by Jim Morris
As the journey progressed Mr Scammell started to feel more and more uncomfortable and he experienced a cramp.
When the firm were satisfied they had all the money they were likely to find, they hammered some nails into the outside door of the guard’s carriage to seal it up.
“I heard them nailing up the door. I couldn’t see them and I thought they were breaking open boxes. I thought at one time that they would throw me out when they had finished. The thieves made me comfortable. One of them even put a mailbag under my head.”
After they’d finished they calmly returned to a carriage – where they probably sat separately – for the rest of the journey. They could simply mingle with the rest of the passengers until the train pulled into Victoria at 3.25 pm. Their departure from the scene of the crime was straightforward: as the train arrived the robbers left the train and disappeared into the London crowds.
William Gosden was a porter at Victoria, and after a short while it occurred to him that after the train had emptied he hadn’t seen the guard. When he went looking he found the guard’s carriage door was jammed. Mr Gosden went through the passenger compartment into the guard’s carriage, where he found Mr Scammell half-buried under the ransacked mailbags. It took about fifteen minutes to fully free him as the homemade handcuffs he wore were held together by two bolts that needed a spanner to loosen them. The police described the handcuffs as “ingenious”.
The hunt for the firm was led by Superintendent Jesse Lawrence, who was in charge of the Southern Region railway police. He appealed for help from any passengers on the train who might have seen something or someone behaving suspiciously. “Even the smallest thing could be vital in tracking down the bandits,” he said.
Detectives started the task of interviewing ticket collectors who were on duty on platform six at Brighton station, from which the train left. It was reported that, based on the way the robbery was organised, police believed the firm had inside knowledge of railway staff methods.
*
One might be forgiven for thinking that the next raid was the work of another firm, but thieves will often change their methods if there is a need to. The train from Brighton to Victoria, as above, was a corridor train, but quite common still in the Southern Region in 1960s was the non-corridor type. The change in method brought the desired result and overpowering the guard wasn’t part of the plan. It would only be possible to use a confrontational approach when the train wasn’t about to stop at a station, a place where the alarm could quickly be raised. So the firm needed a way of distracting the guard and a method where his distraction would be certain.
The firm knew that the prize would be on that particular train. They also knew what rolling stock would be used on the train, and they had in mind the best place to pounce: they selected a stretch of track adjacent to Barnehurst station on the route from Dartford to Charing Cross. So, on Friday 26 August 1960, off they went – one perhaps in the front of the train; two or more in the rear-most compartment, nearest the guard’s carriage; and somewhere close to where they planned to carry out the raid a driver and a getaway car waited.
In the forward-most compartment of the train a couple of smoke bombs were set off as the communication cord was pulled and the train stopped short of the station. The guard, a forty-one-year-old man named Edward Post, investigated the emergency stop, and he saw smoke billowing from the front compartment. Mr Post ran quickly up the track, but he would have been looking out of the left, or near-side, of the train on the left-hand ‘up’ line. If the firm got out of the train on the other side and crossed the line then they would been concealed by the train between them and the guard on the track – being at the rear of the train, other passengers wouldn’t see them either. So they alighted from their carriage, walked the short distance to the guard’s carriage, climbed up and entered, stole the bags, and away they went, still on the ‘blind side’ of the train.
There is a bridge under the line about 300 metres to the east of the station, which in 1960 may not have had the mature trees and the fencing it has now, nor the double yellow lines on the road beneath! And the houses at the end of Eversley Road would have had the most unobtrusive view of the whole thing – someone thereabouts dialled 999 when they realised what it was they were witnessing! So the grey Austin A35 van in which the firm made their escape was noted and its registration number was written down for the police – it turned out that TLT 409 had been stolen, and it was found abandoned only a short distance away.
The initial response from the GPO was that a total of thirty-five registered packets had been stolen, but they were unaware of the value. However, the Flying Squad were involved and a Scotland Yard spokesman said that the cash, which had been sent from a Dartford factory to its London office, was to the value of £6,400. This was an early estimation; the firm were to discover that they had escaped with £9,400.
The raid had been timed down to the second.
The carriage in which the smoke bombs were set off, together with the guard’s carriage, was removed from the train for examination. But the train itself was a credit to British Rail as it was only twenty-five minutes late arriving at Charing Cross.
There can be no question that the firm had acted on information received.
*
It was less than four weeks later that the firm struck again, but this time there was a definite tie-in with a set of rigged signals, and again the modus operandi was changed.
At 9.28 pm on Tuesday 29 September 1960 a train pulled out of Victoria bound for Brighton. Among the passengers were three men said to be wearing plastic macs and with face masks concealed somewhere about their person. Meantime, the fourth member of the firm was just outside Brighton, ready to change a signal showing clear (green) to one showing danger (red).
At a pre-determined spot the three men would have left their seats and made their way towards the guard’s carriage towards the rear of the train. As they got to the carriage they would have donned their masks, before overpowering the guard and tying him up, complete with a gag. They could then riffle through the mailbags to find their prize.
The train slowed to prepare to stop at a red light, and the men knew they would be leaving the train then. The deceleration of the train would have been sharp and abrupt, and not the gentle glide one would associate with a scheduled stop at a station.
About five miles’ journey time from Brighton is Patcham Tunnel, where the red light had brought the train to a halt. The three men got off the train. The man rigging the signals would have been aware of this, so the signal was restored to its normal working order to show clear (green). The driver, none the wiser, would have pulled away to complete the journey. Meantime, the four men climbed the embankment and slipped through a hole in a gate where a car was said to have been parked. The next station is Preston Park, and when the guard wasn’t present to see the train off, the staff investigated and the robbery was discovered.
There were forty-five registered packets in the mail sacks and three of them contained £9,000 in notes. One report said the firm had brought “to a fine art” the “stop-grab-and-run” method from the western films of Jesse James. But the planning and cunning that went into these raids was clear.
To stop the train Roger placed a small strip of metal between two wires to effectively short-circuit the system; which would show up in the signal box as a fault in the system and the signals would automatically turn to danger (red). The normal procedure then would be that the driver who stopped at the red light would contact the signalman – on each signal gantry or post was a phone for this purpose. If there was a fault in the system then it would be highlighted when the driver reported the danger (red) signal because if the signalman had set the signal to clear (green) in anticipation of the train, yet the danger (red) signal showed then this highlighted the fault. The driver could then get verbal clearance to pass the red light and the signalman could report the fault. However, when the strip of metal was removed the proper circuit was restor
ed, and the lights changed back to clear (green). Until the matter was scrutinised, the train driver and signalman wouldn’t have had any inkling that something was wrong. So a firm member had a good knowledge of the signalling system, which pointed to it being the work of the same firm.
The gang mainly operated this system under the cover of darkness, otherwise Roger on the track and near the signal might attract attention but even then its possible a driver would think he was a ‘permanent way’ or maintenance man. In the event of the danger (red) light the driver would have to wait a couple of minutes before he contacted the signalman, and in this couple of minutes the firm would be off the train and the strip of metal removed so the signal lights would show clear (green). The driver would simply move the train on.
But information on postal movements was coming their way because they always seemed to have an idea about what they were looking for in the mail bags. To know the money was to travel on this particular train suggested some kind of tipoff, and possibly more. Piers Paul Read said that Roger Cordrey discussed things with a guard on one of the trains and was even, for the right price, able to look at mail on his train (but not steal it!). So in such incidences the guard was paid to let Roger ‘research’.
The obvious question was: did any of the passengers see three men making for the guard’s carriage at the same time? They may have sat separately until the train reached a certain point and then converged. Police followed up this line of enquiry and asked passengers the following night on the same service.
Forty-three-year old Mr Len Hooper was the guard on the train that night and he said he was taken completely by surprise:
“The gang leader was brandishing a cosh and wore a red mask over his face. He told me to keep quiet and I would not be hurt . . . I was thrown to the floor and my arms were tied to an iron ring on the side of the van. They also tied my legs. I didn’t get a good look at their faces because of their masks.”
There was a particular lock with a distinctive key on trains at the time and it was considered almost certain that the firm had got hold of a key. With this it would have been easy to get into the guard’s carriage.
*
The press were now escalating their interest in the raiders and they were making the front page of daily newspapers. In particular, the press were asking questions about the security arrangements on Southern Region trains. One headline ran: “A child could stop a Southern Region Train for a gang of thieves.”
What was more alarming was the apparent attitude of management; they were quoted as having said: “It is more practical to continue running the risk of trains being robbed than to put an extra guard on duty.” The comments were attributed to their fifty-seven-year-old traffic manager, Mr Percy White. He admitted with little prompting that no extra security measures had been adopted since (what was thought to be) the first raid was made.
The firm struck again at Merstham, Surrey, on Tuesday 29 November 1960, using the same method to rig the signals that they had used a couple months before at Patcham, near Brighton. Mr White explained that the signals were switched from green to red, and that actually it was not a complicated matter: “It is easy, a child could do it if he knew how.”
The train was stopped at Merstham and three mailbags were throw out onto the line. The guard, Mr Alfred Reynolds, who was sixty-two, had been overpowered and tied up. However, the haul wasn’t nearly as valuable as it had been on previous raids. And Scotland Yard had started to liaise with British Transport Police and the GPO Investigations Branch. They said the total value of the raid was likely to be near to £500.
It was thought that the three men who robbed the train had boarded at Haywards Heath; the train had originated at Ore, just east of Hastings, and had started its journey at 7.00 pm. On the line above Battle Bridge Lane, Merstham, were other men who waited at the signal. As the train carrying the right headcode approached, the signals were changed, bringing the train to a halt. The three men on the train jumped out and were met by the other men at the trackside. The whole entourage could then move towards a waiting car, and once the signal wiring was returned to what it should have been then the clear (green) was illuminated and the train recommenced its journey. The next scheduled stop for the train was at East Croydon, where the theft was discovered, but by that time the firm were well away.
Railway officials refused to give any details about how the lights could be changed at the trackside, but Mr White said:
“It is an easy matter for a man with only a slight knowledge of electricity. Any type of short-circuiting would throw the signals to danger (red) and the short-circuit removed would put the signal back to clear (green). What can we do? One can over insure and it wouldn’t be practical to place two guards on train’s carrying letter-mail.”
He tried to justify his comments, but one could perceive an attitude of resignation that the raids would continue.
“There are 7,000 passenger trains a day on the Southern Region and a high proportion carry letter-mail. We on the railways, are not told when that letter-mail includes registered packets. We are up against determined thieves. Whatever locks you devise, they find a way to open them. There just isn’t a foolproof plan.”
It would only be a matter of time before the guards, with a genuine fear for their safety and a genuine grievance, were to say they had taken enough. Mr White vindicated himself to some degree, and one couldn’t tell what secret arrangements had taken place away from the glare of the press.
“We have certain measures in hand and some decisions have already been taken. Naturally, we are not satisfied with our security system. It will be tightened up, but the whole scheme is a gradual process.”
The guards were not happy with the ‘gradual’ tightening up of security and they refused to take any mail on corridor trains.
By now the press had dubbed the London to Brighton Line the ‘Robbery Run’, and although there didn’t seem to be any real or direct danger to passengers, the guards were definitely feeling more and more anxious about their work. If a member of the train staff is anxious – and anxiety related to violence can be severe – then their performance is bound to suffer; if an employee’s performance is not at its best then anything in their sphere of responsibility will suffer. In the case of the guard on a train, one has to question the efficiency of a feature of the guard’s job that is central to his role: passenger safety. So in that sense there was a danger to passengers, but in the case of a raid and the guard being incapacitated then the danger to passengers becomes far more marked.
The guards had taken it up with their management and it had gone to a senior level. As discussed above, some unfortunate words were attributed to the traffic manager, Mr White. I don’t want to condemn Mr White or the management structure of the day, but if there was even a grain of truth to it then British Railways were placing more importance on the mail they carried than their staff’s safety. And there was an indirect threat to passenger safety.
The guards then, not surprisingly, took the matter up with their union – even though the prediction of another raid and the violence that might accompany it was almost certain. Therefore the uncertainty originated in the when and where questions. So after quite a few months and three definite raids on the same line they had to take action for themselves. The guards had a meeting and the word ‘revolt’ was used by the press, but that seems unreasonable. What they did was as described: they refused to carry mailbags on trains with corridors, as it was through the corridors that robbers could gain access to the guard’s carriage. Their request for more security had become a demand, and still they felt (and were) at risk.
The raid on the Hastings to Victoria service had been enacted on 29 November, and the guards’ ‘revolt’ was reported within a couple of days. The press quoted the ultimatum that BR management were given: “No mail on corridor trains to London until we are given adequate protection, otherwise we shall refuse to work the train’s.”
But it sounded as though man
agement supported wholly what the guards had decided to do. At Brighton at the time there were fifteen guards on the roster and a spokesman for BR said: “We had to accept the ban or there would have been no fast trains to London. Mail is being loaded only on to slow, stopping trains without corridors.”
A spokesman for the guards said: “We have been pressing for greater protection ever since the August raid. We want a couple of strong sliding bolts on the guard’s side of the door between the guard’s van and the corridor . . .” This seemed to be the least that could be expected because it was acknowledged that the door could still be broken down: “. . . but it would make a lot of noise and a guard would at least be warned in time to take emergency action.”
On that winter’s timetable there were sixteen non-stop trains a day from Brighton to London. All of these were generally made up of corridor trains and it was noted that some of the stopping trains were also made up of corridor stock. And for the guards it was the corridor issue that became prominent.
But the pattern of the robberies was clear – the firm would board the train, and when a particular point was reached they would get up and congregate, ready to enter the guard’s carriage. Then they would overpower and incapacitate the guard and look for the mail bags they knew were present. And the timing was perfect: just as they had riffled through the bags and got their prize the train would come to a standstill at a red light, and they’d jump down onto the track to make their escape. At the next stop, or indeed at the train’s destination the raid would be discovered: the guard would remain in his carriage until he was missed and someone went to search.
Part of the problem was that the guards went through their management, and in such a large organisation a decision to ‘allow’ their action would have to be made at a senior level. Most of the guards were members of the National Union of Railwaymen, who completely understood the guards’ views: “This is an off-the-cuff move by some guards, but the union is sympathetic towards their views. At the moment it is left to the individual guard to decide whether he will carry mail.”