Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from House Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com to too and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bright, there's Jerry Uh.
Speaker 1: And you put all of us together with a couple
Speaker 1: of microphones, a crummy ikea lamb and uh you will,
Speaker 1: and a headful of nose juice, you get stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. That's right, stuff you should knows juice. Oh girl,
Speaker 1: how's it going, buddy? Besides the obvious under the weather
Speaker 1: and nests of you, I predict this is the last one. Great.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be back to good as new by the
Speaker 1: next time we record. Yeah, we're going to Vancouver and
Speaker 1: you'll get some of that good Canadian air air in
Speaker 1: your body, and the pine air it's healing. Yeah. Properties,
Speaker 1: I'll get pine and flannel and ocean like in my
Speaker 1: in my faith and and moose yeah, moose hair. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's so if you wal wadded all into a ball
Speaker 1: and sniff it, it takes care of everything. That's right.
Speaker 1: What the world are we talking about? I don't know. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're talking about trains, It's right. We're talking about a
Speaker 1: specific train, Chuck. We're talking about a specific train at
Speaker 1: a specific moment in place and time that all came
Speaker 1: together to become known as the Great Train Robbery. Right,
Speaker 1: did you know? Did you commission this article? I did not.
Speaker 1: Did you know about it already? Some? Or yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean I a little bit, but um not as like
Speaker 1: obviously as much. After I researched and I watched a
Speaker 1: couple of documentaries, and uh was looking for a great
Speaker 1: awesome movie. But I don't think there really is a
Speaker 1: great awesome movie about this yet, which is surprising. I
Speaker 1: think they did, like BBC did one, and I think
Speaker 1: Sean Connery did one that was loosely I think other
Speaker 1: things were loosely based, but like the Taking of Pelham one,
Speaker 1: two three, Yes, exactly, that's a good movie. Did you
Speaker 1: the original? Of course? Yeah? Did you watch The Tale
Speaker 1: of Two Thieves? Is that one of the documentaries you watched? No?
Speaker 1: I don't think that's out to the public yet unless
Speaker 1: I just haven't seen it. I think it's new this year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's two thousand fourteen. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to see it. But there are no shortage of YouTube
Speaker 1: BBC docks because they love it, and I learned a
Speaker 1: lot of new words watching them. Yeah, like um what
Speaker 1: oh like, um, instead of crooked, someone has bent, like
Speaker 1: a bent solicitor, I figured out was a crooked solicitor.
Speaker 1: And a cosh is a like a like a billy
Speaker 1: club and you can cash somebody like the train conductor
Speaker 1: was cosht. Yeah. Yeah, there were just a bunch of
Speaker 1: cool terms that I had to kind of figure out
Speaker 1: what they meant an American in my English. Yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: I had I heard the words great train and robbery together,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know anything about. I think there was
Speaker 1: another one, an older great train robbery from the hundreds.
Speaker 1: There's one in eighteen fifty five where a train traveling
Speaker 1: from London to Paris or vice versa had a bunch
Speaker 1: of gold bullion on it and it got hit. That
Speaker 1: was legendary. But apparently this was the biggest train highest
Speaker 1: since then, more than a hundred years later. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a big deal and it was sort of Jesse
Speaker 1: James style. That's why it became uh one of the
Speaker 1: crimes of the century. Um in England for sure. I
Speaker 1: mean it was huge in the press, and these guys
Speaker 1: that knocked off this train became these kind of weird
Speaker 1: working class heroes. Well, one of them became the symbol
Speaker 1: for the anti establishment, which one, uh what was his name? Um,
Speaker 1: the the the one who made off for years and
Speaker 1: years Yeah, he Um, he was on the lamb for
Speaker 1: like thirty years, so he was super famous. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: they knew where he was and they couldn't get to him,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about. But he, you know, became like
Speaker 1: the this folk hero of the anti establishment, saying vocals
Speaker 1: on lots of like punk records. Yeah. Yeah. I saw
Speaker 1: in both documentaries that had a bunch of interviews, like
Speaker 1: on the street interviews from the time, like with regular
Speaker 1: upstanding citizens like who side are you on? And a
Speaker 1: lot of them were like, well, I feel ashamed to
Speaker 1: admit this, but I kind of think these guys really
Speaker 1: took it to the cops on this one, and they
Speaker 1: thought they were ingenious and um even though the plan,
Speaker 1: as we'll get to really was pretty uncomplicated. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: wasn't nearly as clever as it was made out to be. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the plan. So there was this idea
Speaker 1: who had who had the idea, the original idea. I
Speaker 1: believe his last name was Fields. He was the guy
Speaker 1: who originally had the idea and approached several people criminals
Speaker 1: for partnership, and they all turned him down except for
Speaker 1: this a safe cracker by the name of Goody. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Goody had a friend who was His name was
Speaker 1: Bruce Reynolds and I guess he Um, he originally funded
Speaker 1: the whole thing. Yeah. Well, they were in a gang
Speaker 1: called the Bowler Hat Gang in London. No, right, I
Speaker 1: don't think we've said this. We've made reference to like
Speaker 1: the Wild West and train robberts and everything. This is
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, Yeah, like the early nineteen sixties that
Speaker 1: this is going on. Yeah, and the Bowler Hat Gang
Speaker 1: was Um, they dressed in bowler hats and suits and
Speaker 1: they had done some crimes and they were mainly career
Speaker 1: criminals and they actually even uh, they had to press
Speaker 1: his attention and they actually tried to rob a train
Speaker 1: at first, but it didn't work so well and they
Speaker 1: got away, and but that they had sort of a
Speaker 1: not a trial room, but they legitimately tried to knock
Speaker 1: off another train. So is that when they realized that
Speaker 1: they needed to expand their rank and file. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: realized that we don't know trains and we don't know
Speaker 1: how to stop them, So we need to get some
Speaker 1: train guys, right, So the Bowler Coast Gang, who is
Speaker 1: guests led by Bruce Reynolds, right yeah, Bowler Hat the
Speaker 1: Bowler Hat Gang they got with the South Coast Gang
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, the South Coast Raiders. So they and
Speaker 1: this is I mean, those are some great gang names,
Speaker 1: by the way, but the Bowler Hat Gang and the
Speaker 1: South Coast Raiders, who were led by a dude named
Speaker 1: Buster Edwards, right yeah, and Tom Wisby he was one
Speaker 1: of the main guys. Whitney. Sorry. So those guys all
Speaker 1: got together and they said, we got this great idea.
Speaker 1: We need your people together to come help us. We're
Speaker 1: gonna rob a train. And they're not just any train.
Speaker 1: There was one specific train that this gang targeted, and
Speaker 1: for good reason. It was called the Up Special. And
Speaker 1: the Up Special had been running since the thirties between Glasgow,
Speaker 1: Scotland and London, right and uh. It would run every
Speaker 1: night and it was basically like a mail sorting facility
Speaker 1: on wheels like it was pretty clever. They thought, well,
Speaker 1: we'll take all the mail from Glasgow that's going to
Speaker 1: London and we'll sort it along the way. So there
Speaker 1: was twelve cars in the Glasgow Special or the up
Speaker 1: Special UM and a diesel engine. So it's a pretty
Speaker 1: simple train. Uh. And it didn't run for years and
Speaker 1: years without incident, for for like a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: almost a hundred and fifty years. Yeah. And and and it
Speaker 1: wasn't loaded with guards and cops. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: a bunch of postmen basically, which is a really it's
Speaker 1: really weird then that the banks would trust their money
Speaker 1: that we're moving from Glasgow to London to this postal
Speaker 1: train that we had like no security, no armed guards,
Speaker 1: no no alarms until the early sixties, um on the
Speaker 1: train cars themselves. But yet every night the banks would
Speaker 1: empty their um their accounts into this train and say,
Speaker 1: good luck, get into London. Like here's a bunch of
Speaker 1: huge sacks of money. We're gonna put it on the
Speaker 1: train and you're going to sort it along the way.
Speaker 1: They had an inside man who and this is one
Speaker 1: of those weird stuff you should know things, you know,
Speaker 1: how there's all these weird correlations in the news. I
Speaker 1: picked out this article two days ago, and two days
Speaker 1: ago it was announced who the identity of the inside
Speaker 1: man was. Yeah, the last great mystery of this thing
Speaker 1: from the sixties. Yeah, was just unraveled like two days ago.
Speaker 1: And I didn't even know it at the time. I
Speaker 1: found out afterwards. But the code name was ulster Man,
Speaker 1: and it was always believed to be someone on the
Speaker 1: inside of the of the train and post industry to
Speaker 1: give him information like you know, the train is superloaded
Speaker 1: on this particular night because of a bank holiday. And
Speaker 1: uh he was named by Gordon Goody as Patrick McKenna. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the documentary A Tale of Two Thieves, they hand
Speaker 1: a picture of Patrick McKenna too. Goody and says that
Speaker 1: Ulsterman and apparently he like kind of like gets visibly
Speaker 1: uncomfortable because he's kept this guy's identity secret. He was
Speaker 1: the last person alive for fifty years to to know
Speaker 1: who this person was. There were two other people who knew.
Speaker 1: They both died before good Patrick McKenna died years back,
Speaker 1: and there was just this one man who swore he
Speaker 1: would take the secret whose grave and he he named
Speaker 1: them he had fingered him. These guys were really good
Speaker 1: at keeping secrets over the years. They wore bowler hats
Speaker 1: for goodness thing. Uh So McKenna's family was super surprised
Speaker 1: to hear all this. Police never suspected him, and um,
Speaker 1: they basically think that this guy felt bad afterward and
Speaker 1: never even spent the money and gave it to the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church like slowly over the years his cut is
Speaker 1: what the family is saying. But um, it sounds like
Speaker 1: an ulsterman kind of thing to do. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: he's a good guy. Well before he had his change
Speaker 1: of heart, he was the inside man that helped the
Speaker 1: gang figure this out. Yeah, he actually recommended change the
Speaker 1: day to get a bigger take and it was then
Speaker 1: it worked. Can you can you explain this to me?
Speaker 1: So a bank holiday and it's the same thing here
Speaker 1: in the US. It's like a like a day the
Speaker 1: banks are closed. They have official bank holidays. There's a
Speaker 1: banking Act in the UK from the nineteenth century that
Speaker 1: designated certain days as bank holidays. Um, what I don't
Speaker 1: understand is why is there so much more money the
Speaker 1: day after bank holiday. It's like everybody waited to do
Speaker 1: their banking business that they would have done on Monday
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, Like there's so many more people, are so
Speaker 1: many more transactions that didn't get to be done on
Speaker 1: that Monday that were carried out on the Tuesday. That
Speaker 1: that that's why there's so much more money. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's that the because of the holiday, they didn't
Speaker 1: uh do their deposits and and like make the money
Speaker 1: leave the bank like they normally would, so it was compounded.
Speaker 1: I guess. So that is like double the amount of
Speaker 1: money as usual because they didn't do their drop on
Speaker 1: the holiday or something. Yeah, but they didn't conduct any
Speaker 1: business on the holiday, so there wouldn't have been more
Speaker 1: money to accumulate than usual, you know what I'm saying. Well,
Speaker 1: if it came after a weekend, though, maybe it was
Speaker 1: like all of that weekend's deposits had gathered up. I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's a good question, Okay. The point is
Speaker 1: is that a lot more money than usual, a lot
Speaker 1: more usually this um. This train car, the Up Special,
Speaker 1: carried about three hundred thousand pounds UM between Glasgow and
Speaker 1: London each each night. On this particular night, the night
Speaker 1: of August eighth, nineteen sixty three, which was Thursday early
Speaker 1: wee hours of a Thursday, UM, it was carrying something
Speaker 1: like two point six million pounds, which today in dollars
Speaker 1: would be worth about fifty million. I think it's I
Speaker 1: looked it up and it was like doubled that million. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're going from nineteen and from pounds to dollars,
Speaker 1: I might be off, but I got sixty nine million
Speaker 1: pounds today or a hundred and eleven million dollars US,
Speaker 1: let's kill with that. That's way better either way. Two
Speaker 1: point six million pounds was a ton of money for
Speaker 1: a high speck. Then it was like really really a
Speaker 1: lot of dough even splitting it among fifteen guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they didn't even necessarily split it evenly. There were
Speaker 1: the core gang who were carrying this thing out and
Speaker 1: they all got even split. But they're also accomplices. In
Speaker 1: addition to Ulsterman, there's Mr One, Mr Two, and Mr Three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and those are the their names. So because they were
Speaker 1: never brought to justice, there were three that just got
Speaker 1: away with it even though they knew who they were. Supposedly,
Speaker 1: they didn't have evidence to go pick them up. So
Speaker 1: like the identities of the three guys that got away,
Speaker 1: they they think they knew who they were the whole time.
Speaker 1: Really can, I mean one of them is named John Weeder,
Speaker 1: he got away. I'm not sure. Was he one of
Speaker 1: the one, two or three he was, Yeah, he was
Speaker 1: the one who got the safe house for the gang. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well he worked with Fields to get the safe house.
Speaker 1: Uh well, let's let's back up here. Okay, we're so excited,
Speaker 1: we're getting happen. So he mentioned that they recruited another
Speaker 1: gang that knew how to work with trains, knew how
Speaker 1: to stop trains, and um, what they did was they
Speaker 1: brought this guy on board who had a this elderly
Speaker 1: man who was a train driver. His name was Peter,
Speaker 1: and Peter's job once they stopped the train was to
Speaker 1: get it to where the drop point the exchange point
Speaker 1: was in case, you know, because the train stops at
Speaker 1: the red light, which they very awkwardly wired the red
Speaker 1: light to turn on and they just covered the green
Speaker 1: light with gloves. But it worked. They stopped the train
Speaker 1: and still needed to get it down the track to
Speaker 1: the exchange point. And this old man gets on board
Speaker 1: and he's like, I don't know how to undo this
Speaker 1: new handbrake. So he was useless. And so the guy
Speaker 1: Bigs who became this criminal legend for evading the law
Speaker 1: for so many years. Apparently his only job was to
Speaker 1: find somebody who could drive the train, and he screwed
Speaker 1: it up. So the guy who was supposed to drive
Speaker 1: the train got thrown off the train, and they got
Speaker 1: the original train engineer, the one whose job it was
Speaker 1: to actually drive the train under normal circumstances, and made
Speaker 1: him drive another mile and a half to this bridge. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was Jack Mills. And this is a very
Speaker 1: important detail. He was, like you said, the conductor and
Speaker 1: two guys jumped on the train at the very front
Speaker 1: there and uh coshed him, which is smacked him on
Speaker 1: the head a bunch with this billy club. I thought
Speaker 1: it was a crowbar Wells and iron cash, which is
Speaker 1: English for crow bar, I guess. And this was a
Speaker 1: big point because, um, for a lot of reasons. One
Speaker 1: and that it was why the justice ended up coming
Speaker 1: down so harshly on them, because they were apparently way
Speaker 1: more violent than they needed to be with this guy.
Speaker 1: And the public perception of these guys is working class
Speaker 1: heroes doesn't jibe with the violence because they weren't. You know,
Speaker 1: the English still aren't really into violence as a whole. No,
Speaker 1: especially if you're the bowler hat gang. Yeah, like you do.
Speaker 1: You dressed nicely and you conducted your business, your criminal business,
Speaker 1: like gentleman. Uh. And you didn't need to beat this
Speaker 1: old guy up. He was elderly, nearing retirement. And his
Speaker 1: family says that the robbers still say today that like,
Speaker 1: he wasn't beating up nearly as bad as they say.
Speaker 1: And the family is like, no, he never fully recovered
Speaker 1: and died of cancer. But um, about seven years later,
Speaker 1: I think he died of leukemia. Yeah, but they they
Speaker 1: say he he had headaches for the rest of his
Speaker 1: life and he was just not the same man. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You can't do that to somebody. You can't do that
Speaker 1: someone and and like you said, that changed absolutely everything.
Speaker 1: Um good. He uh. The the guy who's really the
Speaker 1: brains behind this whole operation, he uh. He wrote a
Speaker 1: book a few years back before he died, and he
Speaker 1: named he said it was either Buster Edwards or a
Speaker 1: guy named James Hussey who was the one who coshed
Speaker 1: the poor conductor. Yeah, and supposedly Hussy who was brought
Speaker 1: in as a heavy as some muscle. Supposedly at his
Speaker 1: deathbed he said that it was him who cashed the guy.
Speaker 1: And uh, but there are other people that say, including
Speaker 1: Jack Mills's son, who said, no, my father told me
Speaker 1: who it was and it wasn't him. This guy is
Speaker 1: just doing that that robber thing where you still cover
Speaker 1: for your people, so like on his deathbed, he was
Speaker 1: still trying to cover for the real guy. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if we'll ever know for real if it
Speaker 1: was him or the other dude while lying on your deathbed.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's not okay, No, that never happens. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: where you're supposed to be the most troops. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they I mean they take deathbed confessions like as like
Speaker 1: completely legitimate in courts. Yeah, that's where you're supposed to
Speaker 1: look at your wife and say, I never really loved you. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's terrible. Could you imagine? I think that was in
Speaker 1: a movie. Once you thought it was gonna be some
Speaker 1: tender moment and he was like, I never really loved you.
Speaker 1: I think I know what you're talking about. The War
Speaker 1: of the Roses where like they're both laying there dying
Speaker 1: and Michael Douglas goes to like put his arms around
Speaker 1: That's when I it's a great movie. Um No, I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody's done that. Okay, So Roger Cordry is
Speaker 1: the guy's name who came up with the idea to
Speaker 1: fix these train signals. Uh. And he was an associate
Speaker 1: of Buster Edwards. And if you had ever seen a
Speaker 1: movie Buster with Phil Collins, I was that who it's about.
Speaker 1: That's who it's about. Sort of like a working class criminal,
Speaker 1: like criminals back then. We're kind of revered in certain
Speaker 1: circles in England's weird two Hearts beaten in. Just was
Speaker 1: that from that movie? Okay, alright, so after this break, uh,
Speaker 1: we were going to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: how it went down and what happened right after. So Chuck,
Speaker 1: we've got the Bowler Hat Kang and the South Coast
Speaker 1: Raiders coming together for one huge heights that's worth about
Speaker 1: a hundred million dollars in today's money, or or how
Speaker 1: that they're hitting the up special. Just this crotchety old
Speaker 1: twelve car train moving along through the night from Scotland
Speaker 1: to London. Right, And so the the gang messes with
Speaker 1: the lights. They put a glove around the green light
Speaker 1: and managed to turn on the red lights. So the
Speaker 1: train comes to the stop, they all board the train.
Speaker 1: They hit the conductor over the head, huge mistake. Uh.
Speaker 1: They bring on the guy who's supposed to drive the train,
Speaker 1: find out he can't drive the train, throw him off,
Speaker 1: stand the conductor back up, probably give him a handkerchief
Speaker 1: for his head, and say we need you to drive
Speaker 1: this another mile and a half to the drop point,
Speaker 1: which is called the Brittigo Bridge. Yeah, it was it
Speaker 1: like a bridge overpass. Uh and uh. The guy does
Speaker 1: that and they start offloading the loot. Yeah. They got
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty of the hundred and eight sacks of
Speaker 1: cash money onto Um. They had this big and a
Speaker 1: couple of land rovers. Yeah, could could have been? Could
Speaker 1: this be any more stylish? They had land rovers a
Speaker 1: getaway cars. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Um. You see why
Speaker 1: people bought into all this stuff and thought it was cool,
Speaker 1: because I think it's cool right now. Um. And so
Speaker 1: what they did they had prearranged a hideout and this
Speaker 1: was fields His job as well, was he bought this
Speaker 1: farm and farmhouse leather Slade farm, right, yeah, two And
Speaker 1: it was sort of ingenious but ended up screwing them
Speaker 1: in the end because the idea was within thirty minutes
Speaker 1: of this robbery, they have effectively disappeared off the face
Speaker 1: of the earth. Well, they stopped the train and got
Speaker 1: it to the bridge and offloaded more than a ton
Speaker 1: of money. Yeah, two tons of two and a half
Speaker 1: tons of money in fifteen minutes. Yeah. And they were
Speaker 1: back in their hideout in another fifteen So by the
Speaker 1: time this thing was reported, they were gone and in
Speaker 1: this farmhouse like with the windows shut and the shades drawn.
Speaker 1: But that also kind of screwed them because before they
Speaker 1: left the train, they said, all right, no one moves
Speaker 1: for thirty minutes. And so the cops here this and
Speaker 1: they went, oh, well that they're probably within a thirty
Speaker 1: mile radius. And then and so they put this out
Speaker 1: on the news. We know that they're within a thirty
Speaker 1: mile radius, and we're gonna start camvasing the area. They
Speaker 1: get word of this there within twenty eight miles and
Speaker 1: they go, well, crap, they're gonna find us. And they
Speaker 1: also said it was sort of a city boys move
Speaker 1: to think you can hide out in the country like that. Um,
Speaker 1: And this one guy in the documentary was like, no,
Speaker 1: out in the country, you get noticed if you're fifteen
Speaker 1: guys in a farmhouse. That was their undoing. A neighbor said,
Speaker 1: there's a lot more people at this old rambling old
Speaker 1: farm and they're all wearing bowler hats for some reason,
Speaker 1: at least half of them are. Um, there's something fishy
Speaker 1: going on. So when the when the word got out
Speaker 1: that this train had been hit, this guy came forward
Speaker 1: and said, you guys should go check this farm out. Well,
Speaker 1: the guys weren't only at this farm for the half
Speaker 1: hour after the heist. They've been there for like eight days,
Speaker 1: waiting for the day to come, getting ready, um, eating
Speaker 1: things that required catchup. Playing Monopoly. Yeah, uh, played a
Speaker 1: lot of Monopoly with their real money. Yes, they they
Speaker 1: thought that was just a fun thing to do. Hilarious. Um.
Speaker 1: And they did go to the trouble of like wiping
Speaker 1: down a lot of the stuff, but they left a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff behind, including the Monopoly game, including the
Speaker 1: catchup bottle, and a lot of other stuff that had
Speaker 1: prints on it. Well, yes, because Fields was supposed to
Speaker 1: get a guy to go torch the place. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I thought, was like, why wouldn't you just burn
Speaker 1: the place down? That was the plan And apparently the
Speaker 1: guy never did it, and um, they ended up getting
Speaker 1: out of there a few days early. They left five
Speaker 1: days into it because they obviously heard the news that
Speaker 1: they were canvasing the area, so they left quicker than
Speaker 1: they wanted to. And um, like you said, left a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff behind because they thought it was gonna
Speaker 1: be torched. Their plan was to lay low there for
Speaker 1: a few days. Yeah, to keep laying low. But um,
Speaker 1: when they found out they were basically making their way
Speaker 1: to them, little by little they got the heck out
Speaker 1: of Dodge. Well that probably kept them from getting caught sooner.
Speaker 1: But in so the public is being treated to this
Speaker 1: incredibly daring train heist. These people got away without a
Speaker 1: trace for at least the first week. Finally within a week, Um,
Speaker 1: this leather Slade Farms has been identified as the place
Speaker 1: where these guys were hiding out and they found the trucks. Uh,
Speaker 1: and they got at least one person within eight days
Speaker 1: of the of the heist. Yeah, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden people start falling. There's fifteen people, um, and on
Speaker 1: the case is called the Flying Squad, who are like
Speaker 1: the best of the best that Scotland yard has to
Speaker 1: offer to combat these some of the best of the
Speaker 1: best criminals that that Great Britain has had to offer
Speaker 1: at the time. Yeah, Chief Superintendent Detective Tommy Butler was
Speaker 1: the head of the Flying Squad. And like you said,
Speaker 1: this was so sensational because it was the top robbers
Speaker 1: and the top cop. It was. I guess it's sort
Speaker 1: of like the elliott Ness of the day going after
Speaker 1: al Capone. It was just a huge story. Um. And
Speaker 1: like you said, they started getting nicked one by one,
Speaker 1: and UM, it came out later that there was an
Speaker 1: informant by the name of Mickey Keiho. Supposedly, Scotland Yard said,
Speaker 1: this guy, Mickey Keiho, was telling us all about it
Speaker 1: because it was well known within the criminal underground, like
Speaker 1: what was going on, and started naming names. Although the
Speaker 1: robbers to this day, UH still say, nah, I wasn't
Speaker 1: Mickey Kiho. We know that guy. He didn't even notice
Speaker 1: that well, he wasn't giving up names, but um, I
Speaker 1: don't know Scotland Yard says he was. So I don't
Speaker 1: see why they make that up. I could see them
Speaker 1: making it up to protect somebody else, especially if they
Speaker 1: didn't like Mickey Keiho and the way he looked. That's true,
Speaker 1: but they You're right, they started to go down one
Speaker 1: by one. Uh. There was a pretty short list of
Speaker 1: people they thought it was. It wasn't like some great mystery. Plus,
Speaker 1: once they started peeling away one and canting one here
Speaker 1: or there, others started falling. Others did did Did anyone
Speaker 1: who was caught name names? Did you get that impression? No?
Speaker 1: They were Most of them were pretty tight lipped. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, one guy, Charlie Wilson, he was the treasurer
Speaker 1: of the gang. He uh. They called him the silent
Speaker 1: Man because he literally said nothing and he didn't didn't
Speaker 1: speak at all during the trial. He went on to
Speaker 1: become a U. S. Congressman who waged the proxy war
Speaker 1: against Russia and Afghanistan. I don't think so. I think
Speaker 1: that's a different different Tom Hanks. Yeah right, Um, so
Speaker 1: consider this from the public's point of view. There's a
Speaker 1: staring robbery, right words getting out within a week he
Speaker 1: got your first guy caught. But there's still tons more
Speaker 1: people on lamb, which gave the press tons of fodder.
Speaker 1: They had so much to write about. Um. There was
Speaker 1: a capture of one of the guys that involved roofed ops,
Speaker 1: Like the guy was running and jumping from roof to
Speaker 1: roof with police and chase you know, and the and
Speaker 1: finally by August, all these guys are rounded up twelve
Speaker 1: or the fifteen, I think we're rounded up. Uh, And
Speaker 1: they started to stand trial. Um in January, they were caught.
Speaker 1: They're being quiet. The public is just totally in awe.
Speaker 1: And finally this trial starts, and right out of the gate,
Speaker 1: the judge found out that Biggs had a criminal past,
Speaker 1: so he he shouldn't be tried with the rest of
Speaker 1: him because it contained the jury against all these other
Speaker 1: guys un fairly. So Biggs gets spun off to his
Speaker 1: own trial. And these guys uh stood trial. The other
Speaker 1: four or the other elevens, no, ten of them stood trial.
Speaker 1: One of them managed to have a lawyer. He was
Speaker 1: there because his prints were on the no, the monopoly game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were prints on Ketchup and Monopoly and pots and pans.
Speaker 1: And some of the guys were gloves the entire time,
Speaker 1: and they smart, smart ones. Yeah, but Biggs was the one.
Speaker 1: Remember biggs one job was to bring the train engineer
Speaker 1: and uh, he screwed that up. His princes were on
Speaker 1: the catchup bottle, so he screwed that up too. But um,
Speaker 1: there was another guy who's prints round the Monopoly game
Speaker 1: and his lawyers managed to show that that those could
Speaker 1: have gotten there long before the crime, and that it
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily need anything to do with it. He got set.
Speaker 1: He was acquitted. During this trial, he was the only
Speaker 1: lucky one. Everybody else had the book thrown at them. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean there was a lot of them were saying
Speaker 1: that they cooked up a bunch of evidence because they
Speaker 1: knew it was them, but they just didn't have the evidence.
Speaker 1: So um, the big lor truck they had painted hastily
Speaker 1: painted yellow and uh, the Goody, one of the main
Speaker 1: you know, two guys, was supposedly some of his evidence
Speaker 1: was that they found yellow paint on a shoe and
Speaker 1: he was like, I didn't paint in those shoes. And
Speaker 1: it was funny because years later he's like, oh did it,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I painted that truck yellow, but I wasn't
Speaker 1: wearing those shoes they planted. That's evidence. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: apparently there was false confessions. There was another great British
Speaker 1: word for that. I can't remember what they called it,
Speaker 1: but chopper dabba, choder dobbing. They false confessions were big
Speaker 1: at the time in England and there was a lot
Speaker 1: of reports from these robbers that they were using false
Speaker 1: confessions and planning evidence. And again, even though they did it,
Speaker 1: they were like, yeah, but if you don't have evidence,
Speaker 1: you can't convict this. So I don't think we'll ever
Speaker 1: know if they cooked up some of this evidence or not.
Speaker 1: Well there's one guy named Bowl William Bull. Poor guy.
Speaker 1: He apparently had nothing to do with it. Well, he
Speaker 1: received money in payment from a debt. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that good. He owed him. Now it was it was Bigs,
Speaker 1: a big big again. He was a friend of Biggs
Speaker 1: and when he got out, helped him kind of lay low.
Speaker 1: But he had nothing to do with the robbery. And um,
Speaker 1: fourteen years No, I'm sorry. It was Cordrey. It wasn't Biggs, Okay, Cordrey, Um,
Speaker 1: I know, I feel bad for Biggs. We're just dragging
Speaker 1: his name through the mud. Yeah, but it was Rob Cordrey.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Rob Cordrey, but um, it was his dad.
Speaker 1: It was his great grandfather of Cordrey, and he was
Speaker 1: Bull's friend. He helped him lay low and he wanted
Speaker 1: Quardrey was actually the first one to get to get
Speaker 1: pinched because he and Bull helped him inn a garage
Speaker 1: and they paid and like the same bank note bills
Speaker 1: for like three months in advance in cash, and the
Speaker 1: lady said, hey, this is a little suspicious, turned him in.
Speaker 1: Ball got wrapped up, and because all these guys were
Speaker 1: saying we're innocent, they couldn't come out and say, well,
Speaker 1: he really is innocent, so they kind of had to
Speaker 1: take this guilt with them to prison. So Bowl got
Speaker 1: fourteen years for doing nothing really, yeah, and for just
Speaker 1: basically knowing the wrong guys and hanging out with the
Speaker 1: wrong guys. He died in prison. I'm not laughing because
Speaker 1: it's just tragic. It is tragic. So his family's like
Speaker 1: trying to mount a campaign now Um to get a
Speaker 1: posthumous pardon at least. But he, uh, he and the
Speaker 1: guy who got hit over the head the conductor are
Speaker 1: really the two big victims and all of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and one of them, there was only one guy that
Speaker 1: Um turned in his cut of the money and actually
Speaker 1: pleaded guilty out of the rest. That was Cordrey. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was Cordry. So even he he says, yes, I
Speaker 1: did it, here's my eighty grand the guy who he
Speaker 1: associated with still got fourteen years in jail. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so sad um. So you'll notice that we were talking
Speaker 1: about twelve of the fifteen Bigs by the way, after
Speaker 1: he stood trial separately, was also found guilty and got
Speaker 1: things like, uh, these guys were getting like twenty years,
Speaker 1: thirty years since it's enormous sentences for this this train robbery,
Speaker 1: generally thirty which was double the harshest penalties for robbery
Speaker 1: that they've ever seen, right, which is really strange because
Speaker 1: the judge in the case, um, he had actually reduced
Speaker 1: another robber in a completely separate robbery, um where a
Speaker 1: man had been shot and killed during the commission of
Speaker 1: the robbery. Someone who was involved in that robbery had
Speaker 1: his sentence reduced from fifteen years to ten years because
Speaker 1: that judge thought it was excessive. That same judge was
Speaker 1: handing out thirty years sentences to these guys where no
Speaker 1: one got killed. Yeah, that was justice, Edmund Davies. I
Speaker 1: think because it was such a high profile case, he
Speaker 1: felt he could make his name had to be you know,
Speaker 1: so um he was making his name though against public sentiment,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people were very much I saw
Speaker 1: these guys as folk heroes, none more though than Biggs.
Speaker 1: And the reason why Biggs is a folk hero was
Speaker 1: because he evaded capture so long, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that right after this. Alright, so, uh, some really interesting
Speaker 1: things happened after they were sentenced. Um, Charlie Wilson escaped prison,
Speaker 1: which was pretty cool. A couple of them escape prison. Um,
Speaker 1: and the way that it was very cute how you
Speaker 1: could escape prison back then, like let's put a ladder
Speaker 1: by the fence and climb up and jump over into
Speaker 1: a truck and speed away. It turns out that Benny
Speaker 1: Hills show was basically a docu drama at the time.
Speaker 1: Another one escaped when he I think he had some
Speaker 1: guys and filtrate the prison and help him escape. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the furniture truck. Yeah, that was Bigs. I think
Speaker 1: it has a lot easier to escape prison back then.
Speaker 1: And some of these were maximum security for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, well yeah, one of them was Britain's
Speaker 1: version of Alcatraz, they say, Wandsworth Prison and um that
Speaker 1: big escape from there. Um when he escaped and when
Speaker 1: on the lamb Uh. He went to Australia and then
Speaker 1: eventually moved on to Brazil, but first he stopped off
Speaker 1: at um one of the worst human beings to ever
Speaker 1: walk the planet's office. This very same cosmetic surgeon who
Speaker 1: redid the faces of Nazis fleeing Europe at the end
Speaker 1: of World War Two. Really that's who was plastic surgeon
Speaker 1: was yes, um, yeah he uh he So Bigg's got
Speaker 1: his face redone a little bit, went to Australia, made
Speaker 1: it to Brazil and um he had a family in
Speaker 1: Australia which he left behind there, uh, and then went
Speaker 1: on to Brazil, got a girl friend and um, she
Speaker 1: was pregnant with their child when the the authorities, the
Speaker 1: British authorities found him in Brazil and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: turns out under Brazilian law you can't extradite the parent
Speaker 1: of a Brazilian citizen. So for many, many years Ronald
Speaker 1: Biggs lived openly as this felon escape e in Brazil. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there are things that he couldn't do Brazil. Apparently,
Speaker 1: he couldn't go to bars, he couldn't be out after
Speaker 1: ten pm, he couldn't associate with, um, you know, anybody
Speaker 1: with a criminal record or anything like that. But he
Speaker 1: wasn't imprisoned by the Brazilian authorities, and he couldn't be
Speaker 1: extradited to Great Britain, which drove Great Britain crazy. And
Speaker 1: there was this one very famous detective who was on
Speaker 1: this case who made his own name. His name was
Speaker 1: Jack Slipper. Yeah. I get the feeling that he and
Speaker 1: Uh and Biggs it was sort of like the lay
Speaker 1: Misser rob like Jean Valjean. You know, they had this
Speaker 1: lifelong pursuit smoking in the band. Sure, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: very old story. Uh and Biggs and Jack Slipper, we're
Speaker 1: playing it out in real life, so much so that
Speaker 1: Jack Slipper in four showed up on Bigg's doorstep, I
Speaker 1: guess just to rattle him, just to say I I
Speaker 1: know where you are and I can get to you.
Speaker 1: And Big said, yeah, but you really can't do anything
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah. And some of the other guys evaded
Speaker 1: police for a little while for a number of years,
Speaker 1: but I think by nineteen sixty nine they were all caught,
Speaker 1: except for the three that they couldn't finger with good evidence.
Speaker 1: But um, even the main mastermind was able to evade
Speaker 1: the police for four or five years. I think he
Speaker 1: went down to Mexico buster he turned himself in after
Speaker 1: living on the lamb for three years. Yeah, and Bruce
Speaker 1: Reynolds I think he was on the LAMB for a
Speaker 1: while too. Yeah, he got caught in Canada. I think,
Speaker 1: um one of the guys, well, I guess it was
Speaker 1: Bruce Reynolds when he changed his name when he went
Speaker 1: on the Lamb. He changed his family's last name to Firth,
Speaker 1: and he had a wife and son, Colin. He changed
Speaker 1: his son Nick's name to Colin Firth. Shut up, no, no, oh,
Speaker 1: totally coincidental. Okay, I thought you were gonna say it.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be amazing that Colin Firth was the son
Speaker 1: of Bruce Reynolds and it was all in alias that
Speaker 1: he turned into a stage name. That would be awesome actually.
Speaker 1: Um So. One of the fun things that the the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister tried to do because he was so upset
Speaker 1: about this was uh he tried to at one point,
Speaker 1: or he didn't try to. He had the idea to
Speaker 1: reissue every bank note in England so their money would
Speaker 1: no longer be good. So from what I understand, they
Speaker 1: were like, yeah, you can't do that. From what I understand,
Speaker 1: most of the money was never recovered. Fo grand out
Speaker 1: of the two point six million was recovered right, So
Speaker 1: there was a lot of that out there still, but
Speaker 1: apparently England went to a different type of decimal currency
Speaker 1: by like nineteen seventy I think, and that means that
Speaker 1: that money that was out there automatically became worthless. Well
Speaker 1: apparently they laundered it pretty quickly afterwards, so I don't
Speaker 1: know how much that affected them, Like through bookies I
Speaker 1: got of stuff like that, they made it new money. However,
Speaker 1: all of the robbers ended up saying like even if
Speaker 1: they got their cut, like it was a curse and
Speaker 1: they didn't live this rich lifestyle in Mexico and Spain,
Speaker 1: like a bunch of a move to these places and
Speaker 1: serve shorter sentences because I think parole was brought in
Speaker 1: after they were sentenced. It wasn't even like a thing
Speaker 1: in England until then. But retroactively they were able to
Speaker 1: get out and like you know, ten or fourteen years
Speaker 1: and then you know, supposedly had some of this money
Speaker 1: still hidden away. But most of them ended up like
Speaker 1: one guy committed suicide, one guy died in a medical
Speaker 1: trial that he signed up for um. One guy was murdered,
Speaker 1: uh yeah by a hit man on a bike in Spain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like most of them have these awful sort of
Speaker 1: ending stories and they didn't live out like sexy Beast
Speaker 1: like Ray Winstone on the Spanish era. I think some
Speaker 1: of that might have been influenced by some of that movie.
Speaker 1: Might a lot of Great Britain's love of gangsters was
Speaker 1: influenced by these guys. Yeah, they were definitely looked up to,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty interesting. I got a little more on
Speaker 1: Biggs the ballot of Biggs, so he I mean, he
Speaker 1: really is like a folk hero in in against anti
Speaker 1: with anti establishment types in the UK um in part
Speaker 1: because he was, you know, living openly in the face
Speaker 1: of you know, British authority, and it irked the British
Speaker 1: enough that a group of ex British military kidnapped him
Speaker 1: from Brazil and put him on a boat and got
Speaker 1: as far as Barbados, where they had boat trouble and
Speaker 1: they were picked up by the Barbadoon and authorities. And
Speaker 1: it turns out Barbados as an event extradition treaty with
Speaker 1: the UK either so he got sent back to Brazil
Speaker 1: and supposedly these ex military were saying that they play
Speaker 1: and on I guess getting some sort of reward from
Speaker 1: the British crown for bringing this guy back. But it's
Speaker 1: also been supposed that that was actually a plausible and
Speaker 1: deniability cover, that it was actually like the British really
Speaker 1: tried to have it, wouldn't surprise me. He Yeah, he
Speaker 1: finally turned himself in and died in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: But he turned himself in in like two thousand he
Speaker 1: started having like, um, failing health. So he's like, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll go live out my life in jail for
Speaker 1: some reason. And I think he went to like an
Speaker 1: old man's hospital jail back in the UK. Uh. And
Speaker 1: not all of them at you know, gross untimely demises.
Speaker 1: You know, several of them just kind of retired and
Speaker 1: went back to their work as florists and uh sort
Speaker 1: of retired with her family in Sussex or London or
Speaker 1: sort of around England and um, but apparently none of
Speaker 1: them like got Rich off this or they're not talking
Speaker 1: if they did. Yeah. Still, well, good good, Yeah, Goods
Speaker 1: wrote a book. So there you go. There you have it.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about the Great Train Robbery.
Speaker 1: A great place to start is the search part how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot Com. And since I said search parts
Speaker 1: time for listener mail. I'm gonna call the horse milk.
Speaker 1: In our Animal Domestication podcast, we talked about horse milk
Speaker 1: and I can't remember what I said. A price said
Speaker 1: it was gross or something. Well, I think we said like,
Speaker 1: we want to hear from people who've had it, and
Speaker 1: I figured we'd hear from a couple of people. By
Speaker 1: I'm blown away by how many people have had a
Speaker 1: brush with horse milk. A lot of people liked it too,
Speaker 1: this is not one of them. Hey, guys, just listen
Speaker 1: to the podcast on Animal domestication. Wanted to tell you
Speaker 1: about the revolting drink called kumas from Kazakhstan. That's k
Speaker 1: u m I s Mila kumas, Mila kumas. It is
Speaker 1: similar to the more familiar product keefer. Uh what you
Speaker 1: we talked about that and something else, right, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like or something. It's like Balky's version of sour milk. Think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said it's made from horse milk because horse milk
Speaker 1: has more natural sugars than couch eap for goat milk.
Speaker 1: Kumas ends up being mildly alcoholic after fermentation. Imagine the
Speaker 1: sourness of raw yogurt mixed with the bite of a
Speaker 1: shot of vodka and round it all out with the
Speaker 1: disgusting tang of horse milk. And you've got kumas well.
Speaker 1: I don't understand that last part, like I don't have
Speaker 1: anything to equate that with horse milk vodka check sour
Speaker 1: like fermented yogurt. But you don't know that disgusting tang. No,
Speaker 1: And I want to know now. You know, in Toronto,
Speaker 1: when I was here with my friend Chris from Let's
Speaker 1: Drink About It, eight horsemeat than in front of you know,
Speaker 1: I was supposed to got to dinner with him, but
Speaker 1: I was sick. And after we recorded, they went out
Speaker 1: and the next day he was like, dude, mate, horsemeat inster.
Speaker 1: Now went they go to Ikea. Now they went to
Speaker 1: some one of those adventurous restaurants. And I was like, Joshua,
Speaker 1: have been all over that, but not me, thank you.
Speaker 1: Beauty horse meat right, probably, but not horse milk. Only
Speaker 1: if the horse died of old So Greg says, I
Speaker 1: drained it. Well, that's what they said. They supposedly all
Speaker 1: of them. They're called what do you I'm barbarians something
Speaker 1: horses like old dead horses. No, basically, there were horses
Speaker 1: that died of natural causes. They called them like senior horses. No,
Speaker 1: like golden AIGs horses. No, there's a word. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of words. I can say them all. So Greg
Speaker 1: drank in Kazakhstan and he said it was served in
Speaker 1: a bowl what he would describe as a bowl. You
Speaker 1: get cocktail peanuts like you would get cocktail peanuts, and
Speaker 1: instead of a bowl of peanuts is a bowl of
Speaker 1: dis disgusting drink. I've lived in the Caucuses for four
Speaker 1: years now. I've had my share of questionable foods. The
Speaker 1: only thing I found more disagreeable than a saucer of
Speaker 1: kumas was a pickled rooster comb. Oh my gosh. He
Speaker 1: said it was all skinning cards as it felt like
Speaker 1: I was eating an ear. Wow, man, that is from Greg.
Speaker 1: That's called using every part of the animal. Yeah, Greg,
Speaker 1: you just blew my mind. Same here, man. I wish
Speaker 1: I could think of the horses, not like freedom horses,
Speaker 1: but it was something like the words the word the
Speaker 1: horses that want you to eat them donor horses. We'll
Speaker 1: find out and tell everybody next time, Okay, the essentialist.
Speaker 1: They're horses that died at natural causes. They weren't killed
Speaker 1: for their meat. Uh. If you want to let us
Speaker 1: know about an experience you had that is fascinating or amazing,
Speaker 1: you can tweet it to us at s Y s
Speaker 1: K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com
Speaker 1: slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: and you can hang out with us at our home
Speaker 1: on the web, the Internet clubhouse known as stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, is it how stuff Works dot com.