The Great Train Robbery

Meanwhile, Pierce has concocted a plan to break into Mr. Trent’s house and make a copy of his safe key. They will be performing a scam known as the “carriage fakement.” On November 12, 1854, at 9 pm, Miss Miriam (Pierce’s lover) pulls up in a carriage outside the Trent residence. When the porter comes out to assist her with directions to a nearby home, Pierce and Agar sneak into the house, pick the locks, and get to the cellar. Around 9:45, Pierce finds the key and Agar makes two copies in wax. At 10:00, Barlow releases rats into the Trent family dog kennel, which causes the dogs to bark. In the commotion, Pierce and Agar sneak out of the house undiscovered.

Fowler meets the 12-year-old girl that Pierce has arranged for him. She leads him to a house, where they are welcomed by Miss Miriam. Miss Miriam tells Fowler that the cost of the meeting will be 100 guineas. He pays and goes to an upstairs bedroom with the girl, Sarah. She tells him to take off the chain with the key on it that he wears around his neck. While he is having sex with her, someone takes the key and later returns it, but he doesn’t notice.

Although the team now has two of the four keys, they still need to get the two keys held in the South Eastern Railway office at London Bridge Station. In December of 1854, Miss Miriam reports to the team that the rail company has hired more guards for the office, so Pierce makes a new plan. He finds Henson, who is a “skipper,” or someone accustomed to sleeping in small spaces. Pierce tasks Henson with surveilling the station overnight from the vantage point of a wooden crate. Henson reports that the guard on the door, who drinks beer on duty, leaves his post for about a minute every night to pee. Agar says it will be hard to make copies of two keys in that short amount of time, but he can do it with practice.

On December 21, 1854, the Illustrated London News reports that a constable named Peter Farrell was beaten and stripped of his clothes after being lured to the scene of an argument involving a woman and a cabby with a white scar on his forehead (Miss Miriam and Barlow). No one stops to think what an odd crime this is, as police uniforms cannot be sold and the constable had no cash on his person.

In late December of 1854, Pierce meets with a career criminal named Andrew Taggart at the King’s Arms public house in London. Taggert is a known horse thief. Pierce asks Taggert to steal a leopard for him and claims that it is a present for a woman in Paris. They negotiate a price of 25 guineas for the job. Pierce says that he will let Taggert know when he needs the leopard.

The narrative states that historically, when a crime happened in Victorian London, bystanders often got involved. On January 9, 1855, Pierce plans a “jolly gaff” scheme in which members of his crew pretend to be members of the public chasing a thief at London Bridge Station. Shortly before 11:00 am, a boy chosen by Pierce for his speed brushes up against Miss Miriam. She cries out that she has been robbed. Pierce (who is posing as her “husband”), Agar (posing as a “bystander”), and Barlow (posing as a “policeman”) chase the child. The boy runs into the South Eastern Railway office and breaks a window in his “attempt” to escape. In the commotion, Agar enters the office and figures out which of his lockpicks will unlock the office door and cabinet door. The boy is eventually caught by “policeman” Barlow, and they all leave.

That afternoon, Clean Willy goes to Pierce’s house. He watches as Pierce times Agar, who practices entering the office and making copies of the two keys in under a minute. They tell Willy that he is to climb the roof of London Bridge Station, go through the broken office window, and unlock the cabinet with one key and the front door with another. At 11:30 pm, when the guard at the door leaves to urinate, Agar will enter the office, make copies of the keys, and leave. Then, Willy is to lock everything up and leave through the window.

At 9:00 pm, Willy breaks into the office and unlocks the cabinet. Agar is hiding in the station, waiting for his moment to break into the office. Agar wonders what the ultimate score will be for this job. Meanwhile, a drunken Irishman wanders into the station and accuses the guard at the door of being up to no good; he then calls for the police, and the constable escorts him out. Agar hopes that during the commotion, Willy was able to unlock the office door. Pierce, the “drunken Irishman,” walks out of the station and sits with Barlow in the nearby waiting cab. At 11:30, the guard at the door leaves to urinate. Agar sprints into the office, opens the cabinet, makes a copy of each of the two keys, and sprints back to his hiding place just before the guard returns.

At the Casino de Venice, Pierce sits next to a man who is wearing a railway uniform. The man asks if he is Mr. Simms, and Pierce says he is. The man is Richard Burgess, “a Mary Blaine scrob, or guard on the railway” (135). Pierce knows that Burgess is poor and has a sick child. He promises to pay Burgess £200 for looking the other way during their planned activities and gives him £10 as a sign of good faith. Pierce says that a man will ask him “whether your wife sews your uniforms” (137), and this will be a signal to ignore whatever the man is doing. Burgess realizes what Pierce is planning and tells him that there is no way to crack the safes; Burgess killed the last man who tried. Pierce says he knows about this because he saw it happen.

In Victorian England, an “eel-skinner” was a metal worker who made forged coins, illegal weapons, and bullets.

In early January of 1855, Pierce puts in an order for 5,000 LC shot with an eel-skinner in Manchester. This is a large order. Even though the man is confused, he agrees to have the order ready in a month. Altogether, Pierce orders “two hundred and fifty pounds of lead shot” from eel-skinners all over England (140).

The narrative states that the many London newspapers of the day were fascinated with the story of a man-eating tiger in India that was said to have killed many children.

Primed by this story, the crowds are thrilled by the full-grown leopard that is loaded onto the luggage car at London Bridge Station. They do not notice the armed guards loading the gold into the luggage car. An animal handler is traveling in the luggage car with the leopard. The train leaves the station, and the handler asks the guard, Burgess, if his wife sews his uniforms. The handler is Agar. He verifies that all four of the copied keys work on the safes filled with gold, then tells Burgess they won’t be taking the gold that day. An hour later, the train pulls into Folkestone station, where Pierce is waiting. The leopard is unloaded, and Pierce and Agar meet. Pierce confirms that the team will be stealing the Crimean gold next month.