Contents
The Great Gold Robbery 1855
This article was written by William Owen Gay
(former Chief Constable of British Transport Police) and was part
of a series Murder in Transit published in the BTP Journal.
Modern practices are often, merely variations
of the old. This does not mean that detection becomes easier with
the passage of time. Many crimes are not preventable and the
initiative is so often with the criminal. But it would be contrary
to the record to assume that the criminal of today has a better
technique than his predecessors. In January 1857 the trial ended at
the Old Bailey of three men who had planned and carried out one of
the most remarkable railway robberies ever committed. The case was
not solved, however, by brilliant detective work but fortuitously
after the police of two countries had failed to find a clue.
On the night of 15 May 1855, three London
firms each handed to Messrs. Chaplin & Co. Carriers, a box of
gold for conveyance from London, via Folkestone and Boulogne, for
Paris. Each box was solidly constructed of wood and bound with iron
hoops. They were weighed and sealed at the carriers' office and
then taken to the London Bridge station, of what was then the South
Eastern Railway.
At the railway station the boxes were placed
in travelling safes made of iron and each secured with two Chubb
patent locks. The keys of these safes were entrusted to railway
staff in London and Folkestone and also to the captain of the
cross-channel steamer, the Lord Warden. It was the practice to load
the safes with the guard on the night train from London to
Folkestone.
When the Lord Warden reached Boulogne, on this
particular occasion the safes were unlocked with the captain’s keys
and the boxes were taken out and weighed. All three boxes showed no
signs of interference, but one weighed forty pounds less than it
should have done. They were transferred to the Chemin de Fer du
Nord for conveyance to Paris. On arrival there they were opened and
it was then seen that the boxes were full of lead shot. Gold bars
to the value of £12,000, worth very much more then than today, and
a quantity of gold coins, including American 10-dollar pieces, were
missing.
Extensive enquiries were made along the whole
route from London to Paris and officers of the Metropolitan Police,
South Eastern Railway Police, the French police and other Forces,
through whose territory the consignment had passed, were engaged
upon the investigation for many months. A large reward was offered
by the South Eastern Railway, rumours abounded and false scents
were endlessly pursued. For a long time the official theory was
that the robbery was committed in France and the claim from the
bullion merchants was resisted on that grounds until December
1855.
Hundreds of suspects were rounded up and some
visited police stations in order to ‘help the police’. Statements
were taken from many of the staff, but these suggested, as is so
often the case, that everybody did their job as it should be done,
so that in theory the robbery could never have happened at all. The
French police made careful inquiries and came to the conclusion
that the robbery must have been committed during the train journey
in England or during the channel crossing. They were in a strong
position, because they were able to point to the discrepancy in the
weight at Boulogne immediately after the bullion boxes were removed
from the safes, which had been unlocked with the captain’s
keys.
At one time suspicion rested on the railway
staff at Folkestone, where the bullion boxes, which should have
been placed in a strong room, had actually been left in an
accessible office during the night. At another period suspicion was
directed to the guard in whose van the boxes had travelled. This
man, James Burgess, had been in the railway service for thirteen
years and had a good character. He was questioned by police
officers and other officials, but nothing he could, or would, say
threw any light on the mystery. James Kennedy, the under-guard to
Burgess on the night mail, said that he saw Burgess at London
Bridge, but did not see him again until the train reached Dover. A
prominent part was taken in the investigation by Mr Rees, a young
and able solicitor in the service of the South Eastern Company.
At this time the Secretary of the South
Eastern Railway was a gentleman named Samuel Smiles, a shrewd Scot,
who was well known in later years as the author of the Victorian
best-seller, Self-help. A few months after the robbery, a young man
named William Tester, formerly station master at Margate and at
this time assistant passenger manager at London Bridge, approached
Smiles for a testimonial because he was leaving to become general
manager of the Swedish Railways. Smiles did not know much about
Tester, so he made some enquiries. He learned that Tester was
highly regarded by his superior and gave him a testimonial. Tester
left for Sweden. Events were to show that he had good reason for
leaving the railway and the country.
In August 1855, a professional criminal named
Edward Agar displaced a man named Humphreys in the affections of a
certain young woman. Humphreys, in revenge, arranged a trap for
Agar, who was arrested, charged with uttering a forged cheque and
sentenced to transportation to Australia for life. Before his
arrest, Agar had been associating with another young woman named
Fanny Kay, who had a child by him. Fanny had once been a barmaid at
Tonbridge station. While awaiting transportation, Agar spent some
time in Pentonville and other prisons and he often thought of and
wrote to Fanny, for whom he had made provision with an ex-railway
employee, William Pierce. This man had once been in the railway
service as a ticket printer, but was dismissed in 1850. Agar had
given Pierce at least £7,000, but Fanny had never received a penny
of it and by the summer of 1856 was destitute.
A letter from Agar aroused her suspicions and
she had a furious quarrel with Pierce. The upshot was that she went
to the governor of Newgate Prison and told him a most interesting
story. The governor got in touch with Rees and Fanny was taken to
London Bridge to see him. What she had to say made that young man
lift his eyebrows. After the interview he said to Smiles: “If what
this woman says is right, we have all been wrong.” Fanny made a
statement to Rees and he was soon on his way to see Agar, who by
this time had reached the prison hulks at Portland on the final
stage of his journey to Australia. When he learned what had
happened to Fanny he was extremely angry, for even a professional
criminal like Agar had his standards, and he punished Pierce in the
only way he could – he told Rees about the part played by Pierce in
the bullion robbery. In due course he made a long statement
describing how the gold had been stolen and who had stolen it.
The statement made all that time ago and still
on record, shows that criminals of Agar’s calibre may have worn
mutton-chop whiskers and never been to the pictures, but they would
have reaped a big harvest today.
The investigation that followed the
revelations made by Agar were directed by Rees, who was ably
assisted in London by Inspectors Williamson and Thornton, two
Metropolitan police officers famous in their day. After Fanny Kay
had made a statement she lived at Inspector Thornton’s house at the
expense of the railway company. She was too valuable a witness to
leave in any other lodgings.
In November 1856, William Pierce and James
Burgess were arrested in London and afterwards William Tester was
arrested at Deal, on his way home from Sweden to see his
family.
On 10, 11 and 12 January 1857, the three
appeared at the Old Bailey and two important witnesses against them
were Fanny Kay and Edward Agar. At the trial the defence made much
of the fact that the prosecution relied on the evidence of an
accomplice, but once the modus operandi and the identity of the
criminals were known the investigating officers were able to build
up evidence against them. The judge considered Agar’s statement was
corroborated in such detail by persons with whom Agar could have
had no contact whatever, that his story was obviously true. Agar, a
slightly-built man, with keen bright eyes, and of considerable
intelligence and education, gave his evidence clearly and most
convincingly. He was a resourceful rascal and had planned and
carried out the most difficult part of the operation. He was an
associate of the notorious James Townsend Saward, otherwise known
as ‘Jim the Penman’, a barrister, who had organised criminal
enterprises for over thirty years. Saward himself had organised the
disposal of part of the stolen bullion. In March 1857, he and other
confederates were convicted for the extensive forgery of bankers’
cheques.
In the late 1840s Agar met Pierce, then
employed as a ticket printer, and the possibility of stealing the
gold passing regularly between London and Paris was discussed. Agar
thought the security was too good and did not pursue the matter.
Soon afterwards he went to the United States and it was not until
some years later, when he returned to England, and met Pierce by
chance, that the gold was mentioned again. Agar thought it would be
impossible unless impressions of the safe keys could be obtained.
He also wanted to know how many other people would have to be in
the plan. Pierce then mentioned Burgess, the guard, and Tester, at
that time the Margate stationmaster. After some consideration Agar
agreed to make the attempt. In May 1854, Agar and Pierce went to
Folkestone for a fortnight and watched the working of the trains.
In fact they paid too much attention to the trains and were viewed
with some suspicion by Inspector GD Hazell and other officers of
the South Eastern Railway Police. Pierce returned to London, but
Agar stayed on and through Tester made the acquaintance of some of
the railway staff. In particular he visited public houses
frequented by them and concentrated on one man, who handled the
keys of the travelling safes in the course of his duties. Inspector
Hazell, however, thinking Agar was a pickpocket, warned this clerk,
and Agar, suspecting something was wrong, decided to leave
Folkestone for a while.
By this time Burgess had been introduced into
the circle, and the four met regularly to discuss plans. The
meetings usually took place in public houses, notably the Green Man
of Tooley Street and the White Hart near London Bridge. Tester was
regarded as an able man by his superiors, and while the
conspirators were still discussing ways and means, fate played into
their hands. Tester was promoted and transferred to London and
found himself in the office that dealt with security of valuable
goods and also the rota of guards’ duties. About this
time one of the keys kept on the channel boat was lost and Tester
had to arrange a replacement. He was able to smuggle it to Agar for
a matter of minutes at a public house near London Bridge and a wax
impression was made. The next difficulty was to obtain an
impression of the second key, because there were two locks on every
safe. Arrangements were made for a box of bullion value £200 to be
sent to Agar at Folkestone addressed to ‘CE ARCHER, c/o Mr LEDGER
or Mr CHAPMAN’, who were two clerks at Folkestone.
The box travelled in October 1854, and on
arrival Agar called for the box and saw Chapman open the safe with
a key which he took from a cupboard in the office. At the end of
October, Pierce and Agar went to Folkestone and when the boat train
came in, watched until the two clerks were called from the office.
Later, after further observation, they found an opportunity to make
an impression of the key in the brief absence of the clerks – a
piece of perfect timing. Agar also went to Boulogne and spent a
week there watching the handling of traffic from boat to rail. At
this stage they decided that having gone to so much trouble they
would not attempt the robbery until a large amount of gold was
passing and they aimed at a quantity equal in value to £12,000,
which they estimated would weigh about two hundredweights. Agar
travelled many times on the trains worked by Burgess in order to
test the keys on the safes. After experiments, Agar went with
Pierce to the Shot Tower on the Surrey side of Hungerford Bridge,
and bought two hundredweights of lead shot. Some of the shot was
packed in small parcels and then placed in specially-made leather
courier bags, and the rest was carried in carpet bags, then
commonly used by travellers. Night after night Agar and Pierce, the
latter heavily disguised with a wig and whiskers, carried the bags
by various routes to London Bridge Station to wait for a
prearranged signal from Burgess.
On the night of the 15 May 1855, both Burgess
and Tester tipped them off. Agar and Pierce booked two first class
tickets to Dover and also took with them the return halves of
tickets to Ostend. They handed the carpet bags to a porter to place
in the guard’s van and he did not notice at the time how heavy the
bags were. Pierce took a seat in a compartment and Agar slipped
unobserved into Burgess’ van. He was equipped with a mallet and
chisel and other tools for opening the boxes and also carried wax
and tapers for resealing them. Shortly after the train started he
opened the first safe with the false keys and knocked off the iron
clamps from one of the boxes. He then took out the gold bars,
substituted the parcel of lead shot, replaced the iron fastenings
and nails and resealed the boxes. By the time the train reached
Redhill, Agar had completed the first box. Tester was waiting there
and Burgess handed him one bar of gold, with which he returned to
London on the next train.
Pierce then joined Agar in the van to help
with the other boxes. They opened them successfully, but found they
had not brought sufficient lead shot and this accounted for the
discrepancy in the weight at Boulogne. Before they left the van the
boxes were all carefully readjusted, the van was swept up and
everything was left apparently normal.
On arrival at Folkestone the safes were taken
from the train in the usual way and Pierce and Agar travelled on to
Dover, where they collected the carpet bags from Burgess’ van. Agar
then went along the pier and threw his mallet, chisel and other
tools into the sea. At Dover, as a matter of fact, Agar had an
anxious moment because a persistent porter insisted on carrying the
bags, but fortunately for Agar, did not suspect their unusual
weight. Both men then returned to London and returned to Agar’s
house at Cambridge Villas, Shepherd’s Bush by a circuitous route. A
furnace was built and day after day Agar and Pierce melted the gold
down. In due course some of the gold was sold and the proceeds
divided between the three of them. In the share out Burgess
received £700 and the others £600. Shortly afterwards Agar was
arrested on another charge as has been stated, but fortunately for
him and the others at that time, the man who had organised his
arrest knew nothing of his complicity in the gold robbery. After
Agar’s arrest, Pierce buried some of the stolen property in the
pantry under the front steps of his house at Kilburn Villa. After
Agar had told his story, Rees went to this house accompanied by
police officers and found bonds to the amount of £2,000 and other
valuable securities. At Agar’s house in Shepherd’s Bush traces were
found of the gold and corroboration of other evidence provided by
Agar.
Many months after the robbery, when Agar was
put up for identification, the underguard, Kennedy, recalled that
he had seen Burgess and Agar drinking together at public houses on
several occasions. A porter named Hart had unloaded the boxes at
Folkestone, in the presence of Burgess, but had noticed nothing
unusual. A night watchman, who had looked after the bullion during
the night was relieved by PC McKnight, of South Eastern Railway
Police, who also saw the boxes loaded on the Lord Warden. The boxes
were placed on the deck and the mate of the steamer watched them
throughout the crossing. At Boulogne, during the unloading, the
mate had recalled one box was slightly damaged and a French customs
officer, it was learned, had also noticed a small hole in the
box.
But the fact that the bullion had been stolen
was not discovered, as has been told, until the consignment reached
Paris. Many witnesses were traced to corroborate the detailed
statement taken by Rees. Thus, a booking clerk at Folkestone
recognised Agar, and Inspector Hazell recalled that he had seen him
there on several occasions. The porter who carried Agar’s bags was
traced. Staff at the Dover Castle Hotel and the Rose Inn at Dover,
where Agar had stayed under an assumed name, also recalled a guest
answering his description. A guard remembered seeing Tester
carrying a black leather bag at Redhill on the night of the
robbery, the bag having been described in detail by Agar. The same
guard also remembered having seen Pierce and Agar together at
Folkestone some time before the robbery. There was also some
interesting evidence which indicated that Tester had deliberately
altered the guards’ duty roster so that Burgess was in charge of
the mail train on the night of 15 May.
The men were convicted, the jury being absent
only ten minutes. Burgess and Tester were sentenced to
transportation for fourteen years, but Pierce, convicted of simple
larceny, only received two years with “the first, 12th and 24th
month to be spent in solitary confinement”. It is interesting to
note that one of the original counts was for larceny in a
dwellinghouse, but the court decided that a railway carriage could
not be regarded as the dwellinghouse of the railway company, who
were the prosecutors.
Counsel for the prosecution commented during
the trial upon “the skill, dexterity, perseverance and ability
exercised upon the execution of this criminal design”. He then
overplayed his hand somewhat by referring to the “greater amount of
skill, dexterity, perseverance, legal knowledge and discretion
evinced by the professional advisers of the railway company” which
had brought the men to justice. In fact, as we know, the
investigation resources of those days had failed completely.
It was a remarkable case, however, and the
crime had all the hallmarks of great robberies – the audacity, the
link with the man with inside information, the reconnaissance, the
careful planning and the patience. There are lessons for detective
officers in it too, and a very old one for criminals.
The wooden box from which the gold was stolen
(still containing lead shot) is on display at the National Railway
Museum, York.
The Great Train Robbery 1963
Prior to 1963, the Great Train Robbery
referred to the theft of gold bullion from a train travelling
between London and Paris in 1855. However the events of 8 August
1963 displaced this as being one of the most audacious robberies in
the UK.
Late on Wednesday 7 August 1963 the ‘Up
Special’ train left Glasgow en-route for Euston. The train was a
TPO (Travelling Post Office) and consisted of a number of carriages
where Post Office staff sorted the mail and parcels en-route prior
to its arrival in London. The second carriage from the front of the
train was a HVP (High Value Package) where registered mail was
sorted. Much of this consisted of cash. Usually the value of these
items would have been in the region of £300,000 but, because there
had been a Bank Holiday weekend in Scotland the total on the day of
the robbery was £2.3 million (about £30 million today).
The train passed Leighton Buzzard at about 3am
the following day and a minute or two later the driver, Jack Mills
saw a red signal ahead at a place called Sears Crossing. He did not
realise that the red light was false, a glove had been stuffed onto
the proper signal and the red light was activated by attaching it
to a six volt battery. When he stopped, his co-driver David Whitby
climbed out of the diesel engine in order to ring the signalman to
ascertain the problem. He discovered that the cables from the
line-side phone had been cut and as he turned to return to his
train he was attacked and thrown down the steep railway embankment.
At the same time a masked man climbed into the train cab and coshed
the driver around the head rendering him unconscious. Meanwhile
other robbers were uncoupling the rest of the carriages leaving on
the engine and the first two carriages containing the high-value
property.
The steep embankments at Sears crossing were
unpractical for removing the loot from the train but the gang had
done their homework and had planned to drive the train a mile
further to Bridego Bridge (bridge number 127). Here Land Rovers
were waiting to convey the cash to a hideout a few miles away.
But it was now that the well-planned heist
encountered the first problem. One of the gang had spent months
befriending railway staff on the pretence of being a railway
enthusiast. He had been allowed rides in the cabs of trains and had
even been permitted to drive a few trains. His part in the robbery
was to drive the train onto the rendezvous point but as he climbed
into the cab of the train he realised that this huge diesel train
was far more complicated than the local trains he had previously
travelled in. One of the gang members Ronnie Biggs (it was his 34th
birthday) had to rouse the driver to continue the journey.
In the front two carriages frightened post
office staff were pushed to one end by some of the fifteen strong
gang – but, in the remaining ten carriages (left at Sears Crossing)
staff did not even realise anything had happened.
At Bridego Bridge a human chain of robbers
removed 120 sacks containing two-and-a-half-tons of money. The
robbery was well organised and swift. Before leaving one of the
gang threatened the Post Office staff to stay still for 30 minutes
before contacting the police. This gave the investigators an
important clue, they suspected that the gang had a hideout within a
30 minute drive of the scene.
This was indeed the case. An old farmhouse in
Oakley Buckinghamshire, (Letherslade Farm) had been rented and
during the next few days the jubilant gang shared out the cash.
They even played Monopoly using real money. A huge police
investigation was launched, run by the Flying Squad at Scotland
Yard and senior detectives from the Buckinghamshire Police. The
officer in overall command was Detective Chief Superintendent Jack
Slipper.
The British Transport Police had a small role
to play in the investigation, mainly conducting the railway
enquiries, obtaining lists of staff and suspects. A crime report
was completed by PC Blake which is still held by the BTP, as is a
brown cardboard file marked ‘Train Robbery – Cheddington’ with some
notes made by BTP officers who attended the scene.
Back at the farm the gang were becoming
spooked by low flying RAF aircraft who were actually on training
runs and nothing to do with the manhunt that had now been
established. They split the money which was mainly in used £1 and
£5 notes (Biggs was to receive £147,000) and left the scene sooner
that they had planned rather than ‘lying low’ for several
weeks.
A nearby resident had become suspicious of the
comings and goings at the farm and advised the police. PC John
Wooley responded to the report and found large amounts of abandoned
food and provisions. Sleeping bags and bedding had been left in
upstairs rooms and in the cellar, bank note wrappers, post office
sacks and registered mail packages. A thorough scenes of crime
examination found several fingerprints including some on the
Monopoly board and others on a ketchup bottle. These fingerprints
and other enquiries led to the offenders and one by one they were
arrested. The British Transport Police headquarters at Park Royal
in north London was regularly updated of the progress of the
investigation and the chief constable was sent supplementary crime
reports giving the names and details of those involved.
They all eventually appeared in court. The
mastermind of the operation, Bruce Reynolds took five years to
track down but received ten years imprisonment. Ronnie Biggs
received 30 years but escaped from Wandsworth prison in a furniture
van only 15 months later. His flight to Brazil (via Spain and
Australia) and subsequent return to the UK in May 2001 have been
well documented.
The gang received a total of 307 years
imprisonment. Despite the huge amount of money stolen none of the
thieves were able to live happily on their ill-gotten gains. Buster
Edwards ended up running a flower stall at Waterloo station. He
received a lot of publicity in 1988 when Phil Collins played him in
the film Buster but took his own life in the late 90s. James Hussey
and Thomas Wisbey were convicted in 1989 for trafficking drugs.
Charles Wilson was shot and killed in Spain.
It must be said that the Great Train Robbery was brilliantly
planned and executed. Apart from the attack on the train driver it
was nonviolent and no firearms were used. The raiders managed to
steal much more money than they had planned and perhaps it was the
greed in sharing all the money out which led to them being careless
and leaving so many fingerprints behind, sealing their own
fate.