‍IT WAS the biggest robbery in the world at the time — The Great Train Robbery of 1855.

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‍On the night of May 15 that year, gold worth £2million today was stolen from a Southeastern Railway night train travelling from London to Dover.

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‍The three safes loaded with the gold then went from Dover to Boulogne by ferry and then to Paris by rail. But when the safes were opened at the Bank of France, the gold in boxes had vanished … and inside was lead shot of the same weight.

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‍Scotland Yard didn’t know where to start. The safes were weighed at various points of the journey and were always the correct weight. So, was the gold taken in England or France? Or at Sea? It was a meticulous piece of planning that equalled the plot of the later Great Train Robbery of 1963.

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‍The masterminds were 40-year-old career criminal and safe cracker Edward Agar and former bitter railway employee, monocled William Pierce, 37. Their target was the three heavy iron-safes holding boxes of gold bars and coins, intended for the bank in Paris.

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‍Each Chubb safe took two keys to open. The ingenious robbery needed insiders and took months of surveillance and preparation.

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‍The British Press headlined it: ‘The Great Bullion Robbery.’

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‍The heist began after Pierce was dismissed from the rail company for gambling. He continued to drink with old work colleagues in the pubs around London Bridge Station and over time picked up information about the gold shipments to Paris.

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‍What sparked his imagination was that the gold shipment, when it was due, always went on the same train, the 8.30pm mail express from London Bridge. He realised a theft would only be possible if he obtained copies of the keys to the safes which had had three-foot sides and were made of one-inch-thick steel.

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‍One key from the pair was held separately by SER officials at London Bridge and the other in Folkestone, to ensure no one could hold both keys at the same time.

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‍Pierce met with his friend Agar and they discussed the possibility of getting impressions of the keys. First, they needed the assistance of a guard travelling in the van with the safes, and an official with access to the staff rotas, who would know dates when the bullion shipments were to be made.

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‍Railway guard James Burgess and Rail clerk William Tester joined the plotters. Specially designed carpet bags were made for the gold and leather pouches stitched into clothes to conceal lead shot they needed for weight.

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‍Next, they needed impressions of the keys. They struck lucky, both keys were in London together at the time as they were new replacements.

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‍Tester was able to smuggle them out of the railway company’s office briefly and met Pierce and Agar in a pub where Agar made an impression of them in green wax. They were ready to go.

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‍On the night of the robbery, Pierce travelled as a 1st Class passenger, from London Bridge, laden with the shot and carpet bags to carry the gold. 

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‍Burgess had arranged to be in charge of the Guard’s Van that night and Agar sneaked in just as the train left and set to work on the safes.

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‍At Redhill, Tester relieved Agar of some of the gold and Pierce joined Agar to complete the job. Gold was replaced with lead shot and the boxes
re-sealed. They made off with what was left of the gold in Dover.

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‍The gang would probably have gotten away with it, but when arrested for a different crime, 18 months later, Agar asked Pierce to provide Fanny Kay, his former girlfriend, and their child with funds. Pierce agreed and then reneged.

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‍In need of money, Kay took her revenge and went to the authorities to spill the beans. Pierce was sentenced to two years’ hard labour in England. Tester, Burgess and Agar were sentenced to penal transportation for 14 years. The gold was never recovered.

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‍SPOON MAN WHO WORE OUT HIS BOOTS

‍IN THE MUD AND SEWAGE OF FLEET ST

‍MEET vagabond spoon seller William Conway of Crab Tree Row, Bethnal Green, who was famous in the Fleet Street and Clerkenwell area in the late 1700s.

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‍He walked 25 miles every day through the muddy, sewage-ridden London streets, calling out: “Hard metal spoons to sell or change.”

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‍Born in 1752 he is pictured here in his late forties and ladies, gentlemen and workers in his path would always chat with him or just say ‘hello Bill’. 

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‍He followed in the footsteps of his father, who was also an itinerant trader.

‍Conway had 11 walks around London which he took in turn and wore out a pair of boots every six weeks. He claimed that he never had a day’s illness and appears in a wonderful book of wood gravings with the title ‘Vagabondiana’, by John Thomas Smith, published in 1817.

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‍It is a wonderful insight to what life was like back then, when London was full of street traders — flower girls, match girls, horse meat traders with carts and men with muffins on trays balanced on their heads.

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‍CAFE WHERE FUN-SEEKERS ENJOY DEATH AND TASTE THE AFTERLIFE

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‍Hellish entrance to the café world of Dante’s inferno

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‍“The waiters were dressed as pall bearers and addressed the guests as machabees – Parisian slang for corpses found in the River Seine. But everyone had a good time!”

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‍THESE were the words of French writer and arts critic of ‘Le Figaro’ Jules Claretie in 1890 when he visited two chilling, adjoining cafes in Paris, where if you ordered a drink, you’d be offered, ‘a microbe of Asiatic cholera,’ or ‘a sample of the consumption germ.’

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‍He tells how visitors were led into a dark room, where a young woman stood in a coffin against the wall dressed in a white shroud. Her pale face lit in white light to show the stark truth of death.

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‍“From white the face slowly grew livid,” he said. “Then purplish black, the eyes visibly shrank away into their greenish-yellow sockets. Slowly the hair fell off, and the nose melted into a purple putrid spot.

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‍“The whole face became a semi-liquid mass of corruption. Presently all this had disappeared, and a gleaming skull shown where once it was the handsome face of a woman; naked teeth grinned inanely and savagely where rose lips had so recently smiled.”

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‍His words were picked up by some of the British Press and tourists to France were soon making trips to the French death cafes.

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‍Chandeliers made from human bones provided dim, flickering light and pictures of gruesome executions hung on the walls. This was having fun Parisian-style. Billed as “a walk through Dante’s dream.”

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‍In a single night, a tourist at this time could experience Heaven and Hell. The cabarets were located conveniently in adjoining buildings: the Cabaret du Ciel (Heaven) and the Cabaret de l’Enfer (Hell).

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‍These restaurants were in the Pigalle neighbourhood of Montmartre, infamous for its cabarets, brothels, and anything-goes entertainment.

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‍The ‘du Ciel’ announced its presence as heaven with cool blue lights and elegant archways; ‘l’Enfer,’ offered fiery blazes and an entrance in the shape of a grotesque, gaping mouth.

‍One diner, Martin Greenwood, a serviceman from England told a reporter of his trip to du Ciel: “Waiters with lacy wings and lopsided halos moved through the crowds, distributing sparkling draughts of heaven’s own brew,” he said.

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‍“Occasionally, a stubbly St. Peter would stick his head through a hole in the sky to flick the drinkers below him with holy water, and ladies with cockeyed angel wings swooped over the tables on wires.”

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‍Journalist William Morris tells how he was showing off his city to a respectable out-of-town guest and they entered l’Enfer through a gaping, fanged mouth lit by glowing embers:

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‍“A little red imp guarded the throat of the monster into whose mouth we had walked,” he said. “The imp led us into the interior, crying—‘Ah, ah, ah! still they come! Oh, how they will roast!’

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‍“Near us was suspended a caldron over a fire and hopping within it were half a dozen devil musicians, male and female, playing a selection from Faust on stringed instruments, while red imps stood by, prodding with red-hot irons those who lagged in their performance.”

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‍Another newspaper report told how an American soldier was invited behind the scenes and later appeared revolving gaily amongst the clouds—with a lovely pair of wings to his shoulders - blissfully smoking a cigarette.”

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‍DID YOU KNOW?

‍When James Dean proudly showed actor Alec Guinness the new Porsche Spyder car he had recently purchased, Guinness told him, “Please, never get in it. If you do, you will be found dead in it by this time next week.” Dean laughed.

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‍He died, aged 24, in a car crash while driving the Spyder exactly one week later in September 1955. He had nicknamed the car ‘Little Bastard!’

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‍TERRY MANNERS

‍11 May 2026

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