Latest news with #GreatTrainRobbery
Daily Mirror
05-07-2025
- Daily Mirror
Inside Ronnie Biggs' prison escape more daring than audacious £2.4m robbery
The Great Train Robbery convict's best friend lifts the lid on Ronnie Biggs' incredible life as the world's most famous fugitive It was one of the most audacious crimes in British history. But nearly two years after the Great Train Robbery shocked and fascinated the country, an equally daring escape turned the least significant member of the gang into the world 's most famous fugitive. Ronnie Biggs played only a minor part in the 1963 robbery of the Glasgow-to-London mail train. Recruited late, he didn't handle any of the loot and only earned a relatively small share of the record £2.4m haul. Caught three weeks later - after his fingerprints were found on a tomato sauce bottle - the petty criminal seemed destined to be little more than a footnote in the story of an infamous heist. But 60 years ago on Monday, Ronnie, then 36, pulled off something even more extraordinary than the robbery itself, 15 months after he was jailed for 30 years - by escaping. By the end of the summer of 1965, and during the ensuing years, as he fled around the world, eventually settling in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, everyone would know his name. Biggs was sent to Wandsworth Prison, south west London, in April 1964, after losing his appeal, with the judge slamming the robbery as 'an act of organised banditry touching new depths of lawlessness'. A high security jail housing some of Britain's most dangerous criminals - that didn't stop Biggs from smuggling in cans of lobster and crab meat, or listening to pop music on a small illegal radio. Biggs, who died in 2013, later wrote in his autobiography how a hit song by The Seekers became the 'inspiration' for his escape. He wrote: 'It contained the line, 'There's a new world somewhere, they call it the promised land'.' Biggs, helped by two fellow inmates, started to meticulously plan what would become Wandsworth's most brazen escape. And he later told Chris Pickard, his best friend in Rio, who ghostwrote Biggs' books, how he managed it. Chris says: 'He and another prisoner, Paul Seabourne, came up with some crazy plans. One idea was a helicopter, which they decided would be too dangerous. 'Every afternoon they were allowed to walk around the yard for an hour. Ron and Paul worked out that the wall of that courtyard was the outside wall of the prison. Then Ron managed to count the bricks in the wall, which is hard to do as you're walking around. Because he was a builder and knew the size of a brick, he worked out the escape height of the wall, 25ft. 'That was higher than a removal van, but if you put an extension on the top of the van it could reach the top.' Seabourne was released in April 1965 and began to coordinate the jail break from the outside. He would get information to Biggs through the bent lawyers of another prisoner, Eric Flower, who was due to be sentenced for armed robbery and planned to escape with him. Another two inmates agreed to grab the prison officers as soon as Seabourne threw a rope ladder over the wall. 'They knew they'd get into trouble, but they said they'd look after that for the honour of helping Ron,' Chris says. Prisoners were normally chosen at random for one of the two walkabouts at different times in the day, so the conspirators devised a plan to get out of being picked for the first one, which included feigning illness or running out of twine for sewing the mail bags. In the countdown to the planned breakout, Biggs became more anxious. 'He was very nervous, he knew there was so much that could go wrong,' says Chris. 'He also realised that if you're going to climb up a basic rope ladder at that height, you have to be pretty fit. So he was having to be pretty discreet in his prison cell, doing press ups and sit ups without making it obvious. 'He said that several of the guards made comments, like 'good to see you're keeping in shape, Ron,' and he had to joke about why he was doing it, but they didn't catch on.' The escape was set for 3.05 on July 7, 1965 - but just before they were due to walk around the yard it started to lightly rain and the session was cancelled. Chris says: 'Luckily for them, Paul Seabourne, who was driving to Wandsworth in the removals van, also realised they wouldn't be let out in the rain, so turned back. They had agreed that if anything happened the escape would be put back a day.' The next day, Seabourne returned - but first went round every red telephone box in the vicinity and unscrewed the mouthpieces, so no-one would be able to call the police. Biggs' wife, Charmian, who was also in on the plan and who had provided the money to pay for the escape, had gone to Whipsnade Zoo for a day out, so she had an alibi and couldn't be implicated. This time, everything worked perfectly. 'Ron said that, as they walked around the yard they could hear the old removal truck pulling up outside. Then a head appeared over the wall with the traditional stockings over the face, and the rope ladders came down. Ron and Eric made a beeline for it, while these two other guys rugby-tackled the guards. 'They went up and over the wall, followed by two other men who decided they wanted to escape too. They jumped onto a mattress in the van, then all piled into the back of a waiting green Ford Zephyr and drove off. 'Ron told me they passed some police cars with their sirens on going in the other direction, but nobody followed them. 'Paul had assumed they would be chased by the police, so the plan was for them to turn into a cul-de-sac, run down a pathway and get into another waiting car. In fact, they weren't being followed at all, so didn't have to do anything in a rush.' After dropping off the others at Tube stations, Biggs and Flower went back with Seabourne to his flat in Dulwich, south east London, where they toasted their success with champagne. The two escapees were later taken to a safe house in Bermondsey, south east London. The next day, the front page of the Daily Mirror called Biggs' jail break 'the great escape' and quoted a Scotland Yard spokesman warning that the gang may be armed and that the public should not approach them. Chris says: 'In fact, Biggs was offered a gun, but he refused to take it. But it was all over the news, and for the next weeks everyone was spotting Ron everywhere. 'On July 14 police swooped on Heathrow airport, believing Ron was hiding in a crate, which caused chaos, but he wasn't there, he was just sitting in the safe house.' Even Madame Tussauds created waxwork figures of Biggs, as well as Charlie Wilson, another train robber who had escaped from Birmingham's Winson Green Prison a year earlier. By August, the two fugitives were getting fed up of staring at the walls of the London flat, so a house was rented for them in Bognor Regis, where they were finally united with their wives. In October 1965, Biggs and Flower made their way to Paris where their faces were changed by plastic surgery. Under the name 'Terence Furminger', Biggs settled in Adelaide in Australia, joined by Charmian and their children. Eric Flower lived in Sydney until he was captured in 1969 and sent back to Wandsworth to finish his 12-year sentence. With the police closing in on him, in 1970 Biggs flew to Brazil on a false passport, later divorcing Charmian. Under a new name, Michael Haynes, he began to build a new life for himself in Rio. Having a son, Michael, with his Brazilian lover Raimunda de Castro, also won him immunity from extradition under Brazilian law. Chris, who was working as a journalist in the South American city, became a close friend. He says: 'We would spend a lot of time together, sometimes at his house or over food at restaurants, just chatting. Eventually, he asked if I could help write his book because he wanted to set the record straight.' Chris says that it was always his escape from Wandsworth, and not the train robbery, which Biggs talked about most. 'It was his plan, his work, whereas he had nothing to do with the Great Train Robbery. And it was because of that, and not the actual robbery, that he became infamous. 'Although he'd spent all the money by the time he arrived in Rio, it was his fame that allowed him to have such a good life there. 'I'd go round to his house and you never knew who you'd find, a famous celebrity, a journalist or singer. He even had the Sex Pistols round and ended up writing and recording one of their biggest hits. It was an extraordinary life.' Biggs suffered his first stroke in 1998, although he recovered to throw a 70th birthday party. However, second and third strokes followed, permanently ending his days of beaches and parties. In 2001, after evading capture for 36 years, Biggs was arrested and sent to London's high-security Belmarsh prison, where he once again became Prisoner 002731, the same number he was given in April 1964 when he entered Wandsworth. In July 2007 he was moved to a unit for elderly inmates at Norwich Prison, and granted compassionate release from his prison sentence on August 6 2009, just two days before his 80th birthday. Finally free and no longer a fugitive, but imprisoned by his own ailments and unable to eat, speak or walk, he died four years later.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Yahoo
On This Day, May 22: Ireland is 1st to pass marriage equality in popular vote
On this date in history: In 1868, seven members of the Reno gang stole $98,000 from a railway car at Marshfield, Ind. It was the original "Great Train Robbery." In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt established Crater Lake National Park in southwest Oregon, the fifth-oldest national park in the United States. The defining feature is Crater Lake, the remains of Mount Mazama, a volcano that collapsed after a major eruption thousands of years ago. In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first U.S president to visit Moscow. In 1987, a tornado flattened Saragosa, Texas, population 185, killing 29 residents and injuring 121. In 1990, South Yemen and North Yemen united, forming the new Yemeni Arab Republic. In 1992, Johnny Carson ended his nearly 30-year career as host of The Tonight Show. In 2002, authorities in Birmingham, Ala., convicted a fourth suspect in a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls. Bobby Frank Cherry, 71, a former Ku Klux Klansman, was sentenced to life in prison. In 2003, Annika Sörenstam became the first woman in 59 years to compete in a PGA event but her 5-over-par 145 through two rounds of the Bank of America Colonial tournament failed to make the cut. In 2011, the deadliest tornado to strike the United States in half a century roared into the heart of Joplin, Mo., with winds of 200 mph. It killed nearly 160 people, injured about 1,100 others and destroyed nearly one-third of the city. Damage was estimated in the $3 billion range. In 2015, voters in Ireland overwhelmingly approved a measure to allow civil same-sex marriage, making it the first nation in the world to legalize gay unions through a popular vote. In 2017, a suicide bomber killed 22 people attending an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. More than 500 people sustained injuries. In 2020, at least 76 people died in a fiery crash of Pakistan International Airlines Flight PK-8303 near Karachi's Jinnah International Airport. In 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced they would formally recognize Palestine as a state separate from Israel in an effort to inject renewed impetus into a hoped-for two-state solution to decades of conflict.
UPI
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- UPI
On This Day, May 22: Ireland is 1st to pass marriage equality in popular vote
1 of 5 | People celebrate as the final vote of the referendum on same-sex marriage is announced at Dublin Castle in Ireland on May 23, 2015, one day after a referendum on the issue. File Photo by Aidan Crawley/EPA On this date in history: In 1868, seven members of the Reno gang stole $98,000 from a railway car at Marshfield, Ind. It was the original "Great Train Robbery." In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt established Crater Lake National Park in southwest Oregon, the fifth-oldest national park in the United States. The defining feature is Crater Lake, the remains of Mount Mazama, a volcano that collapsed after a major eruption thousands of years ago. In 1972, Richard Nixon became the first U.S president to visit Moscow. In 1987, a tornado flattened Saragosa, Texas, population 185, killing 29 residents and injuring 121. In 1990, South Yemen and North Yemen united, forming the new Yemeni Arab Republic. In 1992, Johnny Carson ended his nearly 30-year career as host of The Tonight Show. File Photo by Mike Hill/UPI In 2002, authorities in Birmingham, Ala., convicted a fourth suspect in a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls. Bobby Frank Cherry, 71, a former Ku Klux Klansman, was sentenced to life in prison. In 2003, Annika Sörenstam became the first woman in 59 years to compete in a PGA event but her 5-over-par 145 through two rounds of the Bank of America Colonial tournament failed to make the cut. In 2011, the deadliest tornado to strike the United States in half a century roared into the heart of Joplin, Mo., with winds of 200 mph. It killed nearly 160 people, injured about 1,100 others and destroyed nearly one-third of the city. Damage was estimated in the $3 billion range. File Photo by Rick Meyer/UPI In 2015, voters in Ireland overwhelmingly approved a measure to allow civil same-sex marriage, making it the first nation in the world to legalize gay unions through a popular vote. In 2017, a suicide bomber killed 22 people attending an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. More than 500 people sustained injuries. In 2020, at least 76 people died in a fiery crash of Pakistan International Airlines Flight PK-8303 near Karachi's Jinnah International Airport. In 2024, Ireland, Norway and Spain announced they would formally recognize Palestine as a state separate from Israel in an effort to inject renewed impetus into a hoped-for two-state solution to decades of conflict. File Photo by Jemal Countess/UPI
BBC News
14-04-2025
- BBC News
'The elite of the criminal world': The men behind the Great Train Robbery
Britain in the 1960s was captivated by the daring of the Great Train Robbery, and the sheer scale of the money stolen. But when the accused men stood trial in April 1964, the judge was determined to send a message that such crimes would not be tolerated. Fourteen years later, several of the convicts talked to the BBC. On 16 April 1964, Robert Welch was one of the 12 men found guilty of a notorious heist in Aylesbury Crown Court. Fourteen years later, in 1978, he was on the BBC's documentary and current affairs programme, Man Alive, and recalled seeing local dignitaries jostle for positions in the courtroom to hear the sentencing. "This was what they had all come to watch. The climax of the play, the drama," Welch said. "And the medieval setting in which we were sentenced, you know, it was a bit chilling." Welch and his fellow convicts had fallen a long way since pulling off one of the most audacious and lucrative thefts the UK had ever seen: the Great Train Robbery. Welch and his co-defendants were part of a band who held up a Royal Mail night train travelling from Glasgow to London. The robbers had made off with £2.6m in used banknotes, a record haul at that time, and the equivalent of over £50m ($65.8m) today. At the time of Welch's trial, police were still hunting for three of the people they suspected had been involved in the crime. To execute this carefully orchestrated robbery, 15 members of two of London's biggest criminal gangs had worked together, each tasked with a particular role in the plot. "They were regarded as the elite of the criminal world," Reginald Abbiss, who had covered the crime for the BBC as a young reporter, told the Witness History podcast in 2023. "You had to have a certain talent and audacity, certain abilities to be able to pull a heist of this magnitude and they came together because they needed a multitude of talent." The daring robbery took place just after 03:00 on 8 August 1963. The first step the criminals had taken was to cut the phone lines to stop an alarm being raised. They then rigged the train signals to stay red. "They put a glove over the green light, they wired a cheap battery up to the red light and this, of course, meant the driver had to slow up," said Abbiss. Seeing the red light, the train's driver, Jack Mills, stopped the engine, and his co-driver, David Whitby, climbed out to use the trackside phone to find out what the problem was. That's when Whitby discovered that the line had been cut, and he was set upon by masked men wearing boiler suits. In the meantime, a masked robber burst into the train's cab to restrain the driver. When Mills tried to put up a fight, another gang member hit him over the head, rendering him semi-conscious. "The one glitch, if you like, was the fact that the train driver… tried to resist," said Abbiss. "One of the robbers hit him on the head with a cosh. A lot of blood and down he went." The gang had been given inside information that the cash and high-value packages were held in the train's front two coaches. And because it was a Bank Holiday weekend, it would be carrying more money than usual. One hundred and twenty sacks of money Although there weren't any police onboard, there were more than 70 Post Office employees, mostly in the rear carriages, where they were busy sorting letters. The criminals who had already familiarised themselves with the train's operation and layout quickly uncoupled the two money-laden carriages. The plan was to detach them and drive them away from the steep embankment to a predetermined rendezvous where it would be easier to unload the bags of cash. It was then they hit a problem. "They had a driver to drive the train, he couldn't get the train going, and they had to pull the original driver, Jack Mills, up from the floor and threaten him and say, 'Drive the train,'" said Abbiss. "He managed to get the train a mile up the line to where most of the gang were waiting, leaving the other eight or nine coaches with sorters happily sorting, totally unaware that the main part of the train had gone on ahead." Mills, still bleeding profusely, was told to stop the two front carriages at Bridego Bridge. There, the rest of the gang broke into the carriages, overpowering the Post Office staff working in them, and forcing them to lie face down on the floor. They also brought in Mills and Whitby, who were handcuffed together. The gang had decided that they would give themselves just 15 minutes to unload the loot and then leave whatever money was left. They formed a human chain and swiftly removed 120 sacks containing two-and-a-half tonnes of money into parked Land Rovers. After a quarter of an hour, the crew called time and ordered the terrified Post Office staff to stay still and not to attempt to contact the police for 30 minutes. Then the robbers drove off into the night. The boldness of the theft and the enormous sum of money involved captured the British public's imagination. In the weeks that followed, the country was gripped by sensational headlines detailing the police's hunt for the perpetrators. But despite the meticulous nature of the robbery's planning and its skilful execution, within a year the majority of the criminal gang had been rounded up and were facing trial. "Well, at first view, the job was a very well-planned job," ex-Det Supt Malcolm Fewtrell, who led investigations into the heist, told BBC News in 1964. "But in the event, it has been a disaster. They obviously weren't so clever as they thought they were." The judge at their trial did not view the robbers' actions in the "romantic" way some of the public seemed to, saying that it would be "positively evil" if he showed the convicted men any semblance of leniency. Crime and punishment "I remember a shock wave ran through the courtroom when the judge, a man called Lord Justice Edmund Davies, handed down 307 years in the space of half an hour," Abbiss told BBC Witness History in 2023. At the time, the punishments they received for the robbery were some of the harshest in British criminal history, especially since nobody had been killed and no firearms had been used. "I was just numbed, I couldn't think of anything but 30 years. When are we going to get out? We are never going to get out," one of the robbers, Tommy Wisbey, told Man Alive in 1978. "I don't think it really hits you until a couple of days later and you realise what you've got," fellow gang member Gordon Goody said to the BBC. "I mean it was a bit of a joke downstairs, clowning around and all that kind of thing. But deep down, I suppose you were sick." More like this:• The British politician who was caught faking his own death• The true story of The Great Escape• The bizarre siege behind Stockholm Syndrome The reason the judge gave for the severity of the prison terms was the assault on Mills. "Anybody who has seen that nerve-shattered engine driver can have no doubt of the terrifying effect on law-abiding citizens of a concerted assault by armed robbers," said Justice Davies at the trial. Mills never worked again and died in 1970 of leukaemia. His co-driver Whitby died of a heart attack the following year at the age of 34. But there was also a sense, at least among the robbers themselves, that they were being disproportionately punished because the heist had embarrassed the British establishment. One of them, Roy James, said to the BBC in 1978, "At that moment, all the shame that was with me throughout the trial was lifted because I felt that Mr Edmund Davies then used his position as a High Court judge, used the backing of the state for vengeance. He put himself on a par with me and everything that he said I was." "There was a feeling that Justice Davies came down particularly hard for two reasons," said Abbiss. "One was the violence shown against the train driver, and the other was that the establishment, the government, the Post Office and British Rail, the way that they were sort of caught with their pants down. It showed the establishment to be people perhaps who take their eye off the ball." The criminals' notoriety only grew following their sentencing when two of the gang made dramatic escapes from prison. Charles Wilson, who had been the treasurer of the group, broke out of jail just four months after the trial. He was recaptured in Canada after four years on the run and served another 10 years behind bars. Ronnie Biggs escaped from London's Wandsworth Prison, 15 months after his sentencing, using a makeshift rope ladder. He underwent plastic surgery and lived at times in Spain, Australia and Brazil, evading arrest for nearly 40 years. In 2001, he voluntarily returned to the UK for medical treatment and served the rest of his prison sentence. On the run The law would also eventually catch up with the three gang members who didn't stand trial that day. Bruce Reynolds, considered to be the robbery's mastermind, spent five years on the run until he was arrested on his return to England. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail, but ended up serving just 10. His son Nick, who spent his early life on the run with his father in Mexico and Canada, would later have his own link to the outlaw lifestyle when his band Alabama 3's song Woke Up This Morning became the opening theme of The Sopranos TV series. Ronald "Buster" Edwards, who was later played by Genesis singer Phil Collins in a 1988 film, Buster, fled to Mexico following the robbery. He gave himself up in 1966 and was released after serving nine years. James White, who acted as the quartermaster for the robbery, was caught in Kent and sent to prison after three years on the run. He was released in 1975. Despite the lengthy jail time handed down, all the men convicted of the Great Train Robbery would end up being released early. None served more than 13 years for the crime – although many of them would return to prison for different offences in the years that followed. As for the huge haul stolen during the robbery, despite the police in 1964 offering a 10% share for information that would lead them to it, the majority of the money was never recovered. -- For more stories and never-before-published radio scripts to your inbox, sign up to the In History newsletter, while The Essential List delivers a handpicked selection of features and insights twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
