Great Train Crimes: Murder and Robbery on the Railways (4 page)

Policing the railways

Crime occurs on trains because they bring people together for a certain length of time. Many of these people are unknown to one another. A man intent on theft or assault may enter a train and choose an isolated fellow passenger as a victim. In most of the period covered by this book, both were easy because trains did not have corridors nor were open plan. Instead, people entered one of the compartments which made up each carriage. They could then only alight through the door in which they had entered. This meant at a station at which the train stopped. True, doors were not automatically locked as they have been since the 1980s, but getting out between stations was very dangerous. Once in such a compartment, if a passenger was alone, they could then be at the mercy of anyone else who entered. Sometimes, two people might board a train who were known to each other, one of them having criminal intent, knowing that he now had his victim in a position in which he could deal with them without any outside interference. Finally the noise of the train could easily stifle screams or cries for help.

An American writing in the
Derby Mercury
in 1853 – before anyone had been murdered on a British train – wrote thus:

I am not a timid man, but I never enter an English railway carriage without having in my pocket a loaded revolver. How I am to know that my travelling companion may be a madman escaped from confinement, or a runaway criminal? And what protection have I against their assault, if it should please them?

Much crime which occurs on trains and on the railways is, on an individual basis, petty. Cumulatively it is not so. Ticket dodging is common, as is trespassing, stone throwing, obstacles on the line and vandalism. In 1959, there were 5,500 prosecutions for larceny and 36,160 offences of all types. In the year 2007–8 there were 13,623 cases of trespass and vandalism. In 2008, railway crime cost £260m and added 22p to the cost of each journey. Violent crime is also not uncommon, with 8,727 cases in 2003–4 and in these years there had been a rise in attacks on underground railway staff by 29 per cent on the previous year. Ticket dodging is not new. In 1902, a man went from Stafford to Willesden Junction, travelling first class. When asked for his ticket, he declared that he was an employee and so did not need one. This was found to be untrue and he was fined 40s (the fare was 20s 9d). As the magistrate said, ‘You travel like a king without paying a farthing’. Then there was also theft – £3,500 of gold was stolen from GWR trains in 1848–9 – and rarest of all, murder. David Stephenson in 1853, wrote, ‘Thieves are pilfering the goods from our wagons here to an impudent extent.’

What could deal with this menace, other than the common sense of the passengers and train staff? There were a plethora of police forces, whose jurisdictions overlapped. Most well known were the Metropolitan Police, founded in 1829 and who covered Middlesex and London from 1839. They would investigate serious crime committed on any trains in their jurisdiction. Outside London there were the county and borough police forces, of which there were very many until amalgamations in the twentieth century.

Perhaps most importantly of all, there were police forces employed by the railway companies themselves to combat crime occurring on their trains. It is possible that the first railway police predate the Metropolitan Police. There is reference to superintendents and constables as early as 1825 for the Stockton–Darlington Railway, but these men may only have been employed to check tickets, not to deter criminals. Certainly in the 1840s, GWR policemen had to give and receive signals on the line, direct people in and out of stations, protect company property, assist in case of accidents and prevent obstructions on the line. But as the century progressed, they created forces which did specifically combat crime, although some were quicker off the mark than others – the London, Brighton and South Coast line did not have a police force until 1900. Other early railway police forces included the London and Birmingham Railway one, with, in 1840, a force comprising of a superintendent, 10 inspectors and 90 constables. In 1841, there was one railway policeman for each mile and a half of GWR track. By 1920, the South East and Chatham railway police force numbered 181 officers.

Initially, as with the other police forces in the country, pay was low, hours long and discipline strict. The GWR policeman worked twelve-hour days for £1 per week in 1841. Sergeants received £1 2s and
inspectors 25s. Singing on duty was frowned on, drunkenness a sackable offence and attendance at church was also expected. However, as with working conditions generally, conditions improved throughout the century and a small annual leave entitlement was granted. By 1902 an eight-hour day was the norm, but a man had to work six days a week. They led the way in some innovations, such as using female officers and also dogs in police work, in the 1900s.

In 1923, with the amalgamation of the railway companies under the Railway Act, four forces were created, each under a chief of police. In 1949, the British Transport Commission was created out of these four forces, which also included canal and dock police. At this time there were 3,700 officers and it was the third largest police force in the country, after the Met and the Lancashire Constabulary. In charge was a chief constable and the country was divided into six geographical areas. Each area was headed by a chief of police and had a CID division. Each area was subdivided into divisions, headed by superintendents, and then into districts, headed by inspectors. With the establishment of a training centre at Tadworth in 1946 and a national headquarters at Park Royal, London in 1959, the force became increasingly professional. The London Transport Police were incorporated in 1958. In 1962 the force was called the British Transport Police. They were made up of uniformed and plain-clothed officers. In the 1980s, the canal and dock forces were separated from the railway police. In 2008, there were 2,835 transport police throughout the UK and 1,455 support officers and they were divided into seven geographical regions.

Some railway policemen were very efficient and dedicated to their duty indeed. In 1845, Sergeant Williams of the GWR was alerted by telegraph that John Tawell, a killer, was on a train from Slough to Paddington. He followed him from Paddington and then apprehended the man. In 1895 a railway policeman, DS Robert Kidd, was killed by thieves when trying to prevent theft from a railway siding in Wigan and a similar incident occurred in Glasgow in 1960, when Walter Macmillan was murdered. On the other hand, the railway police who attempted to investigate the killing of Miss Camp on a suburban train in 1897 managed by their muddling to obliterate any clues there might have been. As Stephenson wrote in 1853, about the railway police, ‘wonderful people these detectives. They don’t find out everything, though.’ We shall now investigate their struggle against assorted villainy.

‘it really is lamentable to reflect upon the amount of skill, dexterity,
perseverance and ability exercised upon the execution of a criminal
design, which this robbery displays.’

Some readers may have seen the film,
The First Great Train Robbery
(1978) starring Sean Connery (playing William Pierce), Lesley-Anne Down (playing one ‘Miriam ’, Pierce ’s mistress) and Donald Sutherland (playing Edward Agar). Michael Elphick plays James Burgess. These gentlemen criminals aim to steal gold designated for the Crimean War from a train travelling from London to Dover in 1855. They manage to make copies of the four keys held by the directors of the railway company. Although they are successful, one is arrested, but he makes his escape at the end of the film. So much for the fiction. Now for the facts.

William Pierce (born in 1816), described in 1857 as ‘a grocer and imperfectly educated ’, and Edward Agar (1817 –81) had known each other for some years. They appear to have been introduced by James Townsend Saward (born in 1799), a barrister, forger and master criminal. Pierce had worked for the South Eastern Railway Company as a ticket printer until about 1850, when he was dismissed for suspected theft. He had expensive tastes, but little money. Agar had been well educated and once worked legally for a Mr Davis in Chiswell Street; he also made money by speculation. Or so he said; he was notoriously vague on this point and the likelihood was that he was a professional criminal. Forgery seems probable. Pierce and Agar had, in about 1850, discussed the possibility of stealing a large shipment of gold from a railway company whilst it was in one of their trains. Agar later recalled, ‘but I had decided, because as I thought, that the thing was impracticable, it could not be done ’. Yet there had recently been a robbery from a train near Bristol, in which the thieves had escaped scot free. Agar then spent some time in America.

Agar returned in about 1853. The two met by chance in King Street, Covent Garden, in London, where Pierce was then employed as a clerk in Clipson ’s betting office. He lived in Walnut Tree Grove, Lambeth. Neither man had forgotten their previous discussion. Pierce recalled:

I said I believed it was impossible to do it unless an impression of the keys could be procured; and he then said he thought that he could get an impression if I would undertake the business. We had several meetings after that, at all of which the conversation turned upon the subject of getting impressions. He repeated that he thought he could get them; and I said that if he did I had no objection to undertake to complete the robbery.

It is worth stating both the prize which the criminals were in pursuit of and the difficulties which lay in their path. Trains of the South Eastern Railway Company ran from London Bridge to Folkestone and Dover and then to Paris. Sometimes they carried an immense amount of gold bullion. This could amount to over £10,000 – an incredible sum of money indeed. However, the gold was well protected. It was in locked chests and kept in the guard’s van, which was locked and, in any case, the public were not allowed admittance there. The chests were regularly checked by being weighed to see that all was as it should be. This was a case where brute force would not suffice. Dynamite had yet to be invented. Cunning, audacity and care would be needed if the criminals were to be successful.

Once Pierce had convinced Agar that he could make copies of the keys to the chests, Agar then asked who else would be involved. Pierce told him that they would be joined by William George Tester (born in 1830) and James Burgess (born in Ipswich in 1821). These men were both employed by the South Eastern Railway Company. Burgess was a guard (since May 1842 he had worked at London Bridge station). Tester was a more recent recruit – he was not working for the company in 1851, but was a station superintendent at Margate station in 1854. Both lived in Lewisham. Tester was a vain dandy and looked to any scheme for making money with enthusiasm. Pierce knew Burgess from his time working for the same railway company. Once the four had become acquainted with each other, the operation could begin. It was to be a well planned and long drawn out affair.

In the autumn of 1853, Agar went to meet Tester at Margate first of all. Agar had tea with him and stayed with him at his lodgings. On the next day, Agar was shown the safe in the station office, and the key to the cash box. Tester asked him if there would be any problem in his copying such a key. ‘Not the least ’, Agar replied. Tester added that it was unfortunate that Pierce had not mentioned such a scheme when he was employed at Folkestone, because then he had custody of the keys in his post of clerk there.

Agar then returned to London. Little of note happened until the following May. Then he and Pierce went to Folkestone to spy out the land. As Agar said, ‘the best thing would be to go to Folkestone, to take apartments there, watch the trains in and out, and so discover whether the keys to the bullion chest were there, and how they were to be got at ’. They hired an apartment consisting of two bedrooms and a sitting room. It was near to the railway station. Both men went under assumed names; with Agar being known as Adams. They stayed there for two weeks.

Each day they went to the harbour to await the arrival of the train from London and the boat that would take the train’s valuables to Boulogne. Agar recalled, ‘we carefully watched the iron safe to see whether it was unlocked, and what was done with the keys’. Yet their stay at Folkestone did not run entirely smoothly. Pierce was noticed by the police and Mr Hazel, inspector of the Folkestone police, was on his track. Agar thought that their constant presence in the town without any obvious reason to be there was seen as suspicious and that the police might have thought that Pierce was a pickpocket. Pierce managed to shake the police off his trail and then returned to London, whilst Agar stayed for a few more days before joining him.

Their stay in Folkestone had been very productive indeed. Agar recalled:

we had noticed generally all the circumstances connected with the arrival and departure of the bullion chest and upon one occasion we had seen it opened. It was placed on the platform, and a man named Sharman came and locked it with one key, which was attached by a loop to a label, from which another key was suspended, which I suspected to be the other key to be required for the safe. I watched Sharman deposit these keys in the cash box.

Agar also noticed that Sharman spent some of his leisure time playing billiards with his colleagues.

The next step was for Agar to be introduced to Thomas Sharman, who had been employed at Folkestone as a booking clerk since May 1849, by one of his colleagues, Tester. The idea was that Sharman could show Agar the crucial keys. In the late summer of 1854, Tester and Agar met in Folkestone ‘by accident’. Agar stayed at the Pavilion Hotel. One Sunday he saw Tester and Sharman at the railway station. They walked arm in arm to the harbour station and Agar was introduced to Sharman as planned. The three then went to the Pavilion Hotel for some refreshment.