One of the most successful thefts in British History was the so-called “Great Train Robbery”.
On the 8th of August 1963, a gang of about 15 men held up the traveling post office train on route from Glasgow to London. Tampering with the signals at Sears Crossing, the robbers then took the uncoupled money train to Bridego Railway Bridge that Ledburn in Buckinghamshire.
There, they stole around £2.6 million, the equivalent of about 40 million in today’s money and over eight times the amount usually carried on the train due to a Scottish Bank holiday.
The gang had no guns. A fact which accounts for the response to them from the British public by some of the robbers where they gathered almost affectionately, but the crime was not really a victorious one. The co-driver David Whitby was thrown down the railway embankment and the driver Jack Mills was abducted before being hit over the head with an iron bar causing trauma headaches for the rest of his life.
An anonymous tip off led to the arrest and imprisonment of 13 members of the gang. The most famous, Ronnie Biggs escaped after 15 months and lived for many years in Australia and Brazil before returning home to England in 2001 at the age of 71, citing increasing ill health and mounting medical bills in Brazil. He was sent back to jail with 28 years his sentence remaining.
In July 2007, He was moved to Norwich Prison on compassionate grounds.
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