The Great Train Robbery

by Andrew Cook

In October 1965 information was received by Chief Supt Butler that a man named Chiandano Vittorio had been living in a caravan in a camp at Antibes and that Ann Killoran and Mabel Hume were living in adjacent caravans. It was considered that Vittorio may well be Reynolds but inquiries revealed that this was not the case.

  On 24 May 1966, W.J. Edwards of the IB reported that, ‘Chief Supt Butler has good reason for thinking that Reynolds has been living in the South of France but that he may now have returned to this country.’20

  Of course, Reynolds was neither in the South of France nor in England, having flown to Mexico the previous year.

  While Biggs, Reynolds and Wilson remained on the run,21 Jimmy White was finally arrested on 21 April 196622 and Buster Edwards eventually gave himself up to DI Frank Williams on 19 September 1966 in a deal brokered between Williams and Freddie Foreman.23

  Their arrests were by no means the beginning of the end, so far as the train robbery story was concerned. In many ways, they were more the end of the beginning.

  Notes

  1. MEPO 2/10571 (still closed at time of writing).

  2. Ibid.

  3. Ibid.

  4. Ibid; when Harry Smith died in 2008, his death certificate recorded his occupation as a Property Consultant (retired); Record of Deaths, London Borough of Redbridge, Entry No 232, 16 October 2008.

  5. HO 287/1496 (opened 1995).

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. MEPO 2/10581, MEPO 2/11298 (closed until 2045 at time of writing).

  11. POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001; opened 2002).

  12. Ibid.

  13. Ibid.

  14. MEPO 2/11298 (closed until 2045 at time of writing).

  15. POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001; opened 2002).

  16. LO 2/244, MEPO 26/282. See Frederick Foreman, The Godfather of British Crime, p. 127 ff; Ronald Biggs, Ronnie Biggs: His Own Story, p. 108 ff. In his book Biggs refers to Alfred Gerrard and Frederick Foreman as ‘Raymond Macclesfield’ and ‘Kenny Lisle’.

  17. POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001; opened 2002).

  18. Ibid.

  19. Frank Williams, No Fixed Address, p. 21.

  20. POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001; opened 2002).

  21. All three were later to be returned to prison; Biggs gave himself up on 7 May 2001, Reynolds was arrested on 8 November 1968 and Wilson on 25 January 1968.

  22. POST 120/102, POST 120/103 (originally closed until 1996 & 1997; opened 1997 and 1998 respectively).

  23. POST 120/104 (originally closed until 1996; opened 1997). Frederick Foreman, The Godfather of British Crime, p. 131 ff; Frank Williams, No Fixed Address, p. 144 ff.

  14

  THE END OF THE BEGINNING

  The saga of the Great Train Robbery has continued unabated for the past five decades. Speculation centred on many of the unanswered aspects of the robbery has been hotly debated by a host of authors and TV documentaries.

  One of the principal sources of conjecture has been the identity of the ‘Irishman’ or the ‘Ulsterman’ who allegedly provided the inside information that enabled the robbery to be committed.

  There have been a number of views over the years. DCS Butler was always sceptical about the ‘insider’ theory. He believed his view was substantiated when, after Jimmy White’s arrest, he was closely questioned about the robbery and how it had been organised. Without betraying any names or identities, White spoke in some detail about the preparations, which appear in his arrest file. Butler placed particular emphasis on the following quote:

  I asked what kind of money could be expected and I was told that after the August Bank Holiday we could expect about £2,000,000 to be on the train, but in any event there would be someone in Glasgow to count the bags when the coach was being loaded and no move would be made unless there was a known large amount in the coach. Later on one of the men left the farm to go to a telephone. He returned with the news that the Scottish Night Mail Train was well and truly loaded and the spy in Glasgow had reported that lots of high value bags had been put aboard.1

  Butler’s view was that the ‘spy in Glasgow’ was not necessarily anyone working for the Post Office, and that the information supplied by this individual was all that was needed to launch the operation to hold up the train.

  Bearing in mind that it was supposedly Brian Field who had contact with the insider, the police and IB had hoped that Brian Field or John Wheater, who they saw as the weakest links, might eventually reveal further details in prison. However, once Brian Field’s sentence had been downgraded on appeal, he no longer saw any benefit in the possibility of talking and instead concentrated on his early release. Wheater, however, was a different kettle of fish. In 1966 he divulged that:

  I did get the impression that there were some other people involved who were not brought to trial and have not been named by the Police. And one thing I learned pointed back to well before the raid – to a link between the gang and somebody in Post Office security. This somebody made contact through an intermediary with one of the men who stood trial, and it was this man – one of my fellows in the dock – who gave me the information when I was discussing with him how he became involved. The intermediary - a relation, I think, of the Post Office security man – put up the proposition that large sums of money were being moved by train at various times, and that it was there for the taking so to speak. This made my fellow prisoner a lynch pin in the whole thing. I was never able to discover who the intermediary was. I was told that after the robbery money was passed to the intermediary for himself and for the Post Office man. Each was said to have received one full share of the total sum stolen and that would be between £140,000 and £150,000.2

  Percy Hoskins, the crime editor of the Daily Express, also later recalled that a certain senior Scotland Yard officer had called at his Park Lane apartment and over a drink divulged off-the-record that a senior Royal Mail officer was strongly suspected of being the man mentioned in Hoskins’s 20 April 1964 story speculating about the ‘inside man’. According to the information given to Hoskins:

  The man had joined Royal Mail in Belfast twenty or so years before, had worked his way up through the ranks and eventually moved to England after the war where he settled into a quiet middle class suburb in south London.3

  Hoskins’s informant had added that the man now held a key post in Royal Mail security, and had written down his name and address on the strict understanding that the brief background information he had given Hoskins would only ever be used in a story if the man in question were to be arrested. Hoskins knew that he had no legal grounds for a story of any kind, but his curiosity, if nothing else, had to be satisfied.

  One Wednesday a few weeks after his conversation with the Scotland Yard officer, Hoskins took the train to Beckenham Junction and walked a short distance to the ‘pleasant tree lined road of spacious semi-detached houses’ where the man lived with his wife and mother. It was the middle of the day and Hoskins (rightly) sensed that the man would be at work. When he knocked at the smart bay-windowed house, the wife opened the front door and Hoskins spoke to her for a few minutes on a pretext.

  This man certainly fitted the bill in every sense, but was he really the man who had, on several occasions, supplied top-grade information to a gang of criminals, albeit through an intermediary? He was apparently a popular and outwardly honest man who was spoken of most highly by his superiors and colleagues.

  One mystery surrounding Brian Field was eventually solved by Tommy Butler. While the appeal hearings were in progress he had received information suggesting that:

  ... the persons who deposited the bags and the cash at the spot were Brian Field and his father. We were informed that this action had been taken because (a) Wheater’s (and therefore Field’s) part in the affair was under active investigation, and (b) because Karen Field insisted upon its removal from her house, where Brian Field had taken it. Therefore,
at the Appeal Court, shortly after the conclusion of that part of the proceedings involving Brian Field, I saw Field senior and inferred in general terms that he might have something to impart to police concerning the money found in the woods. He declined to discuss the matter, but was patently fearful.4

  Six months later, Butler received further information to the effect that a visit to Brian Field’s father, Reginald Field, in the near future would probably lead to a full disclosure of what had happened. Butler therefore visited Reginald Field’s home at 141 Constance Road in Whitton, Middlesex on 9 February 1965 with DS Nevill. Apparently, after some hesitation, Field made a full written statement:

  I Reginald Arthur Field wish to make a statement. I want someone to write down what I say. I have been told that I need not say anything unless I wish to do so and that whatever I say may be given in evidence.

  I am the father of Brian Arthur Field who is at present serving sentence. I can’t be certain of the exact date but one day in August 1963 I came home from work sometime about 6.30 pm and went into my garage. There are two doors but I do not use a padlock on them. I keep the doors shut with a bolt. I don’t know exactly when it was but on the weekend before the Bank Holiday Monday my car was struck by another vehicle whilst I was stationary in the kerb. It was somewhere the other side of Guildford. There was a lot of damage to the car and I could not drive it away. It was towed to a local garage the name of which escapes me. The matter was reported to the police because my wife had to be taken to hospital as she had slight concussion. My car was a Hillman index No MP 4393. Because of this fact when I came home on the night I have mentioned there was no car in my garage. The garage is normally kept in a very tidy condition because I like to put my hands on anything I want.

  I went into the garage to get a piece of wood I had left there. The garage lies to the back of the house and there is a driveway to the street. On opening the door of the garage I saw on the floor at the back of the garage one case and three bags. There was one holdall, an embossed leather case, a brief case and a round leathery sort of hat box. I had not been into the garage for several days so I don’t how long they had been there. I naturally went and looked into them and found that they contained money. The money was done up in separate bundles tied with brown paper bands. I immediately realized that this must be money to do with the train robbery which was reported in the papers at that time. I had no idea how it came to be in my garage. I decided that the best thing to do was to get rid of it as soon as possible. As I had no car I had to give the matter a lot of thought because there was too much to carry. Eventually I thought of Gordon Neal who lives in Blandford Avenue and who had grown up with my son. I told him that I had found some money in my garage which I felt sure had come from the train robbery and asked if I could borrow his car to go and get rid of it. Gordon volunteered to drive the car for me. I put the money in the car and we drove out to Dorking where I threw the money out of the car and we continued our journey and came home. I feel sure that I dumped the money at about 11 pm on the night before it was found at a place I know to be Leaf Hill, Dorking. I got out of the car and threw the money into the woods. I want to get this off my chest as it has been playing on my mind for a long time and it has been making me ill. Now I have told you about it I wish to God I had done so before. I feel as though I can have a good night’s sleep now it is over and done with.

  I have read the above statement and I have been told that I can correct alter or add anything I wish. This statement true. I have made it of my own free will.

  (signed) R A Field5

  Butler and Nevill then sought out Gordon Neal who corroborated everything Reginald Field had said and made a statement as such. Butler’s conclusions, in light of the new disclosures, are outlined in a report to Commander Hatherill:

  The amount found leads one to strongly suspect that it is not the total share awarded to Brian Field for his participation in the offence. It therefore follows that someone diverted a portion of it prior to dumping that found in the wood. Although there is no evidence to prove it, there are firm grounds for believing that Brian Field accompanied his father and Neal to Dorking. His presence would have probably been insisted on by both.6

  When Brian Field was released from prison in 1967 he changed his name and identity and promptly disappeared without trace. A decade later he died in a motorway accident. The truth about the Ulsterman and Field’s other secrets died with him.7

  So far as the legacy of the robbery and the sentences handed down to those involved was concerned, it undoubtedly contributed to an upsurge in armed robbery during the following decade. The net result is probably best summed up by south London gangland boss Eddie Richardson:

  If they could be given thirty years for when they weren’t carrying guns, what was the point in not being armed? Guns reduced the risk of being caught, and if you did get caught, they couldn’t give you longer than thirty years. There was nothing to lose.8

  Notes

  1. POST 120/102 (originally closed until 1996; opened 1997).

  2. POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001, opened 2002); DPP 2/3735 (originally closed until 2045; redacted version opened 22/9/10).

  3. Percy Hoskins Papers.

  4. MEPO 2/10571 (still closed at time of writing).

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Brian Field changed his name by Deed Poll to Brian Mark Carlton. He died on 28 April 1979 (Register of Deaths 1979, Registration District of Hounslow, Entry No 232).

  8. Eddie Richardson, The Last Word (Headline, 2006), p. 108.

  Appendix 1

  JACK MILLS

  Sir, The sad death of Mr Mills, driver of the diesel in the Mail Train case, frees me from a promise I made to him some five years ago, of which the convicted men are fully aware. It also allows me to comment on the identity of the man who injured him.

  When I interviewed Mr Mills on, I think, the actual diesel used in the raid, I asked him whether it was true, as the robbers maintain, that his worst injuries resulted from a fall and not from the blow to the head. To this he replied with some hesitation, ‘if I tell you something, will you promise not to write it in your paper? They hit my scalp and it bled a lot but when I stumbled, I caught my head here’ – and he indicated the curved steel dashboard which runs under the driver’s window. ‘They say this was the bad injury.’

  I said: ‘Why did you not tell the court this and why did you not repeat what I believe you said early on to a reporter, that they treated you “like a gentleman”, which at least suggests that they had not meant so much violence? It would not have made any difference to their guilt but it might well have made a difference to their sentence. Why did you not tell the court the whole story?’

  He became very agitated and said: ‘Oh, please do not ever repeat this as I have been warned that my pension would be affected if this came out.’ Well, I did not betray his confidence during his lifetime, though the robbers have often asked me to, since it corroborates the fact that they had not intended serious violence – something which could not be said in court because of their plea; and I did not, in view of my husband’s involvement in their defence, think it proper to ask by whom the threat about his pension had been made.

  Nor can I say what was the medical view, other than what was given in evidence, of when his leukaemia developed. I did, however, offer him, through the then Public Relations Officer to Midland Region, a consultation with a leading neurologist and sufficient time in the National Hospital to ensure that everything possible had been done. This he refused, to my lasting regret. He was a brave and pleasant man and everyone is sad about his fate, including Parkhurst. But who struck the fatal blow? All those in the ‘know’ in the underworld (and certainly the convicted men themselves) maintain that it was a man who was never on trial but who slipped through the net. This they have never said openly during Mills’ lifetime, lest, if the man were charged, he might be recognised by the driver, who heard him speak. This, if true (and there
is reason to think it is), is surely the supreme irony of the thirty-year sentences.

  I am, Sir, yours sincerely

  PETA FORDHAM

  4 Paper Buildings, The Temple, EC41

  ‘Leukaemia with complications due to bronchial pneumonia was the cause of Jack Mills’ death. I am aware that Mr Mills sustained a head injury during the course of the train robbery in 1963. In my opinion, there is nothing to connect this incident with the cause of death.’2

  Appendix 2

  THE VEHICLES

  The three vehicles found abandoned at Leatherslade Farm were as follows:

  A new Land Rover bearing false index plates BMG 757A. It was light blue in colour but over-painted khaki. The vehicle was later identified as having been stolen from Oxenden Street, London, WC1 between 7.30 pm – 11 pm, 21st July 1963. The vehicle when stolen was fitted with a radio set. The radio set was still in position, attached to the dashboard of the vehicle when it was recovered.

  An ex-War Department Land Rover bearing index plates BMG 757A. This vehicle passed through the auction of ex-War Department Vehicles at Ruddington, Nottinghamshire, on 2nd July 1963, and was sold to a London motor dealer, trading in the name of Cross Country Vehicles. The Vehicle had been re-sprayed a deep bronze green [by] the purchaser. Cross Country Vehicles re-sell their vehicles to the public through the medium of advertisements in the Exchange and Mart. On 26 July, Cross Country Vehicles received a telephone call about the vehicle and as a result two men called at Cross Country Vehicles. One of them who gave the name Bentley agreed to purchase the Land Rover for £195. The vehicle was registered and allocated the number BMG 757A. On 1 August 1963, Bentley telephoned Cross Country Vehicles, was given the number, and called to collect the vehicle with the registration number plate on either 3 or 4 August 1963. He signed the duplicate receipt for the vehicle ‘F Wood pp C Bentley’. Bentley was later identified as James E White CRO 26113/55.