‍IT READS like a plot from an Agatha Christie book. Three inexperienced teenage lads, a chief reporter only slightly older and an ageing editor seeing out time until retirement, become a crack team to investigate the Great Train Robbery.

‍Good idea … and that is what happened in the editorial office of the Leighton Buzzard Observer on August 8, 1963.

‍It was the day that Bruce Reynolds and his gang stopped the Royal Mail train at Sears Crossing and stole £2.6 million in cash in a well-planned robbery that involved rigging train signals and cutting phone lines. It made history of course.

‍The first reporter on the scene, just down the road from the LBO office, was Dennis Aris, who died aged 76 in April 2020, but left his account of that fateful day.

‍I have just come across his words that paint a wonderful picture of life on a local newspaper at the time and what happened when the biggest news story of the decade dropped on them like a bombshell.

‍“Monday morning was always a rush as publication day was Tuesday,” he writes. And that was why the little news team initially ignored one of the biggest stories ever to drop on their doorstep.

‍“We were three inexperienced teenage lads, under a chief reporter and an ageing editor, hardly a top team to take on the might of the national press as the story of the robbery broke.

‍“When a phone call came in saying: ‘There’s a train stopped out between Linslade and Chedddington’ there was a distinct lack of interest.

‍“I just carried on reducing the Tottenhoe correspondent’s village flower show report from two A4 sheets to a more acceptable 100 words while worrying about how I was going to raise the deposit for a motorbike.”

‍Dennis told how colleague Geoff South muttered: “Damn diesels, always breaking down” and continued refining his Leighton cricket club match report; while John Flewin had his head down over the last-minute minutia of the WI reports and church fetes which readers expected to have before them on the breakfast table next morning.

‍Chief reporter Anne Hammond was checking pages while editor Dougal MacReath was finishing his leader and calculating how long it would be until the bar of the Liberal Club opened.

‍“The second call about a stationary train still raised little interest,” said Dennis but when a third caller added that there were ‘a lot of police around it,’ John’s ears pricked up, as he was always keen on earning a bob or two on the side by flogging paragraphs to the London evening papers.

‍“As Anne was busy and he was the only other one of us with a car, John was delegated to go and have a look.”

‍From then on, the quiet little backwater office became a madhouse, said Dennis.

‍“Half an hour later I was on my way to the scene with Tom our photographer, a former Liverpool Echo veteran whose experiences in that city had resulted in him having a curious anti-theft device on his ancient car which meant it would only start if the ashtray was pulled out and turned upside-down.

‍“As we chugged into Cheddington, police were escorting the battered and shocked train driver away from the station. Minutes later the power of the national press even in those days was shown when an express train made an unscheduled stop at the station and a flock of reporters tumbled out, many having already made good use of the bar on the 30-minute trip from Euston.

‍“Over the next few months, we lads learned a great deal about journalism as the story rumbled on through the capture of many of the gang and preliminary court hearings in our little Linslade court room.

‍“Surprisingly, having almost missed the greatest story of the age our combined report looked every bit as good on the front page as those of the nationals next morning.”

‍By August 14, the police had conducted hundreds of interviews and raided hundreds of homes in search of the gang. The Telegraph reported that five people headed the list, with a few temporarily detained while police checked their movements.

‍Scotland Yard issued a statement, saying “We know who they are. It is now a question of finding where they are.”

‍A witness statement from local car spotter, Alan Walker, aged 9, who had noted several vehicles that matched the police description helped piece together the gang’s getaway plans.

‍On April 16, 1964, Robert Welch was one of the 12 men found guilty of a notorious heist at Aylesbury Crown Court. Fourteen years later, in 1978, he told the BBC’s Man Alive programme how he watched as ghoulish local dignitaries jostled for positions in the courtroom to hear the sentencing.

‍"It was what they had all come to watch,” he said. “The climax of the play, the drama. It became a medieval setting in which we were sentenced, you know, it was a bit chilling."

‍Welch was the last surviving member of the gang, and he died in 2023 taking with him the remaining secrets of who really masterminded it.

‍HOWZAT! HISTORIC CRICKET MATCH

‍WITH ONLY ONE LEG BEFORE WICKET

‍VICTORIAN publican James Gentle was an all-round good sport. Everyone in his town said so. But it wasn’t until he arranged a most unusual cricket match that he achieved greater fame.

‍For in 1868 he arranged a one-legged, one-armed cricket match that hit the headlines.

‍Gentle, a well-known caterer and popular cricketer for St Albans and other Hertfordshire sides, who once played alongside W.G. Grace, was never stumped for money-making ideas.

‍Under the headline “Cricket Extraordinary, Great Sensation Match, One Arm v One Leg, Army and Navy Pensioners” in the Luton Times, it was reported that:

‍“Mr James Gentle begs to inform the inhabitants of St Albans and neighbourhood that he has arranged with the above celebrated Elevens to play one of their novel matches in our town on Monday and Tuesday August 31 and September 1, 1868.”

‍The teams were pensioners from Greenwich hospital playing old soldiers from a hospital in St Albans, all victims of the Crimea War.

‍The announcement published on August 29, went on to state that Mr Gentle, having been at considerable expense, earnestly requested that those intending to witness the match should purchase tickets as early as possible.

‍A single ticket was 6d. The location was at what is now Victoria Playing Fields on Verulam Road, St Albans.

‍“The one-armed cricketers are the general favourites,” stated the Herts Advertiser, in a post-match report and in fact they won by 103 runs (326 against 223) because their legs moved faster than the wooden ones. The whole day was captured on canvas by local artist John Henry Buckingham and can be viewed at the St Albans Museum.

‍Gentle made his money by handling all the catering for the event that drew a crowd of nearly 2,000, who mostly went for the curiosity value. For home games he was known for sometimes rewarding his team with ‘a fine roast beef and peas’ … before the match.

‍The Herts Advertiser said: “Excellent refreshments at moderate prices were purveyed on the ground. Mr Gentle begs us to thank the public for the liberal manner in which they patronised him on this occasion.”

‍Gentle went on to organise his next match — a St Albans Eleven v.16 clowns.

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‍THE HOUSE THAT A VICTORIAN

‍HACK MADE FAMOUS IN A DAY

‍AUTHOR and journalist Theodore Hook was well known for his pranks, not least of all ‘the Berners Street Hoax’ in November 1810. It took him into the history books.

‍Hook, who became editor of the John Bull newspaper, couldn’t help himself and the pranks got bigger and bigger.

‍The Berners Street hoax started when he bet a friend one guinea that he could transform any dwelling into the most famous address in London. The wager was agreed.

‍Hook then picked an address at random and spent six weeks sending over 3,000 letters to tradespeople and businesses ordering their goods and services to be delivered to 54 Berners Street in the West End at various times on 27 November 1810.

‍Several well-known people were also invited to call including the chairmen of the Bank of England and The East India Dock Company; The Duke of Gloucester and the Lord Mayor of London.

‍Hook and his friends rented rooms in the house opposite number 54, the home of Mrs Tottingham, to view the big day.

‍Chimney sweeps began arriving at the address at 5:00 am that morning, followed by hundreds of representatives of several trades and businesses, including auctioneers, undertakers, grocers, butchers, bakers, pastry chefs and dancing masters.

‍Goods deliveries included organs, furniture, coal, wedding cakes, food and drink … and a coffin. It was mayhem.

‍The police were called to try and manage the crowd, but they were not able to clear the street until after the final rush of visitors at 5pm – domestic servants desperate to be interviewed for a job.

‍Hook got his friends to swear to secrecy but five years later admitted the hoax in his autobiography. The prank was repeated across Britain and Paris, and was retold on stage, in songs and by cartoonists.

‍HOOK NOTE: The world's oldest postcard was sent to joker Hook in 1840, bearing a black penny stamp. Hook created and posted the card to himself as a practical joke on the postal service. It shows a caricature of PO workers and sold for a record £32.000 in 2002.

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‍GRIEVING BESSIE’S LOVER REACHES

‍OUT FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

‍WHEN the Sunderland Daily Echo was born in December 1873 it promised that it would always print only the truth. The paper was a mixture of local, national and foreign news.

‍In January 1901 it ran a story about Bessie Brown on its foreign page. She had married a ghost. The story reported that Bessie’s fiancé John Allen had died a few weeks before their wedding in Oklahoma and he always made her promise that if anything happened to him, she would marry his spirit.

‍When his spirit appeared to her one night, she said it was a sign, and she had to keep her part of the bargain. Here is the Echo story.

‍The article reported that people who passed the cottage could hear them talking and laughing just as if they were both in human form.

‍Her father said: “Her mother and I feared the poor girl had lost her mind, so we sent to Dallas for a specialist to make an examination of her brain. He pronounced her mental condition perfectly normal and said that she was not under the influence of any drug. Her case is a strange one, and she must surely see the ghost she talks about so much.”

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‍BLOW THAT

‍THE Fleet River had lifesaving equipment along the shoreline at various points in the 18th early century — pairs of bellows and a pipe to revive victims who fell in. But you needed to find tobacco because the pipe was inserted into the victim’s bottom and smoke puffed in. The warmth and stimulating powers of the tobacco would then bring the victim back from the dead, many doctors believed.

‍The British medical journal The Lancet reported how it all began in1746:

‍“A man’s wife was pulled from the water apparently dead. Amid much conflicting advice, a passing sailor proffered his pipe and instructed the husband to insert the stem into his wife’s rectum, cover the bowl with a piece of perforated paper, and blow hard. Miraculously, the woman revived.”

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‍TERRY MANNERS

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‍2 June 2025

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