THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

The 1963 Great Train Robbery, along with the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby (though not the assassination of President Kennedy), was one of my earliest TV memories. I was four at the time, so I don't remember the details; but I do remember that it was a big deal, both at the time and later.

As I grew up and found out more about what had happened, two things struck me. The first was the length of the prison sentences given to the perpetrators after they had been caught and tried, 30 years without parole for nearly all of them (there was no parole system at the time of sentencing, so they served the full 30 years). It is true that the train driver had been hit with an iron bar, when the robbers boarded the train. However, although hospitalised, he had not died, yet the 30-year sentences were much longer than many of those given in that age to murderers and rapists. Even as a child, I didn't think that that was very just.

The second was that it was never convincingly explained why there was £2.6 million (roughly £50 million in today's money) in cash on an overnight mail train without any special security arrangements. It seemed at the time, and still seems today, bizarrely easy-going.

I was reminded of all this because Ronnie Biggs died just before Christmas and his obituary was in the Economist. Biggs was only a minor member of the 16-man gang, whose only job was to recruit a train driver, who would drive the train from the hold-up signal to a suitable low bridge where the cash would be loaded into a lorry. As it happened, the (retired) driver could not drive the (modern model) train, so the original driver had to be pressed into service. This meant that Biggs' role had not been necessary. Yet he became the most famous member of the gang by escaping from prison in 1965 and finding his way to Brazil, which did not have an extradition treaty with the U.K. Safe in his hideaway, he kept up a stream of articles and interviews to a British press that always seemed to have a sneaking admiration for London criminals.

The Great Train Robbery would never happen today. Hardly anybody uses cash anymore; and if they do, it is carried in armoured car vans with GPS and radio communication. Ronnie Biggs would have to find another way to become famous, probably by appearing on Big Brother.

Walter Blotscher