the great train robbery

They also found a camel-skin bag with a receipt inside, from the Cafe Pension restaurant, Sonnenbichel, Hindelang, Prov. These are all scenes that could come straight out of "Ocean's 11". Both were directed by Edwin S. Porter. Both said that they had no money left. The film was set in England in 1855 and starred Sean Connery as Edward Pierce the criminal mastermind behind the robbery, along with his accomplices Donald Sutherland as Robert Agar a thief and Lesley-Anne Down as Miriam a seductress that manipulates men to gain information from them. The defendants were brought to the court each day from Aylesbury Prison in a compartmentalised van, out of view of the large crowd of spectators. [72] In 1993, he shot and wounded his father in-law, pistol-whipped and partially strangled his ex-wife, after they had returned their children for a day's outing. The Fields, Amber, her husband and two children were all killed instantly. [11][page needed][unreliable source? He clearly did not know all the names perfectly, and a second informant (a woman) was able to fill in the gaps. They sent Detective Superintendent Gerald McArthur and Detective Sergeant John Pritchard to assist the Buckinghamshire Police. When that money ran out, Reynolds moved his family to Canada and then France under false identities, in search of work, before returning to the United Kingdom to pursue opportunities promised by his old criminal contacts. Field was called upon to assist in Goody's defence in the aftermath of the "Airport Job", which was a robbery carried out on 27 November 1962 at BOAC Comet House, Hatton Cross, London Airport. [100] He did not contest his seat at the next election in September 1964, which the Labour Party won under Harold Wilson. ", "British Transport Police History: The Great Train Robbery", "Fancy the 'Get Out of Jail Free' card from Great Train Robbery gang's Monopoly? [105] The sign was replaced around 2017. The robbers now had to move the train to Bridego Bridge (now known as Mentmore[8] Bridge), approximately half a mile (800 m) further along the track, where they planned to unload the money. He was sentenced to six years in jail. He was tried in June 1966 at Leicester Assizes and Mr Justice Nield sentenced him to 18 years' jail, considerably less than the 30 years given to other principal offenders. Tommy Butler was a shrewd choice to take over the Flying Squad and in particular the Train Robbery Squad. His counsel, Walter Raeburn QC, claimed that the evidence against his client was limited to his fingerprints being on the Monopoly set found at Leatherslade Farm and the fact that he went underground after the robbery. Despite claiming that his negotiations were responsible for the return of this money, Williams in his book No Fixed Address (1973) claimed not to know the identity of the person who had returned the money, although he did mention several robbers to whom he had offered deals through intermediaries. [11][page needed][unreliable source? His mother died in 1935, and he had trouble living with his father and stepmother, so he often stayed with one or other of his grandmothers. England, 1850s. In May 2001, aged 71 and having suffered three strokes, Biggs voluntarily returned to England. This was to deter collector/souvenir hunters. [60][page needed][non-primary source needed][unreliable source?]. Jimmy White – With the other robbers on the run and having fled the country, only White was at large in the United Kingdom. [11][page needed][unreliable source? He was convicted and sentenced to three years. A year later in July 1965, Buster Edwards and his family arrived, although unlike the Reynolds family they planned to return to England at some stage, and did not like Mexico. [31] The documentary makers employed Ariel Bruce, a social worker who finds missing family members, to trace McKenna, who was found to have died some years previously. On 14 July 1964, the appeals by Roger Cordrey and Bill Boal were allowed, with the convictions for conspiracy to rob quashed, leaving only the receiving charges. Once the robbers had entered the carriage, the staff could put up no effective resistance and there was no police officer or security guard on board to assist them. By 1983, James and Charlie Wilson had become involved in an attempt to import gold without paying excise duty. Mills had constant trauma headaches for the rest of his life, before dying of leukaemia in 1970. He threatened the man left in charge of his share of the theft to retrieve the remainder. The final changeover had not been completed by the time of the robbery. As a result, he lived openly in Rio for many years, safe from the British authorities. [47] This process saw them get 18 names to be passed on to detectives to match up with the list being prepared from fingerprints collected at Leatherslade. At Edwards's funeral in 1994, Reynolds saw only Welch. Following a tip-off from a herdsman who used a field adjacent to Leatherslade Farm, a police sergeant and constable called there on 13 August 1963, five days after the robbery. The audacity and scale of the robbery was yet another controversy with which the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan had to cope. Two weeks after his escape Wilson was in Paris for plastic surgery. Butler worked long hours and expected all members of the squad to do the same. In the book he expressed some frustration with the Flying Squad although he mostly had praise for individual officers. Because it would be necessary to accommodate a large number of lawyers and journalists, the existing court was deemed too small and so the offices of Aylesbury Rural District Council were specially converted for the event. [55][page needed], On 12 August 1964, Wilson escaped from Winson Green Prison in Birmingham in under three minutes, the escape being considered unprecedented in that a three-man team had broken into the prison to extricate him. John Wheater was released from prison on 11 February 1966 and managed his family's laundry business in Harrogate. This recommendation was implemented in 1961, but HVP carriages without alarms were retained in reserve. This gang, although very successful in the criminal underworld, had virtually no experience in stopping and robbing trains, so it was agreed to enlist the help of another London gang called The South Coast Raiders. [71][page needed][non-primary source needed][unreliable source?] They were living in a rented, fully furnished flat above a florist's shop in Wimborne Road, Moordown, Bournemouth. [11][page needed][unreliable source? He called a meeting with Edwards, Reynolds, Daly and James and they agreed that they needed to be sure. [106] There were 1,579 notes whose serial numbers were known and the rest of the money was completely untraceable. The film was also one of the first to incorporate a full cast of actors and to shoot on-location. According to Buster Edwards, he 'nicked' £10,000 in ten-shilling notes to help pay "Mark's" drink. The staff were made to lie face down on the floor in a corner of the carriage. "The Great Train Robbery" is probably the oddest of the bunch. Though the gang did not use any firearms, Jack Mills, the train driver, was beaten over the head with a metal bar. Both gang members stated that they believed Boal was "stitched up" by the police.[99]. By lunchtime of the following day, it became obvious to Fewtrell that extra resources were needed to cope with the scale of the investigation and the Buckinghamshire Chief Constable referred the case to Scotland Yard. Reynolds gave up trying to find Field. It seems that while he was an older man, he still had to apply for two weeks leave of absence from his job. It had been bought two months earlier as their hideout. Field had arranged with "Mark" to carry out a comprehensive clean-up and set fire to the farm after the robbers had left, even though the robbers had already spent much time wiping the place down to be free of prints. [11][page needed][unreliable source? One of the carriages involved in the robbery is preserved at the Nene Valley Railway. In addition, they knew that Field had acted for Gordon Goody and other criminals. The train was stopped at Bridego Bridge, and the robbers' "assault force" attacked the 'high-value packages' (HVP) carriage. Raeburn went on to say that Daly had played the Monopoly game with his brother-in-law Bruce Reynolds earlier in 1963, and that he had gone underground only because he was associated with people publicly sought by the police. [10], George Hatherill (1898–1986) had his service extended by one year because of the need to complete the investigation of the Great Train Robbery. He was traumatised by his track-side assault and subsequent rough treatment and never recovered from his ordeal. Richardson in turn introduced him to Gordon Goody. The Great Train Robbery (1963) PKM: Didn’t your dad once describe the train robbery as his “Sistine Chapel”? £55,000 had been paid as a package deal to get him out of the UK. They knew we had never grassed anyone, we had done our time without putting anyone else in the frame". In the epilogue, Reynolds describes what happened to some of the robbers. [69] His family continued to run the flower stall after his death. The locomotive was scrapped at Doncaster Railway workshops in 1984. These books were written in the immediate aftermath of the 1964 trial and before the capture of several of the gang. The opening scene shows the interior of the robbers' den. On 8 August, 1963 Britain awakens to the news of the biggest robbery in the country's history. Many in Rigaud petitioned that his wife and three daughters be allowed to stay in the Montreal area. [11][page needed][unreliable source? However he crashed several cars and his chances of becoming a driver quickly faded. [56] Wilson's escape was yet another dramatic twist in the train robbery saga. [69] His story was dramatised in the 1988 film Buster, with Phil Collins in the title role. Ronnie Biggs. The actual carriage that was robbed [M30204M] was retained for seven years following the robbery, and then taken to Norfolk and burned in the presence of police and Post Office representatives at a scrapyard near Norwich in 1970. Field, aged 44, and Sian, aged 28, died in a car crash on the M4 motorway on 27 April 1979, a year after the last of the robbers had completed their sentences. After his success in securing White and Edwards, Tommy Butler got the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Joseph Simpson, to suspend his retirement on his 55th birthday so he could continue to hunt the robbers. [33], The most dangerous of the Great Train Robbers was 'the Silent Man' Charlie Wilson. Several scenes have color included - all hand tinted. [28] He has produced occasional journalism pieces, been a consultant on movie and book projects about the train heist, and published a well-regarded crime memoir, Crossing the Line: The Autobiography of a Thief (1995). [34][page needed]. Crichton uses the same quasi-non-fiction style that he uses for his other historical novels like Eaters of the Dead or Pirate Latitudes. That’s what the book is about, and this came totally after the fact. [36][page needed], Field later became a solicitor's managing clerk for John Wheater & Co. Harry Booth). Although the Wisbey share was one that was not taken by other criminals, Marilyn Wisbey is still bitter that her relatives got to spend a fair amount of the loot while the overall sum dwindled away. [Laughs.] George Hatherill, Commander of the C Department and Detective Chief Superintendent Earnest (Ernie) Millen, Head of the Flying Squad were initially in charge of the London side of the investigation. He was rejected by the Royal Navy because of poor eyesight, and then tried to become a foreign correspondent, but his highest achievement in that vein was to become a clerk at the Daily Mail. They arrested him at Littlestone while he was at home. Piers Paul Read, in The Train Robbers, claimed that the police were feeling the pressure because although they had caught many of the robbers, they had failed to recover much of the money. "Odd Man Out" (1994) by Ronald Biggs. [110], Up to six of the robbers escaped punishment in one way or another - "The Ulsterman", three robbers who were never caught, John Daly who had his charges dismissed at the trial and Ronnie Biggs who escaped from jail and managed to avoid being taken back to the UK. On 18 December 2013, the day Ronnie Biggs died, In 2019 in episode 6 of part 1 of the Spanish TV programme, On 10 September 2011 two 5-inch-gauge (127 mm) battery-powered scale models of class 40 locomotives on the half-mile-plus (800 m) circuit of The Strawberry Line Miniature Railway in the Avon Valley Country Park at, Additionally, the Luton Model Railway Club has created a, This page was last edited on 31 March 2021, at 09:48. It was several weeks after the accident that Field's true identity was discovered. With a few notable exceptions, the money was quickly laundered or divided by friends, family and associates of the robbers. ][non-primary source needed] According to Piers Paul Read in his 1978 book The Train Robbers, he was "a solitary thief, not known to work with either firm, he should have had a good chance of remaining undetected altogether, yet was known to be one of the Train Robbers almost at once—first by other criminals and then by the police". [10], Famously, the gang had used the money in a game of Monopoly while holed up at the farm house. Hussey's share of the loot had been entrusted to a friend of Frank Monroe who squandered it despite Monroe periodically checking on its keeper. ][non-primary source needed] On one occasion he described the contents and layout of a house near Weybridge where his wife Karin had once been a nanny.[37]. He was the last of those convicted in Aylesbury to be released. When an escort girl is found dead in the offices of a Japanese company in Los Angeles, detectives Web Smith and John Connor act as liaison between the company's executives and the investigating cop Tom Graham. When he returned to South London, he ran a drinking club and became a professional criminal. The train consisted of 12 carriages and carried 72 Post Office staff who sorted mail during the journey. The Great Train Robbery was a Michael Crichton affair. He was a failed musician, a failed artist. The first reports of the robbery were broadcast on the VHF police radio within a few minutes and this is where the gang heard the line "A robbery has been committed and you'll never believe it – they've stolen the train!". Just after 03:00 on 8 August, the driver, 58-year-old Jack Mills from Crewe, stopped the train on the West Coast Main Line at a red signal light at Sears Crossing, Ledburn, between Leighton Buzzard and Cheddington. Tom Logan is a railroad detective. One of the milestones in film history was the first narrative film, The Great Train Robbery (1903), directed and photographed by Edwin S. Porter - a former Thomas Edison cameraman. He went back to being a florist at his sister's business upon his release. Great Train Robbery, (August 8, 1963), in British history, the armed robbery of £2,600,000 (mostly in used bank notes) from the Glasgow–London Royal Mail Train, near Bridego Bridge north of London. Thus the proceeds of the greatest cash robbery in British history were quickly used up, with few of the robbers receiving any real long-term benefit. Police later acknowledged that he was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Eight of the gang members and several associates were caught. In return for Hussey and Wisbey pleading guilty, the two women were unconditionally freed. Find out about upcoming events, network with others. Mary Manson, an associate of Bruce Reynolds and John Daly, was charged with receiving £820 from the robbery; she was held for six weeks but was released. He lived under the name Ronald Alloway, a name borrowed from a Fulham shopkeeper. The 11 men sentenced all felt aggrieved at the sentences handed down, particularly Bill Boal (who died in prison) and Lennie Field, who were later found not guilty of the charges against them. I haven't seen the 1960 original, starring Frank Sinatra, but it isn't unthinkable that Steven Soderbergh also took some ideas from this film whilst he was preparing the 2001 remake. At the time, the severity of the sentences caused some surprise. (Hussey, Wisbey and James were all in prison at the time. Smith died in 2008. On 10 April 1966 a new friend recognised him from photos in a newspaper and informed police. [10] It appeared, from interviews with the witnesses, that about 15 hooded men dressed in blue boiler suits had been involved, but little more could be gleaned. [67] When Reynolds returned to the UK in 1968, he tried to contact Field as this was the only way he could get in touch with the "Ulsterman". One of the pleasures of "The Great Train Robbery" is the way it's firmly in the Victorian period. Use the HTML below. Cordrey was the first of the robbers released, but his share of the theft had almost entirely been recovered by the police. It was only when he invited his brother-in-law over from the UK for Christmas that Scotland Yard was able to track him down and recapture him. [28][29] He is survived by his son Nick. [89][page needed][non-primary source needed][unreliable source?]. Strangely, however, he makes no further mention of him. England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858-1966, 1973-1995 [database on-line]. Subsequently, Field went to ground and Buggy was killed shortly after. He soon joined a gang with best friend John Daly (future brother-in-law). Lennie Field had already been arrested on 14 September.[35]. By the time they were ready to go back to the farm, however, they learned that police had found the hide-out. Marilyn agrees with Piers Paul Read's assessment of how her father's share of approximately £150,000 was spent. The Great Brain Robbery is a reference to the 1903 movie The Great Train Robbery. Ronnie Biggs, in his 1994 autobiography, Odd Man Out, said that Bruce Reynolds offered him a chance to join the gang, if he could find a train driver. At 18:50 on Wednesday 7 August 1963, the travelling post office (TPO) "Up Special" train set off from Glasgow Central station en route to Euston Station in London. Site accessed on 21 January 2018. He became arguably the most renowned head of the Flying Squad in its history. Hatherill and Millen decided to publish photos of the wanted suspects, despite strong protests from Tommy Butler and Frank Williams. He took a while to learn how to live harmoniously with his wife Rene (his daughter Marilyn having moved out upon his return). Wilson and Biggs's escapes meant that five of the known robbers were now on the run, with Tommy Butler in hot pursuit. This article is about the actual robbery. He was able to resume his job as a secondman, but died from a heart attack on 6 January 1972 at the age of 34 in Crewe, Cheshire. Crossing The Line: Autobiography of a Thief by Bruce Reynolds. Justice Fenton Atkinson concluded that a miscarriage of justice would result if Boal's charges were upheld, given that his age, physique and temperament made him an unlikely train robber. [41] Despite not being in on the robbery, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years (20 years for conspiracy to rob and five years for obstructing justice), which was later reduced to five. It follows a gang of outlaws who hold up and rob a steam locomotive at a station in the American West, flee across mountainous terrain, and are finally defeated by a posse of locals. He gets no help from the workers or authorities when he finds himself marked for murder. Biggs was renewing the front windows of a train driver's house in Redhill, who he calls 'Peter' (and whom he believes to be dead by 1994). The informant had just been jailed in a provincial prison before the train robbery, and was hoping to get parole and other favourable outcomes from talking. He served two years in the Royal Army Service Corps, seeing service during the Korean War. The jury retired to the Grange Youth Centre in Aylesbury to consider its verdict. He disappeared from the public eye. Chapter 5 describes the Biggs escape from Wandsworth Prison to Paris, Crossing the Line - The Autobiography of a Thief, by Bruce Reynolds, The Great Train Robbery (Crime Archive series) (2008) by Peter Gutteridge (P 54). Mail was loaded onto the train at Glasgow, during additional station stops en route, and from line-side collection points where local post office staff would hang mail sacks on elevated track-side hooks that were caught by nets deployed by the on-board staff. The Great Gold Robbery took place on the night of 15 May 1855, when a routine shipment of three boxes of gold bullion and coins was stolen from the guard's van of the service between London Bridge station and Folkestone while it was being shipped to Paris. Dewhurst and Kett were hit with coshes when they made a vain attempt to prevent the robbers' storming of the carriage. He then went to Cheddington railway station, where the train had been taken, and where statements were taken from the driver and postal workers. The police then undertook a major search, fanning out from the crime scene after having failed to find any forensic evidence there. He was Scotland Yard's most formidable thief-taker and, as an unmarried man who still lived with his mother, he had a fanatical dedication to the job. The bulk of the stolen money was never recovered. When mastermind Bruce Reynolds was arrested in 1968, he allegedly told arresting officer Tommy Butler that those sentences had had a detrimental effect. Statistically, this could have amounted to £131,000 or 4.7% of the total. The Great Train Robbery was the robbery of £2.6 million from a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London on the West Coast Main Line in the early hours of 8 August 1963, at Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire, England. The Great Train Robbery is a 1903 American silent Western film made by Edwin S. Porter for the Edison Manufacturing Company. In later years, the robbers generally came together only for the funerals of their fellow gang members. With the exception of a few 'drinks' for associates, the loot was split into 17 equal shares of around £150,000 each (George Hatherill claims that there were 18 shares). After the Edwards family returned to England, the Reynoldses also decided to leave Mexico and go to Canada to potentially join up with the Wilson family, leaving on 6 December 1966. The judge agreed, and the jury was directed to acquit him. [65], While there has been a lot of mystery surrounding several of the gang who were not imprisoned, in reality the police knew almost the entire gang almost instantly. In the early 1960s he joined Buster Edwards' gang and helped rob various easy targets. [68] He is buried in Streatham cemetery.[68]. Plot. Locomotive English Electric Type 4 – D326 (later 40126) was involved in a number of serious operating incidents. Piers Paul Read called the replacement train driver "Stan Agate", and Stan was apparently the true nickname of the replacement driver. Plot Summary | Add Synopsis (1978). According to Marilyn Wisbey, her father's share was hidden by his father Tommy Wisbey Senior in the panels in the doors of his home. [57], Eleven months after Wilson's escape, in July 1965, Biggs escaped from Wandsworth Prison, 15 months into his sentence. On 13 July 1964, the appeals by Lennie Field and Brian Field (no relation) against the charges of conspiracy to rob were allowed. Seaborne was later caught by Butler and sentenced to four-and-a-half years; Ronnie Leslie received three years for being the getaway driver. :) Hatherill's list was unerringly accurate—all the major gang members who were later jailed were identified, except Ronnie Biggs. [7] This carriage was kept for evidence for seven years following the event and then burned at a scrapyard in Norfolk in the presence of police and post office officials to deter any souvenir hunters. After the failure of his sporting career, he returned to his trade as a silversmith. 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