The Great Train Robbery

Robert Agar is the “screwsman, or specialist in keys and safe-breaking” in the heist scheme (7). He is loosely based on the historic Edward Agar, the real-life lockpick of the Great Gold Robbery of 1855. The fictional Agar is good at his work because of his nimble fingers and great speed. He is 26 years old. As a child, he worked as a matchstick dipper, and because the phosphorous permanently damaged his lungs, he often has a bad cough. He has been working as a screwsman since the age of 20. When Agar hears that Pierce is planning a large heist, Agar approaches him and asks to be part of his scheme. Over the many-month course of their preparations, Agar works closely with Pierce but is never made fully aware of the entirety of Pierce’s plan. Indeed, when Agar testifies at the trial, he primarily provides information about “the personality of Pierce himself” (271). Despite being ignorant of many of the details, he loyally follows Pierce all the way through the team’s execution of the heist.

However, Agar’s loyalty is later tested when he is arrested for forging £5 notes. When his lover, Alice Nelson, informs the police of his role in the gold heist after she is arrested for stealing, the police threaten Agar with transportation to Australia. Hearing this, Agar turns on Pierce and gives Harranby all the information he knows about the heist. He also identifies Pierce to the police at a boxing match so that Pierce can be arrested. He feels guilty about this decision and is unable to meet Pierce’s eyes at the moment of the arrest.

Agar’s story is typical of the lower-class criminals in Victorian England. He was born into poverty in London and was obliged to undertake hazardous factory work as a child. He is therefore entirely unschooled and illiterate. Within this context, working as an apprentice to a screwsman and then later as a screwsman himself is the best way to improve his quality of life. He ultimately dies a wealthy man in Australia. Agar stands as proof of Crichton’s claim in the Introduction that “on the whole crime pays better than honest labor” (xvii).

Richard Burgess is the inside man in the heist plot. He works as a “Mary Blaine scrob, or guard on the railway” (135). Pierce leverages Burgess’s difficult circumstances to convince him to become part of the conspiracy. Burgess is among the lowest-paid railway employees, has a sick child, and lives in a small room near a gasworks. He agrees to look the other way during the heist in exchange for £200. This agreement is similar to the motivations of the real-life James Burgess, who took part in the Great Gold Robbery of 1855 out of resentment for his reduced wages.

Burgess’s job in the scheme is to pass on information about security measures on the train and to look the other way during the heist. He is largely unaware of the other details of the heist plot and even of the other participants. This aspect is best exemplified in the way that Pierce arranges for Burgess to pass on information to Agar. Burgess is instructed to give any information about changes to security measures to Smashing Billy Banks at a betting shop. Agar then checks in with Banks daily to collect any information that Burgess has left. If all goes well, this arrangement is meant to ensure that Burgess and Agar are never seen together. Burgess is kept so thoroughly ignorant that he does not know what day the heist is to occur until he hears Agar pounding on the coffin to be let out. Although Burgess is a minor character, Crichton implies that his fate is a tragic one, for the man is an example of the possible disastrous consequences of criminal activity. Although he initially escapes, he is eventually arrested and sentenced to two years in prison, where he dies of disease, leaving his family without an income.

Miss Miriam is a secondary character who has key roles in many of Pierce’s cons, including the heist itself. She is Pierce’s lover. According to Clean Willy, she is “well carried, a good figure, and well-spoke” (79). Like Pierce himself, her origins are obscure, but the narrative suggests that she once worked as an actor. Also like Pierce, she has a gift for accents and costumes that allows her to move between different social classes with ease. This talent makes her invaluable as a member of Pierce’s crew. She is also highly intelligent, and Pierce treats her as something of an equal, for the narrative states that “she was an integral part of the plan, and was probably the first of the thieves to know Pierce’s intentions” (79).

Miriam takes part in the cons in both a named and an unnamed capacity. For instance, during the “carriage fakement” con that Pierce uses to gain access to the Trent household and make a copy of Trent’s key, Miriam plays the part of the “handsome, refined woman” in the carriage (95): the one who asks the footman for directions. She is also the woman who acts as the madam for the 12-year-old girl with whom Pierce arranges for Mr. Fowler to have sex. Miriam proves herself to be endlessly loyal to Pierce, even after his arrest; she helps him to escape from custody by disguising herself as an old woman and passing him the handcuff key. At the end of the novel, rumors report that she is living in Paris (and later in London) with Pierce. Ultimately, Miriam is a successful con artist because she leverages Victorian assumptions that women are weak and unintelligent, using common biases in her favor. For instance, she draws attention away from Pierce on the day of the heist by acting like a damsel in distress. She is so successful in going unnoticed that she is not arrested along with the other co-conspirators.