray in 2000, and was quoted as having said: "We grew up in the same era. They were into protection rackets and I was into blags. I never got in their way and they never got in mine. Ronnie was more of a friend than Reggie, but I've come along today because he was one of the 'chaps'. Today is like the end of an era. The Krays were legends." As an adult Shaw mainly lived in Bethnal Green.

Shaw was sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment for an armed robbery in 1963, one of England's largest armoured truck robberies. Shaw reportedly fought his way out of two different holding cells at Her Majesty's Prison at Maidstone, assaulting several prison guards.

Shaw, who claimed he "simply hates the system", and that the "system could never beat him", was consistently moved onto different prisons and spent time at Broadmoor Hospital for Criminally Insane. According to Shaw's autobiography, Pretty Boy (1999), "uncontrollable prisoners, were deliberately drugged up with the aim of turning them into permanent 'cabbages'". At Broadmoor, Shaw underwent experimental electroconvulsive therapy in an attempt to control his temper. His doctor claimed that Shaw had at first come across as a large and intimidating yet soft-spoken gentleman, but when faced with treatment he didn't want, Shaw became "the most powerful and dangerous man I have ever tried to treat". The doctor reported the treatments as having been a complete failure, and only served to make Shaw even more aggressive and unpredictable.

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