Burgess was told the good news and promised Agar, ‘It is a good job, and I will do my best to assist you. ’ There were then a number of meetings between the three of them at The Marquis of Granby pub in New Cross. Agar made keys from the wax impressions, working at Pierce’s house in Lambeth. At this time, Agar started living with one Fanny Poland Kay, and their illegitimate newborn child. He had been introduced to her by Burgess in 1853 and she was to play an important part in the outcome of this account, though not in the planning or execution of the theft itself. Pierce moved to Crown Terrace, Hampstead Road, and Agar and his family went to rooms in Cambridge Villas, Shepherd’s Bush.
Agar now needed to test whether his keys actually could open the locks on the bullion chest. He arranged with Burgess to travel to Folkestone with him. They went down together at least seven times. At last Agar succeeded, with Burgess looking on as the guard in the train, in opening the bullion chest. Tester could see to it that Burgess would be the guard on the train, and indeed, it was later remarked upon that having him as guard on the same train for two months was highly irregular. But it was a risk that had to be run for not even Tester knew when a consignment of gold would be delivered.
The thieves calculated that two of them could carry a maximum of £12,000 worth of gold bullion. Pierce and Agar went to a shot tower by Hungerford Suspension Bridge. They bought a hundred weight of shot and took it to Agar ’s rooms. It was there placed in two checked carpet bags. Four courier bags were also made to order in a shop near Drury Lane and some shot placed in these. Agar said that his family did not see any of this activity. The courier bags were made of leather and tested to check that they would carry shot. Agar had them strengthened when he found they were inadequate at first. The carpet bags of shot were taken by cart to Pierce’s house. Tester had a black bag ready to take down to Redhill, so he could then carry some of the gold back to London after the theft and relieve his confederates of the burden.
Everything was then ready for the theft to take place. Unwittingly, they rehearsed the final stages several times. Pierce, Burgess and Tester were to meet at London Bridge station, once Burgess was on the train. Finally Agar and Pierce were to take the bags with them and travel by cab to St Thomas Street. Pierce was heavily disguised. Agar alighted and met Tester at the station. Tester told him that there was no gold on board the train.
It was on the sixth such trip that the theft could finally occur. It was 15 May 1855. Pierce and Agar were at a pub in Camden Town. They took a carriage to St Thomas Street. Agar approached the station and saw Burgess at the entrance, wiping his face. This was the signal that they had been waiting for: the bullion was on the train at last.
That night, three boxes containing gold were delivered by their owners to Messrs Chaplin & Co., a transporting firm. These boxes were the property of Messrs Abell & Co., Messrs Spielmann and Messrs Bult. The gold therein was worth in total at least £12,000. At Chaplin’s, the boxes were bound with iron hoops, sealed with wafers and were then weighed. On arrival at London Bridge station, they were put into two iron safes. John Chaplin arrived with them and later attested, ‘no one at the railway station would know that bullion was being sent over to Boulogne that night until he arrived there with it ’. Edgar Cox, the stationmaster’s clerk, received the three boxes of bullion from Chaplin. The boxes were chalked up and put outside the stationmaster’s office. He weighed them and John Bailey, a porter, put them into the iron safes and Mr Wetherall the stationmaster locked them.
Burgess returned to the station and the other two took the cab to the Dover railway office. En route, Tester was told that everything was alright. Agar then bought two first class return tickets to Dover for himself and Pierce.
Pierce entered a first class compartment alone. As for Agar, as he recalled: ‘I walked up and down the platform till the train started, and saw the carpet bags given to Burgess . . . Having watched for my opportunity, I at last jumped unobserved into Burgess’ van. ’ The train left London Bridge station at 8.30 pm. Burgess assigned other duties to John Kennedy, the under guard, so as not to disturb Agar. He crouched down in a corner and was hidden by Burgess. He could soon get to work. There were two iron safes in the van. He opened these and found inside them a number of wooden boxes. He used pliers and wooden wedges to open them. There were four gold bars in the first. Three were put into a carpet bag and one into Tester’s bag and given to Burgess. An appropriate amount of shot was put into the box.
By this time the train had pulled into Redhill station at 9.04 pm. Agar heard Tester speak, but did not see him and Burgess gave the bag to Tester. Once the train began moving again, Burgess was in the guard’s van with Agar. The latter opened another box and found a quantity of American gold coins there. Other boxes were opened and as much gold was removed as they felt they could carry. About £6,000 –£7,000 worth of gold could not be taken as it would have been too heavy. Then the boxes, weighted with lead shot, were all carefully resealed with wax and wafers which Agar had brought with him. They were returned to the safes and locked. Agar then recounted the next step, ‘The safes from which I took the gold were removed from the train by the railway company’s officers at Folkestone, and we went on with the train to Dover.’ It was now 10.30. Richard Hart, porter at Folkestone, took the safes to the harbour, along with Burgess, and delivered them onboard the boat.
Pierce and Agar alighted from the train and took the bags with gold in them with them. They went to the Dover Castle Hotel and had supper. It was now 11 pm. They planned to return to London by the 2 am train. Once they had returned to the railway station, an unexpected nuisance occurred. Agar recalled, ‘on a railway porter asking us for our carpet bags, I refused to give them to him, but the man persisted in his request, and almost forced the bags out of my hands’. The two men travelled back to London. Burgess was the guard on this train, too.
Once in London, at 4 am, they called for a cab to take them to Paddington station, but did not ask the porter at the railway station to order one for them. Before they arrived, they told the cab driver that they wished to go to Euston instead. They alighted there and after paying the fare, found another cab to take them to Pierce’s house. They then had the problem of converting the gold into cash. Some of it was melted down in a furnace constructed at Agar’s house; some of it was sold through intermediaries. One James Saward, a crooked barrister, was one such, and he earned a commission on each ounce of gold he sold. The two later moved to Kilburn. When the four split the initial proceeds; Pierce, Tester and Agar had £600 each and Burgess, £700.
Meanwhile, once the boat arrived at Boulogne, the three boxes were removed from the safes and weighed. Two boxes weighed less than they did in London; the other weighed a little more. The boxes were weighed again in Paris and were found to weigh the same as they had in Boulogne. Monsieur Everard, who was expecting the box sent from Abell’s, recalled, ‘I saw the box opened. It contained nothing but a quantity of shot and some shavings’. Extensive investigations revealed that the gold could not have been stolen after it left Folkestone. Suspicion was directed towards Burgess as he had been the guard on the train from London to Folkestone. Although he admitted that he sometimes allowed gentlemen to ride in the guard’s van, he said he had not done so on the night of the robbery. His length of service and the fact that he answered the questions put to him in a convincing manner were taken as proof of his innocence. A reward of £300 was offered by the railway company. It was not until the end of the year that the South Eastern Railway admitted responsibility: that the theft had taken place aboard one of its trains.
However, although the theft had been a great success from the view of the gang, matters began to unravel in the following months. In August 1855, Agar was arrested and found guilty of forging cheques. In October, he was sentenced to transportation to Australia for life, though he denied he was guilty. At least he could take consolation in the knowledge that Pierce had promised to use his share of the money to keep Fanny Kay and their son in a c
omfortable lifestyle, by giving her £1 a week. Pierce did so at first, and then in January 1856 decided not to and kept the money all for himself. After arguments, she went to the prison and railway authorities to tell what she knew. The police went to Agar’s rooms and found remains of the furnace and gold there.
Agar’s former confederates were arrested by the end of 1856; Tester was the last to be caught as he had subsequently taken a post in the Swedish Railways (ironically, his former employers had given him a glowing testimonial for this job) and was only taken when he returned to England to visit his family. Thus Pierce, Burgess and Tester found themselves at the bar of the Old Bailey as prisoners in January 1857. They were charged with robbing the train of its gold. The principal witness for the prosecution was, of course, their former confederate, Agar. However, there were over 30 witnesses who could help verify Agar’s story: cab drivers, railway officials, neighbours, buyers of gold, Fanny Kay, as well as various policemen. All three pleaded not guilty.
However, the weight of the evidence was overwhelming. The judge referred to Pierce thus, ‘A greater villain than you are, I believe, does not exist’. Pierce was sentenced to two years in gaol with hard labour, and three months of solitary confinement. The others were transported to Australia for fourteen years each. The disparity between sentences was because Burgess and Tester had been working for the South Eastern Railway Company when they had committed the crime and it was a greater offence to betray a confidence than otherwise. But for Pierce’s withholding money from Fanny, all would have been well for them. The price of greed was high indeed.
Burgess and Tester were put onboard the ship, The Edwin Fox, which arrived in western Australia on 21 October 1858. Burgess was given his ticket of leave on 21 December 1859; Tester on 14 July 1859. This meant that they were on probation. They could work anywhere in the district, but had to report periodically to a magistrate and could not leave the district without permission. Burgess was given a conditional pardon on 21 March 1862; Tester on 17 October 1861. They were freed of the restraints just mentioned, but could not return to England until their term was over. From 1861–3, Tester was clerk of works to a convict establishment and then left Australia on a ship called The York. Their ultimate fates are unknown.
Although all the recovered gold was returned to the railway company, about £1,500 belonging to Agar was put in a trust fund for Fanny and her child (who was never named in proceedings). Meanwhile, Agar was sent to Australia on The Nile, arriving before his former confederates, on 1 January 1858. On 17 September 1860 he was granted ticket of leave and given a conditional pardon on 13 September 1867. On 30 December 1869, he left for Colombo. Whilst in Australia, he was told, by a newly arrived convict, that his name was a legend in London’s criminal fraternity, to which he replied, ‘That means nothing, nothing at all.’ Agar died in exile in 1881. Saward, incidentally, was sentenced to be transported to Australia for forgery in 1857.
The reader will, if acquainted with the 1978 film, note various differences. Tester is excluded. Miriam, who helps her colleagues in the plot does not resemble Fanny Kay, who played no role in the actual crime or its plotting, nor does the film feature a baby. There are four keys to be taken in the film, not two. Perhaps most importantly, Pierce is arrested near the end of the film, and then triumphantly escapes at its close – a far cry from the initial success and then the squalid climax of reality. The film is really a romanticized version of reality, though as fiction it works splendidly, with acting, scenery, costumes, plot and soundtrack being of the first order.
The First Railway Murder, 1864
‘An event took place which excited an extraordinary sensation
of surprise and alarm in the public mind and continued
for several months.’
Perhaps it is a tribute to the law-abiding nature of mid-Victorian Britain that it was almost four decades after the first passenger-carrying train that a murder was committed on one of them. Or perhaps it was the conservative and unimaginative nature of the criminal classes.
Thomas Briggs appeared to be the embodiment of the prosperous middle-class, middle-aged Victorian; perhaps a character out of Dickens. He had been born in about 1795 in Cartmel, Lancashire, where he had attended the grammar school. His family were middle-class and Anglican. However, he had lived in London since he was 16, and in Hackney since the late 1830s. In London he began working at Sir John Lubcock’s bank. Briggs was hardworking, courteous and of sound judgement. In 1864, he was about 69 and was chief clerk (the highest post below that of partner) at Messrs Robarts & Co. of Lombard Street in the City of London (they had taken over the firm he previously worked for). At death, he was worth between £2,000 and £3,000. Although he had suffered a severe illness and went to Lancashire to recover, by 1864, he was in good health for a man of his age. Briggs was tall and bearded. He lived in a house on Clapton Square, near Hackney parish church. With him lived his wife, Margaret aged 70, and three of his adult children. Of his two sons, one was an insurance clerk and the other a ship broker in the City. They had two domestic servants: a cook and a housemaid. He was highly respected and had many friends. Yet his ultimate fate was a most unfortunate one.
The day began as any other did; like most salaried employees, he led a life of routine. He spent most of Saturday 9 July 1864 at work and at 3 pm left his office. He travelled to see his niece, who lived in Nelson Square, Peckham, arriving at 5 pm. He dined there and at 8.30 left. His niece and her husband, David Buchan, a woollen warehouseman, saw Briggs take an omnibus outside the Lord Nelson pub on the Old Kent Road. This was 15 minutes’ walk from their house. Briggs seemed well and was perfectly sober. He had told them of his route home – to the City, then to take a train from Fenchurch Street to Hackney station, arriving at 10 and so home. There were two or three other passengers on the omnibus, besides the conductor and driver, and its eventual destination was Islington. However, Briggs would have alighted at the corner of King William Street, the nearest stop to Fenchurch Street, and the journey should have taken about 20 minutes.
It was about 9.45 when Briggs arrived at Fenchurch Street station. Thomas Fishbourne, ticket collector there, knew Briggs as a regular traveller on the line, and saw him at this point. Briggs was alone and greeted Fishbourne before going up to the platform. Several other people came up after he did. On the platform was William Petrie, who was in charge of the electric telegraph at the station. He and Briggs exchanged greetings. About 15 others joined the train there, but Petrie did not see Briggs board. The train was five minutes late and did not depart until 9.50, stopping at Stepney, then Bow. Briggs entered the first class compartment in the carriage nearest to the engine.
It was at Bow that one Thomas Lee of Parkfield Villas, Hackney, apparently saw Briggs. Lee was standing on the platform and had a few words with his friend. He was surprised to see him out at such a late hour, but more importantly noted that there were two other men in the same compartment:
I observed two men in the carriage with him. Mr Briggs was sitting with his back to the engine, and appeared in his usual health and spirits. I saw by his side a dark, thin man, apparently tall, and opposite to him I observed a stoutish man, thick set with light whiskers. He had his hand in the loop of the carriage windows, and I noticed that his hand was unusually large.
Lee then went into another compartment (a second class one) and journeyed to Hackney, unaware that Briggs had been assaulted until two days later.
At just after 10 pm, at Hackney Wick, Semple Jones and Harry Verney, ironically enough clerks at the same bank as Mr Briggs, entered compartment no. 69, a first class compartment. It was covered in blood. Calling a guard, one Haines, they found that the cushions and windows were bloodstained and there was much blood on the floor. But there was no body. The only other evidence that somebody had been there were a hat and a stick, both found under the seat, and a black leather bag. The guard took charge of these and locked the compartment door. He telegraphed Mr Keeble, the stationmaster at Bo
w, news of this discovery and the two thought that a suicide had occurred, with the unfortunate individual throwing themselves out of the moving train, though this would hardly account for the bloodstained compartment. The train then proceeded to Camden.
Meanwhile, at about 10.15, an equally disturbing discovery was made by the line between Old Ford Bridge and Hackney Wick station. The driver and stoker of the train from Stratford were about to pass the railway bridge over Ducket’s canal, by the side of the Milford Arms Tavern and Victoria Park. At first, Alfred Eakins, the driver, thought that it was the body of a dog, but his colleague, John Brinckley, thought otherwise. The train had passed the object before they could stop. Taking a lamp, Brinckley alighted and walked back towards it.
He was right in his original supposition. This was the bloodstained body of a man. Brinckley called out to Eakins, who then went to the nearby pub to ask for assistance. Mr White, the landlord, and some of his customers, came with him and removed the body to the pub. In doing so, they nearly lost their lives by the arrival of a train coming in the opposite direction.
Once the body had been taken to the pub, and laid on a couch, it became clear that he had been the victim of a bloodthirsty assault and robbery. Although the hook of his watch chain was attached to his waistcoat, both chain and watch were not there. His head had been battered by a sharp instrument. White then sent for doctors and the police. Three surgeons arrived – Mr Alfred Brereton of Old Ford was the first to appear (at about 11 pm), followed by Mr Garman of Fairfield Road, Bow, and Mr Vincent Cooper of Coburn Road. He was taken upstairs and then the three examined the injured man, who was not, after all, quite dead, though he was insensible. There were a number of wounds to the head. Stimulants were applied to try and render him conscious, but to no avail.
Great Train Crimes: Murder and Robbery on the Railways Page 4
