The Great Train Robbery

by Michael Crichton

  "Who shall we have instead?" Agar said, looking around the station.

  "I was thinking of a skipper," Pierce said.

  "A skipper?" Agar said, in surprise.

  "Yes," Pierce said. "I think a skipper would do nicely. Do you happen to know of a bone skipper?"

  "I can find one. But what's the lurk, then?"

  "We'll pack him in a crate," Pierce said.

  Pierce then arranged for a packing crate to be built and delivered to his residence. Agar obtained, by his own accounting, "a very reliable skipper," and arrangements were made to send the crate to the railway station.

  The skipper, named Henson, was never found, nor was there much attempt to track him down; he was a very minor figure in the entire scheme, and by his very nature was somebody not worth bothering with. For the term "skipper" did not imply an occupation, but rather a way of life, and more specifically away of spending the night.

  During the mid-century, London's population was growing at the rate of 20 percent per decade. The number of people in the city was increasing by more than a thousand per day, and even with massive building programs and densely crowded slums, a sizable fraction of the population lacked both shelter and the means to pay for it. Such people spent their nights outdoors, wherever the police with the dreaded bull's-eye lanterns would leave them alone. The favorite places were the so-called "Dry-Arch Hotels," meaning the arches of railway bridges, but there were other haunts: ruined buildings, shop doorways, boiler rooms, omnibus depots, empty market stalls, under hedges, any place that provided a kip. "Skippers" were people who routinely sought another kind of shelter: barns and outhouses. At this time even rather elegant households frequently lacked indoor plumbing; the outhouse was a fixture among all classes, and it was increasingly found in public places as well. The skipper would wedge himself into these narrow confines and sleep away the night.

  At his trial, Agar spoke proudly of the way he had procured a reliable skipper. Most of the night people were muck-snipes or tramps, wholly down and out; skippers were a little more enterprising than most, but they were still at the bottom of the social order. And they were often soaks; no doubt their intoxication helped them tolerate their fragrant resting places.

  The reason Pierce wanted a skipper, of course, was obtain someone who could tolerate cramped quarters for many hours. The man Henson was reported to have found his shipping crate "ever so wide" as he was nailed into it.

  This crate was placed strategically within London Bridge Station. Through the slats, Henson was able to watch the behavior of the night guard. After the first night, the crate was hauled away; painted another color, and returned to the station again. This routine was followed three nights in succession. Then Henson reported his findings. None of the thieves was encouraged.

  "The jack's solid," he told Pierce. "Regular as this very clock." He held up the stopwatch Pierce had given him to time the activities. "Comes on at seven prompt, with his little paper bag of supper. Sits on the steps, always alert, never a snooze, greeting the crusher on his rounds."

  "What are the rounds?"

  "First crusher works to midnight, goes every eleven minutes round the station. Sometimes he goes twelve, and once or twice thirteen minutes, but regular, it's eleven for him. Second crusher works midnight to the dawn. He's a flummut crusher, keeps to no beat but goes this way and that, popping up here and there like a jack-in-a-box, with a wary eye in all directions. And he's got himself two barkers at his belt."

  "What about the jack who sits by the offce door?" Pierce said.

  "Solid, like I say, ream solid. Comes at seven, chats with the first crusher—he don't care for the second crusher, he cools him with a steady eye, he does. But the first crusher he likes, chats now and again with him, but never a stop in the crusher's rounds, just a little chat."

  "Does he ever leave his place?" Pierce said.

  "No," the skipper said. "He sits right there, and then he hears the bells of Saint Falsworth ringing the hour, and each time they ring he cocks his head and listens. Now at eleven o'clock, he opens his bag, and eats his tightener, always at the ringing of the clock. Now he eats for maybe ten, fifteen minutes, and he has a bottle of reeb"—Beer—"and then the crusher comes around again. Now the jack sits back, taking his ease, and he waits until the crusher comes once more. Now it's half past eleven or thereabouts. And then the crusher passes him by, and the jack goes to the loo."

  "Then he does leave his place," Pierce said.

  "Only for the pisser."

  "And how long is he gone?"

  "I was thinking you might want to know," Henson said, "so I clocked it proper. He's gone sixty-four seconds one night, and sixty-eight the next night, and sixty-four the third night. Always at the same time of the night, near about eleven-thirty. And he's back to his post when the guard makes the last round, quarter to midnight, and then the other crusher comes on to the beat."

  "He did this every night?"

  "Every night. It's the reeb does it. Reeb makes a man have a powerful urge."

  "Yes," Pierce said, "beer does have that effect. Now does he leave his post at any other time?"

  "Not to my eye."

  "And you never slept?"

  "What? When I'm sleeping here all the day through on your nice bed, here in your lodgings, and you ask if I kip the night away?"

  "You must tell me the truth," Pierce said, but without any great sense of urgency.

  (Agar later testified: "Pierce asks him the questions, see, but he shows no interest in the matter, he plays like a flimp or a dub buzzer, or a mutcher, no interest or importance, and this because he don't want the skipper to granny that a bone lay is afoot. Now the skipper should have done, we went to a lot of trouble on his account, and he could have put down on us to the miltonians, and for a pretty penny, too, but he hasn't the sense, otherwise why'd he be a skipper, eh?"

  (This statement put the court into an uproar. When His Lordship requested an explanation, Agar said with an expression of surprise that he had just explained it as best he could. It required several minutes of interrogation to make it clear that Agar meant that Pierce had pretended to be a "flimp or dub buzzer"—that is, a snatch-pickpocket or a low-grade thief, or a "mutcher," a man who rolled drunks—in order to deceive the skipper, so that the skipper would not comprehend that a good criminal plan was being worked out. Agar also said that the skipper should have figured it out for himself and "put down" on them—that is, squealed to the police—but he lacked the sense to do so. This was only one of several instances in which incomprehensible criminal slang halted courtroom proceedings.)

  "I swear, Mr. Pierce," the skipper said. "I swear I never slept a bit."

  "And the jack never left except that one time each night?"

  "Aye, and every night the same. He's regular as this jerry"—he held up his stopwatch—"that jack is."

  Pierce thanked the skipper, paid him a half-crown for his troubles, allowed himself to be whined and cajoled into paying an additional half-crown, and sent the man on his way. As the door closed on the skipper, Pierce told Barlow to "worry" the man; Barlow, nodded and left the house by another exit

  When Pierce returned to Agar, he said, "Well? Is it a coopered ken?"

  "Sixty-four seconds," Agar said, shaking his head. "That's not your kinchin lay"—not exactly robbing children.

  "I never said it was," Pierce said. "But you keep telling me you're the best screwsman in the country, and here's a fitting challenge for your talents: is it a coopered ken?"

  "Maybe," Agar said. "I got to practice the lay. And I need to cool it close up. Can we pay a visit?"

  "Certainly," Pierce said.

  CHAPTER 21

  An Audacious Act

  "Of recent weeks," wrote the Illustrated London News on December 21, 1854, "the incidence of bold and brutal street banditry has reached alarming proportions, particularly of an evening. It would appear that the faith Mr. Wilson placed in street gas lighting as a deterrent to blackguard
acts has been unjustified, for the villains are ever bolder, preying upon an unsuspecting populace with the utmost audacity. Only yesterday a constable, Peter Farrell, was lured into an alley, whereupon a band of common thugs fell upon him, beating him and taking all of his possessions and even his very uniform. Nor must we forget that just a fortnight past, Mr. Parkington, M.P., was viciously assaulted in an open, well-lighted place while walking from Parliament to his club. This epidemic of garrotting must receive the prompt attention of authorities in the near future."

  The article went on to describe the condition of Constable Farrell, who was "faring no better than could be expected." The policeman gave the story that he had been called by a well-dressed woman who was arguing with her cabdriver, "a surly thug of a fellow with a white scar across the forehead." When the policeman interceded in the dispute, the cabby fell on him, swearing and cursing and beating him with a neddy, or blackjack; and when the unfortunate policeman came to his senses, he discovered he had been stripped of his clothing.

  In 1854, many urban-dwelling Victorians were concerned over what was viewed as an upsurge in street crime. Later periodic "epidemics" of street violence finally culminated in a pedestrian panic during the years 1862 and 1863, and the passage of the "Garrotting Act" by Parliament. This legislation provided unusually stiff penalties for offenders, including flogging in installments—to allow the prisoners to recover before their next scheduled beating—and hanging. Indeed, more people were hanged in England in 1863 than in any year since 1838.

  Brutal street crime was the lowest form of underworld activity. Rampsmen and footpads were frequently despised by their fellow criminals, who abhorred crude lays and acts of violence. The usual method of footpadding called for a victim, preferably drunk, to be lured into a corner by an accomplice, preferably a woman, whereupon the footpad would "bear up" on the victim, beat him with a cudgel and rob him, leaving him, in the gutter. It was not an elegant way to make a living.

  The lurid details of a footpadder bearing up on his hapless quarry were the ordinary fare of news reporting. Apparently, no one ever stopped to think how strange the attack on Constable Farrell really was. In fact, it made very little sense. Then, as now, criminals tried wherever possible to avoid confrontations with the police. To "prop a crusher" was merely asking for an all-out manhunt through the rookeries until the culprits were apprehended, for the police took a special interest in attacks on their own kind.

  Nor was there any sensible reason to attack a policeman. He was more capable than most victims of defending himself, and he never carried much money; often he had no money at all.

  And, finally, there was absolutely no point in stripping a policeman. In those days, stripping was a common crime, usually the work of old women who lured children into alleys and then took all their clothing to sell at a secondhand shop. But you could not take the down off a crusher's dunnage; that is, you could not disguise a policeman's uniform so that it would have resale value. Secondhand shops were always under surveillance, and always accused of taking stolen goods; no "translator" would ever accept a police uniform. It was perhaps the only kind of clothing in all London that had no resale value at all.

  Thus the attack on Constable Farrell was not merely dangerous but pointless, and any thoughtful observer would have been led to ponder why it had occurred at all.

  CHAPTER 22

  The Prad Prig

  Sometime in late December, 1854, Pierce met a man named Andrew Taggert in the King's Arms publican house, off Regent Street. Taggert was by then nearly sixty, and a well-known character in the neighborhood. He had survived a long and varied career, which is worth briefly recounting, for he is one of the few participants in The Great Train Robbery whose background is known.

  Taggert was born around 1790 outside Liverpool, and came to London near the turn of the century with his unmarried mother, a prostitute. By the age of ten, he was employed in "the resurrection trade," the business of digging up fresh corpses from graveyards to sell to medical schools. He soon acquired a reputation for uncommon daring; it was said that he once transported a stiff through London streets in daylight, with the man propped up in his cart like a passenger.

  The Anatomy Act of 1838 ended the business in corpses, and Andrew Taggert shifted to the smasher's job of "ringing the changes"—disposing of counterfeit money. In this maneuver, a genuine coin would be offered to a shopkeeper for some purchase, and then the smasher would fumble in his purse, saying that he thought he had correct change, and take the original coin back. After a while, he would say, "No, I don't have it, after all," and hand over a counterfeit coin in place of the original. This was petty work, and Taggert soon tired of it. He moved on to a variety of con games, becoming a full-fledged magsman by the middle 1840s. He was apparently very successful in his work; he took a respectable flat in Camden Town, which was not a wholly respectable area. (Charles Dickens had lived there some fifteen years earlier, while his father was in prison.) Taggert also took a wife, one Mary Maxwell, a widow, and it is one of those minor ironies that the master magsman should himself be conned. Mary Maxwell was a coiner specializing in small silver coins. This bit-faker had served time in prison on several occasions, and knew something of the law, which her new husband apparently did not, for she had not married idly.

  A woman's legal position was already the subject of active attempts at reform; but at this time women did not have the right to vote, to own property, or to make wills, and the earnings of any married woman who was separated from her husband were still legally the property of her husband. Although the law treated women as near idiots and appeared overwhelmingly to favor men, there were some odd quirks, as Taggert discovered soon enough.

  In 1847, the police raided Mary Maxwell Taggert's coining operation, catching her red-handed in the midst of stamping out sixpence pieces. She greeted the raid with equanimity, announced pleasantly that she was married and told the police the whereabouts of her husband.

  By law, a husband was responsible for any criminal activities of his wife. It was assumed that such activity must be the result of the husband's planning and execution, in which the wife was a mere—and perhaps unwilling—participant.

  In July, 1847, Andrew Taggert was arrested and convicted of counterfeiting currency and sentenced to eight years in Bridewell Prison; Mary Maxwell was released without so much as a reprimand. She is said to have displayed "a roistering, bantering demeanour" in the courtroom at the time of her husband's sentencing.

  Taggert served three years, and was given a ticket-of-leave and allowed to depart. Afterward it was said the steel had gone out of him, a common consequence of a prison term; he no longer had the energy or the confidence to be a magsman, and turned to hoof-snafffing, or horse stealing. By 1854, he was a familiar face in the flash sporting pubs frequented by turfites; he was said to have been involved in the scandal of 1853 in which a four-year-old was passed off as a three-year-old in the Derby. No one was certain but, as a known prad prig, he was thought to have engineered the theft of the most famous prad of recent years: Silver Whistle, a three-year-old from Derbyshire.

  Pierce met him in the King's Arms with a most peculiar suggestion, and Taggert gulped his gin as he said, "You want to snaffle a what?"

  "A leopard," Pierce said.

  "Now, where's an honest man like me to find a leopard?" Taggert said.

  "I wouldn't know," Pierce said.

  "Never in my life," Taggert said, "would I know of any leopard, excepting the bestiaries here and there, which have all manner of beasts."

  "That's so," Pierce said calmly.

  "Is it to be christened?"

  Now this was a particularly difficult problem. Taggert was an expert christener—a man who could conceal the fact that goods were stolen. He could disguise the markings of a horse so that even its owner would not recognize it. But christening a leopard might be harder.

  "No," Pierce said. "I can take it as you have it."

  "Won't gull nobody."r />
  "It doesn't have to."

  "What's it for, then?"

  Pierce gave Taggert a particularly severe look and did not reply.

  "No harm in asking," Taggert said. "It's not every day a man gets asked to snaffle a leopard, so I ask why—no harm intended."

  "It is a present," Pierce said, "for a lady."

  "Ah, a lady."

  "On the Continent"

  "Ah, on the Continent"

  "In Paris."

  "Ah."

  Taggert looked him up and down. Pierce was well dressed. "You could buy one right enough," he said. "Cost you just as dear as buying from me."

  "I made you a business proposition."

  "So you did, and a proper one, too, but you didn't mention the joeys for me. You just mention you want a knapped leopard."

  "I'll pay you twenty guineas."

  "Cor, you'll pay me forty and count yourself lucky."

  "I'll pay you twenty-five and you'll count yourself lucky," Pierce said.

  Taggert looked unhappy. He twisted his gin glass in his hands. "All right, then," he said. "When's it to be?"

  "Never you mind," Pierce said. "You find the animal and set the lay, and you'll hear from me soon enough." And he dropped a gold guinea on the counter.

  Taggert picked it up, bit it, nodded, and touched his cap. "Good day to you, sir," he said.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Jolly Gaff

  The twentieth-century urban dweller's attitude of fear or indifference to a crime in progress would have astounded the Victorians. In those days, any person being robbed or mugged immediately raised a hue and cry, and the victim both expected and got an immediate response from law-abiding citizens around him, who joined in the fray with alacrity in an attempt to catch the bolting villain. Even ladies of breeding were known, upon occasion, to participate in a fracas with enthusiasm.