The Great Train Robbery, the Second Gang Read online

  THE SOUTH COAST RAIDERS

  THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY’S SECOND FIRM

  JIM MORRIS

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  © 2014 Jim Morris

  Jim Morris has asserted his rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-78301-419-4

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  THE SOUTH COAST RAIDERS - THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY’S SECOND FIRM

  It was in January of 1963 that Brian Field made a phone call to Gordon Goody; a call that was to start the chain of events that saw the two of them and most of Gordon’s firm, together with the majority of the South Coast Raiders, spend a lot of years in prison. The call was to tell Gordon that huge amounts of money were carried routinely on the ‘up’ special mail train, which travelled from Glasgow to Euston each night.

  Gordon discussed it with his firm and Buster Edwards made contact with his friend Tommy Wisbey, because he knew Tommy worked with a railway expert. Buster’s friendship with Tommy was long and well established, though they hadn’t worked together for many years.

  Buster had heard of a series of raids on trains in the south of England, of which a few were characterised by the train stopping at a danger (red) signal on the track. He didn’t have too many details, but enough to know one of the firm was able to fix signals to show danger (red).

  The main attraction for Buster and particularly the firm’s chief planner, Bruce Reynolds, was a small, insignificant man one could pass in the street without a second glance: Roger John Cordrey. They were keen to know if he could help or advise them on how to stop a train.

  Buster was a garrulous man who had a lot of friends and even more acquaintances – and whether they liked it or not, in the underworld of London in the post-war crime boom, a lot of rumours would fly around.

  When the idea of robbing a train was again floated to Bruce and the firm, the initial response was one of scepticism because they’d tried trains before with limited success. But the two things that made them take note were the possible prize, which ran into millions, and the source of the initial information they had, Brian Field, who was known to be reliable. So with Charlie Wilson and Gordon Goody, together with Roy James and others, they started to look at the feasibility.

  More enquiries were made, which included meetings with the person who was to become their source of specific information. In many books this character is referred to as the Ulsterman and he’d taken the original idea to Brian Field.

  An alternative job was a bullion consignment coming up from Southampton, but the train and the Ulsterman seemed to gain the most support.

  However, when the firm thought about the project in any depth they always came back to the same problem – stopping the train. They learned that the target, a travelling post office, didn’t carry passengers, so the communication cord was not a possibility, but using that had badly backfired in the past anyway.

  *

  It has been suggested that Bruce’s firm attacked the Irish mail train in February 1963, but this seems unlikely. The whole matter is discussed in Piers Paul Read’s The Train Robbers, though he says the date was early January. But his description of what happened and who seemed to be involved taken with contemporary reports, does tally quite well. So it looks more likely to be the firm Buster was in contact with through Tommy Wisbey, a firm known as the South Coast Raiders.

  The Irish mail train robbery was quite simple: the train staff discovered some men riffling through the registered mail. The guard had gone to attend to duties elsewhere on the train, and the firm didn’t expect anyone to come into the guard’s carriage. But the ticket collector had been approached by a soldier wanting to alight at Crewe, where the train didn’t stop, but there was the possibility of a request stop. When the ticket collector went into the guard’s compartment to sort this out, the firm were busy. A punch-up ensued, which the guard discovered when he returned. Some dining car staff had also joined in, or were dragged in. As it turned out, the train stopped at a station instead of in a secluded place and the firm made good their escape.

  The story that got back to Bruce, Buster et al. via the underworld grapevine was slightly different. If it was the South Coast Raiders then they were noted for their forays on the southern lines, so that evening their reputation was enhanced even if their pockets weren’t.

  One problem for Roger was that the signalling system on the lines to the Midlands and North was slightly different to that for the southern areas, but he was soon able to figure out a method. As I’ll discuss later it was often Roger who was at the line side when a raid was made, and it was he who stopped the train, often in an area away from a station which was how the other members of the firm alighted the train and made their getaway.

  How and ever it might help for this piece to consider the disaster that Bruce, Buster and their firm encountered in trying to rob trains, and they soon decided it was hopeless. However, if the South Coast Raiders were able to do it, then there must be, they thought, something amiss with their methods.

  *

  Word had come to Bruce and his firm that wages for railway workers in Swindon were carried by train from Paddington down to Wiltshire. The prize might be in the region of £10,000, so it was well worth looking into.

  A trip to Paddington showed them that, sure enough, the cash boxes did go on a Cheltenham-bound train that called at Swindon. So they drew up a plan to find a convenient spot along the track where, if the train stopped, they could alight with the cash boxes and rendezvous with a van and driver to take the boxes, and also a car and driver to take them back to London.

  They knew the information was sound and they found what they thought was the perfect spot adjacent to Hayes and Harlington station. They staged a dress rehearsal for the raid, which seemed to go well. Buster and another member of the firm travelled out from the capital, and when they were level with the signal box at Hayes and Harlington station they pulled the communication cord and the train stopped in exactly the right place.

  All was set for a £10,000 prize in railwaymen’s wages, which was usually taken down to Swindon on Thursday mornings. Their intelligence proved accurate, as four bullion boxes were loaded onto the train at 9.05 am on Thursday 8 November 1962, and the train started out from Paddington. The passengers on board included Bruce, Buster, Charlie, Gordon (complete with crowbar), Bill Jennings and two other accomplices. Another firm member was in a disused factory with a van all ready to load up the money, and Roy James was probably in a car ready to transport the men.

  Buster was the signal man for Bill, who was locked in a lavatory, ready to pull the communication cord. One at a time the partners in crime moved from their seats to the back of the train. The timings were perfect. The guard was overpowered with a glimpse of the crowbar and a hiss from Gordon, and Charlie, with bolt-cutters, was simultaneously at the chains that held the bullion boxes safely in place.

  According to contemporary reports, when the communications cord was pulled the train screeched to a halt, but the ‘mastermind’ had miscalculated when to p
ull the cord. But the robbers told a different story: that the train didn’t stop. As the now-familiar landmarks flashed past and Buster knocked on the toilet door, Bill pulled the cord, but nothing happened.

  After a second pull of the cord, which was again ineffective, the two men made quickly for the guard’s carriage. The others were there with the boxes all ready and the doors open, ready to disembark. But they saw Hayes and Harlington station flash past.

  “This train fuckin’ ain’t stoppin’,” said Buster when he entered.

  He tried what he thought was the guard’s brake, and finally the train drew to a halt, but a long way past their spot.

  Frantically, they tried to carry the boxes, but they soon found out the boxes were incredibly heavy – they were lined with lead. The idea was soon dropped, as were the boxes.

  A fifty-three-year old railway ganger on the line saw the commotion and soon realised what was afoot – he gave chase but couldn’t catch any of them.

  Gordon managed to get one of the boxes back to the van, and this contained about £700. The prize, then, was far less than they’d anticipated.

  So their expertise on trains and stopping them was far from satisfactory. Most folk in the firm then, and reading this now, would realise this had simply been a bit of bad luck – but it was a weak link. And when the possibility of another job involving trains presented itself, the weak link needed to be strengthened.

  *

  The firm continued to plan their future train raid. They concluded that the train would have to be held up away from a station (at a station the alarm could be raised very quickly), so that left open countryside as the only option. Not a problem to some, but to Bruce and the firm there was a large amount of money hurtling along at eighty miles an hour; if they could stop the train then they might find a way of unloading the money.

  Buster made his approach to the South Coast Raiders, but the greeting he got was lukewarm as the firm were not too impressed that their exploits on the southern railway routes out of London seemed to be a topic of general conversation. After the initial outrage the two firms did get together, although, contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t a match made in heaven.

  With so much written about the main firm, it would be quite useful to look at the second firm, the South Coast Raiders as they’d became known.

  *

  Albert Henry Cordrey was a vulcaniser in a rubber mill. He had married Georgelyn May in 1910 – they were both in their early twenties and they settled down to married life in Summersley Street in Wandsworth. They had two children: May Florence in the late summer of 1914, and Roger John in the same period in 1922. Unfortunately, Albert died in early 1928 and Georgelyn later remarried. Eventually, they found themselves in rather pleasant surroundings in the Hampton Court district where relatives lived, and life settled down reasonably well.

  But Roger became a gambler with almost manic application and his losses were to become huge. One way of plugging the financial gap was theft, and so it was that Roger’s criminal career was born. He was careful, though, and for twenty years, apart from a conviction for embezzlement, all went well.

  By the time of the Great Train Robbery, Roger was forty-one years old. His legitimate front was that he was a florist in Brighton. He’d married Dulcie Brace in 1943 and they had three sons (though some commentators say four). But with all the comings and goings of gambling life mixed with criminal life, his wife felt she was seeing less and less of Roger, so their marriage was on the rocks. It ended with his wife’s adultery, after which Roger got a divorce – he was in prison when matters were finalised.

  Peta Fordham in The Robbers’ Tale describes Roger thus: ‘He wanders through the story like a subdued poltergeist.’ In one sense he was like Jimmy White and could just blend into the background. His arrest was the first in the series, so to speak, and the events surrounding it were bizarre to say the least.

  To his great credit, Roger did his best to keep his family together, though getting a long prison sentence didn’t help. Dulcie Cordrey had well and truly gone to earth, and as late as April of 1964, when Roger was sent down, Tony Cordrey was quoted to have said, “I don’t know where Mum is.” She had been in a relationship with a Mr Jack Levene, who lived in Brighton.

  Roger, not surprisingly, became a key figure in the planning of the robbery, and he made several trips up to Sears Crossing and Bridego Bridge, usually with Bruce to plan his part.

  Like the rest of the robbers, he was invited to make his home in a number of Her Majesty’s establishments before finishing up at Coldingley Prison in Surrey, from where he was paroled on 17 April 1971. He’d been up before the parole board on three occasions before the home secretary accepted its recommendations. Roger said, after he’d been out of prison for a good while, that regret was “. . . an empty emotion”, and although you could learn from life’s experiences, it was never productive to regret them. Piers Paul Read wasn’t quite as mysterious as Peta Fordham, and he had Roger ‘shuffle’ through prison life as he did his thieving life.

  Tommy Wisbey (Thomas William) was born in 1930 in Camberwell in London. He grew up to be a man who could look after himself; he married Irene (Rene) Hill in 1951 and they had two daughters, Marilyn in early 1954 and Lorraine in April 1955.

  Tom was the eldest of three boys: George was four years younger, and then four years after him came Ron. Tom left school at fourteen and was a porter in Covent Garden for a while. He completed his National Service and settled down to life working in the family business. Tommy had relatives and friends in the crime industry, so his destiny, to a degree, had been set.

  As the South Coast Raiders were coming of age, Tommy ran a bookmaker’s shop, and he continued to do so right up until the Great Train Robbery. He freely admitted that there were times when violence was a necessity, but he loved to act the clown, so one is left with the impression that if violence was a way to get the prize then it would be used.

  When they received their thirty-year sentences, Rene was with Gillian, Jim Hussey’s future wife, when the “bird was dished out”, and she felt thirty years between them was far more lenient than expected. When she was told the sentence was thirty years each, she fainted.

  Frank Munroe is the name given to the fourth member of the firm; his true identity is not known.

  Bob Welch (Robert Alfred) was born in Shoreditch to James W. and Maryanne. Maryanne Quaintrell had married James Welch in 1907 and they had eight children altogether, although two died: Emily when aged nine, and a son. Jim (James John) was the eldest child and then came Mary, followed by Charles, then John, Ben and William G. (Billy). The second (surviving) daughter was Annie, who appeared in 1927, and Bob was born in 1929.

  The family lived in Westmoreland Place in the Shoreditch/Hoxton area of East London, which was not noted for its prosperity:

  “Westmoreland Place was a notorious place, but it was lovely: you just go into someone’s house and there’d be a couple of kids sat at a table, perhaps having bread and jam or something and a cup of tea. No one had anything. We used to go round nicking little things from shops, food and that.”

  In the interwar years there was not so much little pockets of poverty in London but great big bags full. The Wall Street crash and the general strike converged to create a London, and an England for that matter, where poverty was rife. An effective (though not recommended) cure for unemployment came when Hitler invaded Poland.

  Ten-year-old Bob’s life changed then – his brothers didn’t hesitate and went off to war. Mum was left at home with a constant struggle and worry for her elder boys’ safety. And a huge blow came one day when the family were notified that John had been reported as missing. It was about the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, so looking back it’s not surprising in the chaos that some soldiers went ‘off the radar’ for a while. But he turned up, so to speak, in a prisoner of war camp a few months later.

  During the war the Red Cross could get food parcels and extras to the men held by the enemy
– what they were given in the POW camps defies description. So Mrs Welch, Bob’s mum, would get a bar of chocolate and a few other bits to send off to John. The problem was that this was all on the black market, so the cost for even a medium-sized bar of chocolate would be something like two shillings or half a crown (10 – 12½p); six or eight times the usual price.

  Bob was a bright boy, and even though he was still a couple of years off his teens, his street sense was well developed. After dark he would go back to the shop where his mother had bought the chocolate and find a way to break in. At the till he’d take only what his mother had paid out – well, usually, or perhaps a tiny bit more – and he was careful to make as sure as he could that the till didn’t look too sparse.

  Westmoreland Place didn’t have a good war:

  “Everything was bombed out and we had to move from 23 to 26 Westmoreland Place – there were only about three families left in the street. I got to about fourteen and I was a Naval Cadet. They built air-raid shelters in the street and put beds in them. If a bomb dropped on you, it would kill you. And they did get close: we’d have a fuckin’ party and the bombs would be going off all round.”

  Eventually, Bob was evacuated to Bedfordshire, but all his family survived the war.

  In the early 1960s Bob worked with his brother-in-law in the Anglo-Italian Fruit Co. Then he opened the New Crown Club, with a restaurant and a dance hall, at Elephant and Castle in October 1962. This venture was with two other partners. The club was closed down after only six months or so, and Bob was fined £230 for a few irregularities in the licencing laws. But the club was a meeting place for a number of London’s underworld. Brian Field was a regular visitor, and Brian’s contacts stretched far and wide.

  Bob married Helen, (Pat), but there was a problem with the couple conceiving and Bob had a long relationship with one of his staff at the club. While Bob was away, Pat divorced him, but it doesn’t sound as though her health was too good.