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Cops on tracks of the robbers

Jun 28 2002

By Local Historian Brian Mcconnell, South London Press

ONE of the great secrets of the Great Train robbery nearly 40 years ago was that policemen solved the mystery largely with a south London pub and club trawl.

Few other people knew that the crime was dreamed up and organised in south London.

On the night of August 7/8, 1963, the robbers rigged the railway signals at Sears Crossing, Cheddington, Bucks, to stop the Glasgow to London overnight mail train, uncoupled the carriages and stole £2,631,784 in cash.

The money was being taken out of circulation and therefore virtually untraceable.

They then shared out the money 20 miles away at Letherslade Farm. But only £400,000 was ever recovered.

Two years earlier, while in prison on a different matter, Bruce Reynolds had discussed the idea of the robbery with fellow inmate Ronald Biggs of Brixton (more recently Australia, Brazil and now Belmarsh high- security prison in Woolwich).

When they began to look for recruits, most accomplished criminals shied from the idea.

The raid had to be re-planned on licensed premises south of the River Thames.

When it was all over, it seemed strange that some tour or travel company did not organise trips and drinks to show how it worked.

Try for a start the Walk-In Club in Lambeth Walk, where the great snatch was originally planned.

Frank Williams, who became a detective chief superintendent in the Flying Squad, had been stationed at Kennington and remembered a call to the club, which had been wrecked.

The damage was so severe it was put down to gang rivalry.

The club was run by two people unconnected with the robbery and Buster Edwards, who lived in Faunce Street, Kennington.

Buster arrived at the police station with his head in bandages, but said he was at a loss to understand the damage.

Thomas Wisbey, another of the robbers, used to drink in the Duke of Clarence in New Church Road, Camberwell, and the Newington Arms in King and Queen Street, Walworth.

Robert Welsh, another member of the gang, used to run the Crown, in Crown Street, Walworth.

Eventually, two separate criminal teams - one from Walworth and Bermondsey and the other from Sutton and Wimbledon - banded together to plan and carry out the robbery.

The raid on Letherslade Farm, where the money had been shared, was delayed for tactical reasons.

While police kept watch at the drinking haunts of the robbers, they were tipped that Welsh was meeting someone for a drink at London Bridge Station.

When he walked towards a car, police pounced.

Welsh, like several of the others, was sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment.

Some escaped, to Europe and the US. Biggs fled to Australia, then Brazil, and was later returned to prison in Britain.

But Mr Williams, in his memoirs No Fixed Address (W.H. Allen), demolishes the idea that there was a Mr Big. "There were too many generals," he said.

And Ronald Biggs, the master escaper, who was hired to buy a drink and enrol a driver at Waterloo Station who could handle the train, failed.

The man he introduced could not understand the controls.

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