Blood on the Tracks: A History of Railway Crime in Britain by Alan Brooke, David Brandon Read Free Book Online

1954-5 another gang spent months visiting railway installations along the East Coast Main Line in Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. This was the ‘Margham Gang’ named after its leader who had a well-known propensity for violence. They used a van and were successful forseveral months, getting away with wine, tea, tobacco and shoes, all of which would find a ready market. There was, however, an element of hit-and-miss in their operations and they seem to have been disgusted when they rifled a van containing carpets and textiles. These they left scattered around the scene of the crime. They cunningly varied their operations, keeping one jump ahead of the Transport Police, but were eventually caught after using extreme violence to resist arrest. Margham himself had the small matter of eighty-three previous convictions. Some might call him a career criminal.
    In 1838 the railway companies were required by law to carry mails and post as directed by the postmaster general. Mail in transit provided a very tempting target for thieves. Some came to specialise in this type of crime and often did so with boldness and elan. One famous case occurred in 1849 on the Great Western Railway at Bridgewater where both the up and down overnight Exeter mail trains were robbed by the same gang.
    The robbers, who were two fit and strong young men and needed to be, were in the carriage next to the van with mailbags on the up train. They opened the door of their compartment as the train was moving along rapidly, held on while clambering along the running board of their lurching carriage and then gained access to the mail van which was unattended. They concentrated on registered letters and other potentially valuable packets, which they stuffed into sacks they had brought along for precisely this purpose. When the train was slowing for its halt at Bristol, they dropped down to the track and made their way over a fence.
    The robbery was quickly discovered but these two bold robbers returned a few hours later and performed the same operation on the down train. However, while they had been hanging around on Temple Meads station they had excited the suspicion of another man waiting for the same train. He gave the authorities a description and the robbers were quickly apprehended. They had almost certainly been responsible for a number of other robberies on the Great Western Railway.
    The mails continued to be a tempting target for criminal activity right up to the loss of most rail-carried postal and mail traffic to air and the roads – itself, it could be said, a criminal waste of resources. Some of those who have robbed the mails have exercised great ingenuity. In the late 1960s one thief used to place himself in a large but light aluminium trunk. This desperado wore an oxygen mask in order to breathe and had himself delivered by accomplices to a busy station, hidden from sight in the trunk and signed for as a parcel. The trunk was then loaded into a train along with the mail bags.
    He would listen and when he thought the coast was clear he would open the trunk, seize a few likely looking mailbags, pull them inside the trunk with him and then travel on with the train to wherever the trunk was due to be unloaded. There his accomplices would of course meet the trunk and carry it away,opening it and examining the contents of the mail bags at their leisure. This criminal enterprise was successful for some time before he was caught, and it is thought that he had stolen something like £ 200,000 of valuables in this way.

    Tester, Agar and Burgess who carried out the Great South Eastern Train Robbery.
    Britain was shocked in 1855 by an extremely bold robbery on a moving train, the event quickly coming to be known as the ‘Great South Eastern Bullion Robbery’. This was planned by two men. Edward Agar, an expert in the field of locks and as such highly regarded in the criminal underworld, and his accomplice, William Pierce, whose main