Armed and Dangerous--This is the True Story of How I Carried Out Scotland's Biggest Bank Robbery

by James Crosbie

  Don and I had become very friendly with Ted, our landlord, and we began helping out with his business, which was light deliveries and private car hire. I used to go about with Ted on a contract he had to shift huge orchestral harps from one hall to another for classical concerts. It took the two of us to carry the harps and I was in and out of TV studios and concert halls all over London. I liked doing that job because I went into so many interesting places and met a lot of television actors. Ted rented or owned two large lock-up garages in Tamplin Mews, just off Cambridge Road, where he worked on his cars or garaged them if he had to. We had keys to these garages and his permission to come and go from them as we pleased. Because we had access to premises, Jack suggested that we go into the car business – stealing them, that is.

  I didn’t know much about cars, but Jack soon sorted that out. He got me behind the wheel of one of Ted’s hire cars and in a couple of days I could drive it. Well, I could start it up, engage gear and pull away all right. I always did have plenty of confidence. Jack had lived all his life in either Hammersmith or Paddington and his father, Fred, was an old face from the racetrack gangs and now ran a coffee stall outside Hammersmith tube station. As a result, Jack knew everyone worth knowing in our new line of business. Soon we were going out at night and lifting cars from around St John’s Wood and the surrounding areas.

  We would take the motor to his garage where Jack and Don would strip off all the parts that we had orders for. Doors, wings, interiors, seats, wheels, mechanical parts, anything that was needed by the dozens of crooked back-street car repair shops that Jack knew. After stripping the car we would either drive it, or tow it away if the engine had been removed, a fairish distance from Tamplin Mews and just dump it. I’ve driven or steered cars while sitting on a kitchen stool, cars without bonnets, boot-tops, doors or wings, sometimes even with odd wheels on. It was a good little business.

  A quiet spell hit us, so I decided to show off a bit and go back home in style. Poor old Cyril’s licence was used to hire a Morris Minor and after packing my bag I headed off for Glasgow. What transpired during my visit really did give my father cause to shake his head. He must have wondered what he had done, especially with him being so hard-working and good-living, to deserve a son like me.

  My visit started out as a great success. Here I was, up from the Big Smoke in my new car with plenty of money in my pockets. I bragged and told lies about my success in the motor trade – I could list makes and models and values like an expert. I had an avid audience of my contemporaries who had hardly moved from Springburn in their lives.

  However, the bubble was soon to burst and it really wasn’t entirely my fault. I had no plans for getting into anything crooked – it just happened. I don’t think I could have stopped the sequence of events even if I had wanted to.

  I was minding my own business and driving innocently up Balgrayhill Road on my way to show off again to Eileen and the rest of the McSherry family, none of whom had ever owned so much as a bicycle and certainly never knew anyone who owned a car. Next thing I know, I’m being frantically waved down by the driver of an overtaking car. I drew up and the other driver stopped and hurried back to speak to me.

  ‘Yes?’ I wondered what was wrong.

  ‘Your rear wheel is wobbling about,’ this bespectacled man informed me.

  I got out of the car to inspect the rear wheel and discovered that the metal hubcap was fitted crookedly, giving the appearance of a wobbly wheel. Maybe some kid had tried to steal it and got disturbed. I gave it a hard push and it clicked into place again.

  ‘That’s a nice car you’ve got,’ my Samaritan said, having a good walk round it. ‘Is it your own?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said importantly. ‘I’ve had it over six months now.’

  ‘Mine’s the same model,’ he said, pointing to his own car. ‘A bit older right enough and a two-door, but it’s a great little motor.’

  I agreed with him and made suitably admiring remarks about how well he had kept it. Then this guy says to me, ‘You wouldn’t fancy a swap, would you?’

  ‘Well…’ I began, getting my thoughts together. ‘Funnily enough, I was thinking about a two-door model. You see, I’m a commercial traveller and I’m nearly always carrying samples and stuff on my rear seat.’ I was ad-libbing like anything here. ‘Things are always falling out on the road when I open the doors. A two-door car would stop all that.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He was with me all the way. ‘A two-door model is what you really need.’ He looked at me again. ‘Would you fancy a swap then?’

  I gave it a bit of thought and decided to give him one more chance to get out of it. ‘Well, actually I would like a two-door model, but I can’t swap with you because I don’t carry the car’s logbook about with me; I’ve left it back home in Greenford.’ There! That should kill it off, I thought. But no, he came galloping on like Red Rum winning his third Grand National.

  ‘You could post the log book back to me, Mr?’

  ‘Chinnery,’ I told him. ‘Cyril Frederick Chinnery from Greenford.’ I held out my hand to his. You would have thought that a name like that from a guy like me would have put him off. But again, no! He went for it like a big salmon leaping for a juicy fly.

  ‘But you’ve got your driving licence on you, haven’t you, Cyril?’ He had a look of desperation on his face.

  ‘Sure,’ I assured him, struggling to hold back an urge to laugh at being called Cyril. I actually did smile. Jesus! Was he really going to do this to me?

  ‘I could take your details from that.’

  ‘Oh, c’mon,’ I told him. ‘I couldn’t just swap you. My car’s worth a good bit more than yours. It’s practically brand new!’

  ‘Of course, of course. But we could come to a cash arrangement, too.’

  I surrendered to fate. ‘How much would you go on top?’

  He went over the car again, giving it a good inspection and checking on the mileage. Finally we agreed on £70 on top of the swap and shook hands on it.

  I made arrangements to call at his house in Wallacewell Road later on that evening to settle the deal. ‘Don’t let me down,’ he said as he drove off with a cheerful parp-parp of his hooter, no doubt thinking about how well he had done.

  At about 7.30 pm, I duly turned up at his house and he gave me his logbook, his car and £70. I gave him Cyril’s name and address and my hired car and this idiot stood at the end of his drive with a big smile on his face waving goodbye to me. ‘Now don’t forget to post me the logbook.’ I caught his last words as I turned away from his house.

  Next day I sold the car for £440 and promptly hired another one. As I have said before, poor old Cyril. I left to drive back to London that same day and going through Abington I was surprised to be waved down by two policemen. Thinking that there must have been some sort of accident or blockage, I stopped. One of the cops leaned inside my car and removed the keys. They had been waiting for me and knew the car I was driving. The police station was just a few yards away and I was hustled inside and put in a cell to wait for an escort from Glasgow. I was really puzzled and wondered what had gone wrong.

  What had happened was this: the idiot who had insisted we swap cars had taken his ‘new car’ round to show his brother and explain how clever he had been. The brother, obviously not half as daft as him, listened to his tale and immediately phoned the police. They agreed it was suspicious and checked up on Cyril Frederick Chinnery by means of a phone call to Greenford police station. Back came the word that poor old Cyril’s house had been broken into six months previously and, along with everything else, his driving licence had been stolen. The Glasgow police were also informed that Cyril Frederick Chinnery’s licence had been used to hire about half-a-dozen cars in the last few months, none of which had been returned to the hire companies concerned.

  The scream was up. Next day, the Glasgow CID had checked the main hire companies in Glasgow; not so many then and sure enough Mr Chinnery had indeed hired another car. An alert w
as put out for this vehicle and it had been spotted passing through Hamilton on the London Road. A phone call to Abington and they were ready to intercept me. That’s what had happened. Simple, isn’t it?

  My escort from Glasgow arrived to take me back and I was handcuffed and put into the back seat of a CID car along with a huge detective. On the drive back, I gave it all I had with the chat, telling stories about London and putting myself over as a right silly bugger. My escort became quite friendly and, thinking that I was a harmless sort of guy, took the handcuffs off me.

  The entrance to the Glasgow Central police station is through a short tunnel, or pen, as we call them in Scotland. We were right inside the yard when I made my move. Still laughing at some joke I had just told, the detective in front got out and opened my door. I gave it a hard shove, knocking him out of the way and ran for the exit. I made it too. What I didn’t know, however, was that the very angry detective chasing me happened to be a champion runner. I might still have got away because I could run myself, but he was too close behind me when I whizzed up a short dead end. That was it. Needless to say, I got a good few thumps for that in the alley and was carried back to the police yard with my arms twisted right up my back, forcing me to point my toes like a ballet dancer in an effort to take the weight off my straining sockets. There was no laughing now at the amusing prisoner. I was sent up to the cells and flung on the floor to get a thorough going-over. I curled up, protecting my face and screaming blue murder.

  I’ll never forget the concerned look on the uniformed sergeant standing by the cell door. I could see he was upset, shaking his head from side to side and looking at me kneeling there. He took a couple of steps towards me and I thought to myself, Good, he’s going to stop them. It just shows how wrong you can be. The sergeant came right up to me and grabbed the hair on my head to lift my face up so he could get an unobstructed swing at it with his fist. He had seen that the detectives weren’t hurting me and his shaking head had only been a sign of exasperation.

  A last few thumps and I was left alone for several hours. After that I gave the usual interview and told the usual lies about just being given the licence when I hired the Morris. No, I’d never hired a car before that and so on and so on. I could say that safely because it had always been Jack who had hired the cars – he was older than me and looked it. Eventually I was locked up again and in the morning was remanded for a week in the Bar L. I knew what to expect this time and accepted it as well as I could. It was easier when you knew what was coming.

  One week later I was taken down to Brunswick Street Sheriff Court for a hearing. Before my case was called, I was interviewed again about all the other cars hired on Cyril Frederick’s licence. I denied all knowledge. I was asked about one of the hires being spotted in Preston near the scene of a break-in. I remembered it and I also remembered the car that had followed us out to the city boundary. We had recognised it as CID at the time, but had dismissed it from our minds when we had drawn clear of the city. It just shows you how they checked out old Cyril’s ‘hires’. I was told that, when I was finished in Glasgow, the Lancashire Police would be waiting to see me. Christ, I thought, not more problems.

  In the end I never appeared in court that day, much to everyone’s surprise, including my mother who was sitting in the public benches. There was an ante-room just off the courtroom, where those appearing before the sheriff were kept waiting until their case was called and off this ante-room there was a toilet in case anyone needed to go while they were waiting.

  I went to the toilet and saw that above the steel mesh covering the window was a space just big enough for me to squeeze through. I was prepared to smash my way out when much to my surprise I found that the window pulled down. I climbed through the space and landed on an outside ledge of the building one storey up. From there I hung on by my fingers and swung in to land on a broad window ledge below. I jumped to the pavement and took off up Brunswick Street like a rocket.

  By now, all sorts of cars were hooting and people on the pavement were raising all sorts of noise. I just kept running. The court building was in the city centre and in less than a minute I was running along Argyll Street, the main city thoroughfare. I tried not to run too desperately – I knew that would attract unwanted attention – so I just kept a good steady pace, trying to look as if I was in a hurry, but not as if I was trying to get away from something. It must have worked because I was soon running down Oswald Street and over the Clyde via the King George V Bridge into the south side of the city. I didn’t stop running until I reached Eileen McSherry’s auntie Molly’s house in Weir Street, off the Paisley Road West.

  Needless to say, Molly was surprised to see me in such a state and even more surprised when I told her that I had escaped from the Sheriff Court. She knew that I had been captured over the car business and had been on remand, but the fact that I had been arrested and then escaped didn’t bother Molly in the least. At that particular time, one of her sons, Barney, was on the run himself from approved school and Joe, another of her sons, was currently serving a sentence in Barlinnie. She looked upon my actions as a victory against the police and thought I had done really well. I was more than welcome to stay there until I could get away to London. Of course, I didn’t have a brown penny, having had all my cash and property taken off me by the police and Molly, bless her, hardly had a penny to her name. I wouldn’t have taken money from her anyway, even if she did have any. I was desperately in need of cash and right then I didn’t know where I was going to get it.

  That evening the papers came out with my escape featured on the front page: POLICE HUNT CAR CRAZY YOUTH was the headline in the Evening Times, along with a picture of the court building with an arrow indicating the toilet window and a trail of black-and-white marks showing my escape route. We all found it very exciting at Weir Street. Headlines! I was famous. But I was also skint.

  I resorted to the same old glazing routine and it went just as smoothly as before, only this time, because I needed extra cash, as well as emptying the till I also took two full cartons of cigarettes. A friend of Molly’s found me a buyer for the fags and suddenly I was solvent again.

  A new set of clothes from Burton’s at Govan Cross and I was ready to go. That night I took a bus through to Edinburgh and caught the train to London. I got into Bravington Road at about 10.00 am and was soon relating my story to a startled Don Tye. I was pretty amazed by it all myself, but the main thing was that I was out and ready to do some work again.

  The car business had dried up a little and we had been scouting about for an earner. We had found something that looked good to us, well, to Jack and me anyway. Don wasn’t too keen on it, but that didn’t matter because two could handle the job all right and that suited me. I didn’t like having anyone on a job who wasn’t strictly necessary. The job we fancied was a quick smash-and-grab, quite a common occurrence at that time.

  We had been wandering about one day and had cut through the little arcade at Victoria tube station. There was, and still is, a jeweller’s on one of the corners nearest the bus terminus. The window of this shop contained some very impressive rings at well over £1,000 each.

  We counted that four of the individually boxed diamond rings would come to about £5,000. We reckoned we would get about £1,500 for them, good money for us. There was a one-way service road between the two steps up to the arcade and the dividing wall of the bus terminus. Traffic on the service road was practically non-existent so there was no problem with getting the car close. It looked good to us and we decided to go ahead. Jack used a stolen licence to hire the car, a Vauxhall Velox, and a red house brick was tidily wrapped in newspaper. We were ready to go.

  When I think back on it now, it was all very suicidal. Certainly the location was good and certainly the stuff was there to be snatched, but there is a time and place for everything. If I were to do the same job again I’d say that a weekday morning at about nine-thirty would give an excellent chance of success. But twelve noon on a Saturda
y, in an arcade which contained a busy tube station entrance next to a bus terminus and a main-line railway station, with people pouring past in both directions was, in retrospect, not exactly the most propitious time and place for a smash-and-grab.

  Jack, as the more accomplished driver, stayed in the car for the getaway. I was left to throw the brick. I almost had to push people out of the way to make a bit of space. Finally I heaved the brick through the glass and made a grab for the rings. I got them too, but when I spun round to head for the car a half-circle of crouching pedestrians confronted me.

  I could see Jack sitting in the car staring at me and made a rush in his direction. At least half-a-dozen men leaped on top of me and that was that. I heard the squeal of tyres as Jack took off – well, he had no option. There was nothing he could do for me. I was frogmarched into the shop and held until the police arrived on the scene. From there I was taken to a police station where I was booked and had my property taken from me and locked in a cell to await an interview with the CID. I felt in a desperate mood as I looked round the white tiled cell. Jesus! What was I going to do?