The Great Train Robbery (4 page)

Thus it was only natural that foreign business concerns of all sorts made London their financial center, and the London banks thrived. Henry Fowler and his bank profited from the general economic trends, but their emphasis on foreign-currency transactions brought them additional business as well. Thus, when England and France had declared war on Russia two months previously, in March, 1854, the firm of Huddleston & Bradford was designated to arrange for the payment of British troops fighting the Crimean campaign. It was precisely such a consignment of gold for troop payments that had been the object of a recent attempted theft.

“A trivial endeavor,” Fowler declared, conscious he was speaking on behalf of the bank. The other men in the room, smoking cigars and drinking brandy, were substantial gentlemen who knew other substantial gentlemen. Mr. Fowler felt obliged to put down any suspicion of the bank’s inadequacy in the strongest possible terms. “Yes, indeed,” he said, “trivial and amateurish. There was not the slightest chance of success.”

“The villain expired?” asked Mr. Pierce, seated opposite him, puffing his cigar.

“Quite,” Mr. Fowler said. “The railway guard threw him from the train at a goodly speed. The shock must have killed him instantly.” And he added, “Poor devil.”

“Has he been identified?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so,” Fowler said. “The manner of his departure was such that his features were considerably—ah, disarrayed. At one time it was said he was named Jack Perkins, but one doesn’t know. The police have taken no great interest in the matter, as is, I think, only wise. The whole manner of the robbery speaks of the rankest amateurism. It could never have succeeded.”

“I suppose,” Pierce said, “that the bank must take considerable precautions.”

“My dear fellow,” Fowler said, “considerable precautions indeed! I assure you, one doesn’t transport twelve thousand pounds in bullion to France each month without the most extensive safeguards.”

“So the blackguard was after the Crimean payments?” asked another gentleman, Mr. Harrison Bendix. Bendix was a well-known opponent of the Crimean campaign, and Fowler had no wish to engage in political disputes at this late hour.

“Apparently so,” he said shortly, and was relieved when Pierce spoke again.

“We should all be curious to know the nature of your precautions,” he said. “Or is that a secret of the firm?”

“No secret at all,” Fowler said, taking the opportunity to withdraw his gold watch from the pocket of his waistcoat, flick open the cover, and glance at the dial. It was past eleven; he should retire; only the necessity to uphold the bank’s reputation kept him there. “In point of fact, the precautions are of my own devising. And if I may say so, I invite you to point out any weakness in the established plan.” He glanced from one face to the next as he talked.

“Each gold bullion shipment is loaded within the confines of the bank itself, which I hardly need mention is wholly impregnable. The bullion is placed in a number of ironbound strongboxes, which are then sealed. A sensible man might regard this as protection enough, but of course we go much further.” He paused to sip his brandy.

“Now, then. The sealed strongboxes are taken by armed guard to the railway station. The convoy follows no established route, nor any established timetable; it keeps to populous thoroughfares, and thus there is no chance that it may be waylaid on the road to the station. Never do we employ fewer than ten guards, all trusted
and longstanding servants of the firm, and all heavily armed.

“Now, then. At the station, the strongboxes are loaded into the luggage van of the Folkestone railway, where we place them into two of the latest Chubb safes.”

“Indeed, Chubb safes?” Pierce said, raising an eyebrow. Chubb manufactured the finest safes in the world, and was universally recognized for skill and workmanship.

“Nor are these the ordinary line of Chubb safes,” Fowler continued, “for they have been specially built to the bank’s specifications. Gentlemen, they are on all sides constructed of one-quarter-inch tempered steel, and the doors are hung with interior hinges which offer no external purchase for tampering. Why, the very weight of these safes is an impediment to theft, for they each weigh in excess of two hundred and fifty pounds.”

“Most impressive,” Pierce said.

“So much so,” Fowler said, “that one might in good conscience consider this to be adequate safeguard for the bullion shipment. And yet we have added still further refinements. Each of the safes is fitted with not one but two locks, requiring two keys.”

“Two keys? How ingenious.”

“Not only that,” Fowler said, “but each of the four keys—two to each safe—is individually protected. Two are stored in the railway office itself. A third is in the custody of the bank’s senior partner, Mr. Trent, whom some of you may know to be a most reliable gentleman. I confess I do not know precisely where Mr. Trent has sequestered his key. But I know of the fourth key, for I myself am entrusted with guarding it.”

“How extraordinary,” Pierce said. “A considerable responsibility, I should think.”

“I must admit I felt a certain need for invention in the
matter,” Fowler admitted, and then he lapsed into a dramatic pause.

It was Mr. Wyndham, a bit stiff with drink, who finally spoke up. “Well, damn it all, Henry, will you tell us where you have hidden your bloody key?”

Mr. Fowler took no offense, but smiled benignly. He was not a serious drinking man himself, and he viewed the foibles of those who overindulged with a certain modest satisfaction. “I keep it,” he said, “about my neck.” And he patted his starched shirt front with a flat hand. “I wear it at all times, even while bathing—indeed, even in my sleep. It is never off my person.” He smiled broadly. “So, gentlemen, you see that the crude attempt of a mere child from the dangerous classes can hardly be of concern to Huddleston & Bradford, for the little ruffian had no more chance of stealing that bullion than I have of—well, of flying to the moon.”

Here Mr. Fowler allowed himself a chuckle at the absurdity of it all. “Now, then,” he said, “can you discern any flaw in our arrangements?”

“None whatsoever,” said Mr. Bendix coldly.

But Mr. Pierce was warmer. “I must congratulate you, Henry,” he said. “It is really quite the most ingenious strategy I have ever heard for protecting a consignment of valuables.”

“I rather think so myself,” Mr. Fowler said.

Soon thereafter, Mr. Fowler took his leave, arising with the comment that if he were not soon home to his wife, she should think him dallying with a judy—“and I should hate to suffer the pains of chastisement without the antecedent reward.” His comment drew laughter from the assembled gentlemen; it was, he thought, just the right note on which to depart. Gentlemen wanted their bankers prudent but not prudish; it was a fine line.

“I shall see you out,” Pierce said, also rising.

England’s railways grew at such a phenomenal rate that the city of London was overwhelmed, and never managed to build a central station. Instead, each of the lines, built by private firms, ran their tracks as far into London as they could manage, and then erected a terminus. But in the mid-century this pattern was coming under attack. The dislocation of poor people, whose dwellings were demolished to make way for the incoming lines, was one argument; another focused on the inconvenience to travelers forced to cross London by coach to make connections from one station to another in order to continue their journey.

In 1846, Charles Pearson proposed, and drew plans for, an enormous Central Railway Terminus to be located at Ludgate Hill, but the idea was never adopted. Instead, after the construction of several stations—the most recent being Victoria Station and King’s Cross, in 1851—there was a moratorium on further construction because of the fury of public debate.

Eventually, the concept of a central London terminus was completely abandoned, and new outlying stations were built. When the last, Marylebone Station, was finished in 1899, London had fifteen railway terminals, more than twice that of any other major city in Europe; and the bewildering array of lines and schedules was apparently never mastered by any Londoner except Sherlock Holmes, who knew it all by heart.

The mid-century halt in construction left several of the new lines at a disadvantage, and one of these was the South Eastern Railway, which ran from London to the coastal town of Folkestone, some eighty miles away. The South Eastern had no access to central London until 1851, when the London Bridge Terminus was rebuilt.

Located on the south shore of the Thames River near its namesake, London Bridge was the oldest railway station in the city. It was originally constructed in 1836 by the London & Greenwich Railway. Never popular, the station was attacked as “inferior in design and conception” to such later stations as Paddington and King’s Cross. Yet when the station was rebuilt in 1851, the
Illustrated London News
recalled that the old station had been “remarkable for the neatness, artistic character, and reality of its façade. We regret, therefore, that this has disappeared, to make room, apparently, for one of less merit.”

This is precisely the kind of critical turnabout that has always frustrated and infuriated architects. No less a figure than Sir Christopher Wren, writing two hundred years earlier, complained that “the peoples of London may despise some eyesore until it is demolished, whereupon by magick the replacement is deemed inferior to the former edifice, now eulogized in high and glowing reference.”

Yet one must admit that the new London Bridge Terminus was most unsatisfactory. Victorians regarded the train stations as the “cathedrals of the age”; they expected them to blend the highest principles of aesthetics and technological achievement, and many stations fulfill that expectation with their high, arching, elegant glass vaults. But the new London Bridge Station was depressing in every way. An L-shaped two-story structure, it had a flat and utilitarian appearance, with a row of dreary shops under an arcade to the left, and the main
station straight ahead, unadorned except for a clock mounted on the roof. Most serious, its interior floor plan—the focus of most earlier criticism—remained wholly unaltered.

It was during the reconstruction of the station that the South Eastern Railway arranged to use the London Bridge Terminus as the starting point for its routes to the coast. This was done on a leasing arrangement; South Eastern leased tracks, platforms, and office space from the London & Greenwich line, whose owners were not disposed to give South Eastern any better facilities than necessary.

The traffic supervisor’s offices consisted of four rooms in a remote section of the terminus—two rooms for clerks, one storage area for valuable checked items, and a larger office for the supervisor himself. All the rooms had glass frontings. The whole suite was located on the second floor of the terminus and accessible only by an ironwork staircase leading up from the station platform. Anyone climbing or descending the stairs would be in plain view of the office workers, as well as all the passengers, porters, and guards on the platforms below.

The traffic supervisor was named McPherson. He was an elderly Scotsman who kept a close eye on his clerks, seeing to it that they did no daydreaming out the window. Thus no one in the office noticed when, in early July, 1854, two travelers took up a position on a bench on the platform, and remained there the entire day, frequently consulting their watches, as if impatient for their journey to begin. Nor did anyone notice when the same two gentlemen returned the following week, and again spent a day on the same bench, watching the activity in the station while they awaited their train, and frequently checking their pocketwatches.

In fact, Pierce and Agar were not employing pocketwatches, but rather stopwatches. Pierce had an elegant
one, a chronograph with two stopwatch faces, with a case of 18-karat gold. It was considered a marvel of the latest engineering, sold for racing and other purposes. But he held it cupped in his hand, and it attracted no notice.

After the second day of watching the routine of the office clerks, the changes of the railway guards, the arrival and departure of visitors to the office, and other matters of importance to them, Agar finally looked up the iron staircase to the office and announced, “It’s bloody murder. She’s too wide open. What’s your pogue up there, anyway?”

“Two keys.”

“What two keys is that?”

“Two keys I happen to want,” Pierce said.

Agar squinted up at the offices. If he was disappointed in Pierce’s answer he gave no indication. “Well,” he said, in a professional tone, “if it’s two bettys you want, I reckon they are in that storage room”—he nodded, not daring to point a finger—“just past the space for the clerks. You see the cupboard?”

Pierce nodded. Through the glass fronting, he could see all the office. In the storage area was a shallow, wall-mounted lime green cupboard. It looked like the sort of place keys might be stored. “I see it.”

“There’s my money, on that cupboard. Now you’ll cool she has a lock on her, but that will give us no great trouble. Cheap lock.”