The Great Gold Robbery, 15th May 1855. Wikipedia. Public Domain.
Gold Bullion and the South Eastern Railway Company
The ambitious Great Gold Robbery (also known as the Great Train Robbery and the First Great Train Robbery) took place on May 15, 1855.
£12,000 (£1.2 million or almost $1.5 million today) was ingeniously stolen during a South Eastern Railway Company journey between London Bridge Station and the port of Folkstone. The gold was originally destined for Paris via Boulogne.
Thefts, murders and almost every petty crime were becoming commonplace on the British railways, so precautions were taken. Chaplin & Co. were the agents acting on behalf of three reputable gold merchants.
Mr. Chaplin observed as three locked boxes with iron bars to bolster them were placed into three iron safes that were then securely locked. Two different keys were required to open the safes and the keys were held by two trusted railway employees. Wax seals offered another visible guard against tampering.
Following the standard procedure, the cargo was weighed and then loaded into the guard's van of the S.E.R. train at London Bridge Station at approximately 7:40 p.m. on 15th May 1855. The safes were constantly guarded and seemed impregnable.
Preparations for the First Great Train Robbery
Edward Agar, James Burgess, William Pierce and William Tester were the men behind the Great Gold Robbery.
Burgess and Tester were employed by the South Eastern Railway Company; Pierce was a former employee of S.E.R.. Agar was already a well-known figure to law enforcement, and when he was approached, he leapt at the chance to steal a fortune.
Agar and Pierce planned a heist unlike any before. They observed what happened at each stage of that particular train's journey, where the rail and steamship employees worked, and when the offices and stations were unmanned.
The men spirited the safe keys away so that impressions could be taken and a copy set of keys was made ready for the appointed hour. A wax seal was produced to reseal the boxes so that they looked untouched at first glance.
William Tester ensured that on the day of the gold theft, Burgess was on guard duty on the train. He could pass and accept packages from "passengers" Tester, Agar and Pierce without suspicion.
London Bridge to Folkstone: £12,000 of Gold Stolen
At London Bridge Station, Burgess signalled from the train to a loitering Agar and he and Pierce purchased first class tickets for the train. They gave their luggage to Burgess.
Agar snuck into the guard's van and hid. Pierce took his seat on the train. Agar set to work liberating the gold almost immediately. He did minimal damage to the boxes and he applied new seals.
At Redhill Station, partway through the journey, a waiting William Tester collected some of the gold from Burgess. He sped back to London so that the S.E.R . staff would believe that he'd been in London at the time of the robbery.
At Folkstone, Agar and Pierce took their seats and they left the train at Dover where they collected the gold from Burgess.
The barrister and master criminal James Townshend Saward, aka "Jem the Penman," fenced some of the gold for the gang.
The Gold Theft Discovered (Finally)
At Folkstone, the safes were transferred from the guard's van to the Lord Steward Steamship ahead of the journey to Boulogne. When the safes arrived in France on 16th May, they were weighed again, a routine procedure. One of the safes was lighter than it had been in London. The other two were heavier.
Staggeringly, the French authorities did not raise the alarm. The safes continued to Paris, and as they weighed the same as they had in Boulogne, no one questioned the discrepancies.
Only when a clerk named Pierre F. Heznard opened one of the safes using only one key (the other lock hadn't been used, explained as a normal occurrence) was the truth revealed. He found that there were 13 ingots of gold and 16 bags of lead shot. Finally, the police were called and another safe was opened. This one contained lead shot and no gold.
The safes were not visibly damaged and the iron bars and seals were in their correct positions. How and when had the gold been switched for lead? In time-honoured tradition, the French blamed the English for allowing the crime and the English accused the French.
The man Agar is a man who is as bad, I dare say, as bad can be, but that he is a man of most extraordinary ability no person who heard him examined can for a moment deny. Something has been said of the romance connected with that man's character, but let those who fancy that there is anything great in it consider his fate.
— Judge Sir Samuel Martin about Edward Agar
Trial: Agar Turns "Queen's Evidence" for Prosecution
The authorities were still baffled by the Great Gold Robbery several months later. Luckily for them, unexpected good fortune came their way.
Edward Agar was implicated in a forgery and deception case. His trial for this took place on 22nd October 1855 and he was sentenced to transportation to Australia for life. Details of this case can be viewed here.
Agar asked Pierce to regularly send money to his gregarious and often drunk partner Fanny Kay and their baby daughter. Pierce failed to do this and a desperate woman called into Newgate Prison, London to beg for assistance from the governor.
Fanny Kay told the governor about the Great Gold Robbery, naming the culprits and giving him detailed information about how the gold was melted or passed to associates.
Edward Agar was questioned and he didn't contradict her. Instead, he turned witness for the prosecution and during a three-day trial in January 1857, he helped to convict Burgess, Pierce and Tester for the First Great Train Robbery. The jury delivered its verdict after approximately 10 minutes.
From the Old Bailey to Australia
Burgess and Tester were sentenced to transportation to Western Australia for 14 years; Pierce was given three months solitary confinement and two years hard labour in England. The full trial proceedings at the Old Bailey, London can be read here.
Saward's criminal network turned on him and in 1857 he too was transported to Australia with a life sentence. He was later called the real life Professor Moriarty (the criminal mastermind character from Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series).
In light of the robbery, the South Eastern Railway Company implemented the use of robust bullion vans to ensure that all valuable cargo arrived at its final destination.
It was not until 1963 that Britain's next legendary Great Train Robbery occurred in Buckinghamshire on the West Coast Main Line Railway.
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