The Great Train Robbery in 1963 is for many the most famous heist in British history. Robbers made off with £2.6 million in used banknotes from the Glasgow to London Royal Mail train. That’s the equivalent of around £40 million today. Real Crime with Mark Austin: Britain’s Biggest Heist, ITV 2010
The robbery that made British criminal history: it wasn’t just the amount that stung the public, the Queen’s train had been attacked carrying the Royal Mail from Glasgow to London. The Underworld: Robbery, BBC 1994
Of course I’d recognise the bastard. Robbery 1967 starring Stanley Baker & Joanna Pettet & James Booth & & Frank Finlay & Barry Foster & William Marlowe & Clinton Geryn & George Sewell & Glynn Edwards et al, director Peter Yates, mother with victim in arms
We’re got capital and half the investment. We all agreed to go ahead? ibid. Paul to gang
Three or four million pounds ... It’s a night mail train ... This is the big one. The biggest. ibid.
You start cheating, Paul, you end up thinking everyone else is cheating too. ibid. her to him
Don’t move for half an hour. ibid. gangsta to train guards
Money to burn, Dave? ibid. rozzer
I do borrow from banks. I mean that is my job. Buster 1988 starring Phil Collins & Julie Walters & Sheila Hancock & Larry Lamb & Stephanie Lawrence & Ellie Beaven & Ralph Brown & Christopher Ellison & Martin Jarvis & Anthony Quayle et al, director David Green, Buster
It’s unlucky working with another Firm. ibid. Buster
£1,000,000! Biggest Ever Mail Robbery. ibid. Daily Mirror front page
Right we’ll go. I’ll get Fairclough to send the dustman in to make sure this place is cleared up. ibid. Reynolds
This is a crime against the very structure of our society. ibid. Sir James
I want those bastards nailed to the floor. ibid. chief rozzer
You should never have brought us to this God-forsaken place. ibid. her to him
It ain’t the money, Bruce. I just want to go home. ibid. Buster
On August 8th 1963, 15 men robbed the Glasgow to London mail train of £2.5 million, worth £30 million today. 2 days later the press dubbed the crime The Great Train Robbery. Secret History: The Great Train Robbery, Channel 4 1999
Both robbers and police were anything but the stuff of legend. And how myth has obscured a catalogue of bungling, betrayal and corruption. ibid.
When it came to trains, the gang was not so clever. They made their first attempt to rob one on the London/Swindon line. It was a fiasco. ibid.
Leatherslade would turn into a disaster area. ibid.
The solicitor’s clerk Brian Field had not only failed to get the farm cleaned up, he’d left a paper trail which would lead the police back to him. ibid.
From the very beginning Tommy Butler [investigating rozzer] had seemed to know exactly who the Train Robbers were … Was his evidence all it should have been? ibid.
‘All the evidence that was found at the farm was manufactured.’ ibid. Reynolds
[Bill] Boal died after seven years in prison still protesting his innocence. ibid.
Foreman goes on to claim he did a similar deal for another robber. ibid.
KENT SECURITAS, 2006: ITV News TV - BBC News TV - Britain’s Biggest Heists TV - Real Crime with Mark Austin TV - Howard Sounes - Crimes that Shocked Britain TV - Heists: Britain’s Biggest Cash Grab TV -
Forget the Great Train Robbery. Forget the Northern Bank in Belfast. Britain’s biggest ever robbery took place in the early hours of this morning in Kent. ITV News at Ten
‘The worst night of my life’: a depot manager’s account of his terrifying ordeal. BBC News
A highly organised attack; the callous gang terrorised their victims for hours. Stealing a record £53 million they fled into the night. This is the dramatic story of the Securitas heist. Britain’s Biggest Heists s1e2: Securitas, Kent, Sky 2010
21st February 2006: the Securitas Depot in Kent, south-east England. Staff are part-way through their evening shifts sorting money ... Held against their will, the staff had no choice but to comply. ibid.
The depot manager, his wife and young child, had been kidnapped at gunpoint prior to the raid and forced to reveal confidential information. ibid.
With all this evidence only days into the inquiry detectives decided to visit some of their suspects. ibid.
Kent police ... capturing most of the main suspects and recovering nearly £23 million. ibid.
They disappeared into the night with half a ton of cash mostly in ten and twenty pound notes. Real Crime with Mark Austin: Britain’s Biggest Heist, ITV 2010
Medway House: the Securitas cash depot was used to sort and circulate cash around the country for the Bank of England. Money used to service cash-points and shops. ibid.
They fixed on this man: manager Colin Dixon, married with a child, he’d been with Securitas four years. ibid.
For the next hour the robbers went backwards and forwards filling their lorry with money using cages, holdalls and even a shopping trolley ... The robbers had filled the lorry with £53 million in new and used bank notes. They had to leave behind £154 million. ibid.
Within hours their carefully laid plans were about to unravel. ibid.
This Kent gang were a pretty hopeless bunch of amateur misfits, knuckleheads, bruisers. I mean these weren’t heavy-duty criminals ... Pretty thick a lot of them. Howard Sounes, author Heist
On the night of 21st February 2006 a gang of armed criminals stormed the Securitas Depot in Kent. Crimes that Shocked Britain
22nd February 2006: news of the greatest cash heist this country has ever seen hits the headlines. It was a daring raid netting the criminals a staggering £53 million. Heists s1e4: Britain’s Biggest Cash Grab, Channel 5 2017
They kidnapped and terrorised innocent people. ibid.
Security at the cash depot has only one real weakness – its staff. ibid.
The manager of a cash depot Colin Gibson has been kidnapped and is being forced to help a gang of criminals get inside a secure cash vault in Tonbridge Kent. ibid.
Inside this room is more than a quarter of a billion pounds in cash. The used notes are stored in cages, colour-coded according to value. ibid.
LIVERPOOL: Britain’s Underworld TV - Stephen French TV -
Showers was establishing himself as an armed robber. But he would go down in criminal history for a different reason ... By 1970 Showers was an armed robber with a growing sideline in Cannabis dealing. He was also an increasingly big figure in Toxteth and prepared to use violence to maintain his reputation ... By going to Africa and importing Cannabis direct he dramatically increased the supply of drugs. Britain’s Underworld: Liverpool, National Geographic 2010
Dock theft had a long history in Liverpool. In many ways it was the City’s signature crime. And it was a world away from cutting-edge bank jobs. ibid.
Charlie Seiga needed little encouragement. He began robbing the country houses of north Wales of their antiques. ibid.
Yet the hard drugs revolution on Merseyside would not come from Toxteth but the other side of the Mersey. And it caught everyone by surprise ... Career villain Charlie Seiga watched many of his peers dive headlong into the gold-rush. One man who seized the opportunity was Tommy Comerford. The so-called mastermind of the Water Street Bank Robbery. Comerford starting importing a whole range of drugs from heroin to LSD, and became the first British criminal to forge links with most of the world’s drugs regions. It made him a fortune, but Comerford still lived in a council flat. ibid.
Curtis Warren: Warren’s rise is one of the most remarkable in British criminal history. He first made the news aged 16 when he mugged a 78-year-old woman on the steps of Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral. 8 years later he was arrested in Switzerland trying to rob a shoe shop. By the early ’90s he had progressed to mid-level drug dealing. Mysteriously though Warren made a huge leap forwards. ibid.
I started to rob drug dealers. It’s called Taxation. Stephen French
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