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NEW BOOK EXPLORES DURHAM'S LINKS TO THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY
RONNIE Biggs’ links to a North-East jail are exposed in a new book by a long-term friend of the late great train robber. Mark Tallentire reports.
IT was arguably the crime of the century.
After tampering with railway line signals, a 15-strong gang of robbers hold up a Royal Mail train and steal £2.6m – the equivalent of £46m in today’s money.
Those were the events of August 8, 1963, and what became known as the Great Train Robbery.
Ronnie Biggs, one of the gang, famously escaped from prison and lived as a fugitive for 36 years, before returning to the UK in 2001.
Biggs spent eight years in prison before being released on compassionate grounds. He died shortly before Christmas, aged 84.
Mike Gray was just a boy when the Great Train Robbery took place but, having first taken an interest in the crime while working on a school project back in 1974, it would become a major part of his life too.
Over the next 15 years, he built up a collection of newspaper cuttings about the robbery so extensive it filled a large suitcase.
Wondering what to do with his archive, Mike decided to write to Biggs, by then living a notoriously high-profile life beyond the reach of the British authorities, in Brazil.
Letters were exchanged and so began a firm friendship which continued after Biggs’ homecoming and right up to his death in a north London nursing home.
Since 2009, Mike, an estate agent employee from Kent by day – a writer by night, has published a series of books about Biggs and his infamous crime.
Now, in his latest – 101 Interesting Facts about Ronnie Biggs and The Great Train Robbery, the gang’s links to Durham Prison are explored.
After the gang were sentenced to between three and 30 years behind bars, three – Gordon Goody, Roy “The Weasel” James and Thomas Wisbey – were sent to Durham, then the highest security prison in the country.
Goody was regarded as crucial to the operation, but each of the trio got 30 years.
“Durham’s E-wing was infamous,” Mike says.
“It had some of the most dangerous prisoners in the UK.
“But sending the robbers to Durham was also an extra punishment, because they all lived in the south of England.
“Visits were allowed once every two weeks in those days.”
Biggs’ escape from London’s Wandsworth prison in August 1965 prompted even tighter security at Durham, with a machine-gun trained officer on every corner.
And soon Goody, Weasel and James were joined by a fourth gang member – corrupt solicitor’s clerk Brian Field.
But it would be the original trio’s feelings on life inside that would cause the next public sensation.
In November 1965, they complained about E wing’s exercise area being too enclosed, demanding access to the prison’s main yard.
The then governor refused the request, viewing it as an escape threat. But one journalist, Alfred Browne of the British Press Association, was allowed behind the gates to speak to the robbers.
The story hit the headlines and within three months Goody, James and Wisbey were moved from Durham to a new “super wing” at Parkhurst prison, on the Isle of Wight.
Durham’s connections with the gang don’t end there, though.
Bruce Reynolds, the reputed mastermind of the robbery, spent several years on the run but was sent to Durham to start his 25-year sentence, remaining there until 1970.
“The public interest in the case has been because it was effectively an attack on the government,” Mike says.
“They were sentenced as if it was treason. They were very lucky not to be hanged.”
Asked his feelings about the crime, which was at the time Britain’s largest robbery and saw train driver Jack Mills beaten over the head with a metal bar, he says: “The hit on the train driver was the blot on the copy book.
“If that hadn’t happened, everyone would have looked on them as heroes.
“But all their lives were ruined. The money didn’t bring them success and happiness.
“I met Bruce and Ronnie for many years. They were non-violent criminals. Ronnie’s criminal record before the robbery was laughable.”
So, two months after his death, how should we remember Ronnie Biggs?
“He was the tea boy that became a legend,” Mike says.
“None of the other robbers wanted him in on it. They voted 15 to one against it. There was a lot of hatred for him.
“He was a nice guy. I got on very well with him. He didn’t have had a bad bone in his body.”
101 Interesting Facts on Ronnie Biggs and The Great Train Robbery, from Apex Publishing, is available now on Kindle, priced £1.99.
The Northern Echo
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THE LIFE OF RONNIE BIGGS
Written by Jack Burt on December 5, 2013 in Local History - No comments
Jack Burt takes a journey through the life and experiences of Lambeth-born Ronnie Biggs with the assistance of Mike Gray.
We can safely say that everyone has heard of the Great Train Robbery of 1963, when a group of 15 gangsters led by Bruce Reynolds attacked a train and successfully made off with £2.6 million.
But how much do we know of those involved in the robbery dubbed by the media as “the crime of the century”? What were their lives like? Brixtonite Mike Gray, who has an unusual admiration for Riggs, has now written numerous books about the man. I had a few questions to ask him about his friendship with Biggs.
Ronnie Biggs, prominently known for his involvement in the robbery, was born in Lambeth in 1929 and grew up in Brixton during the Second World War. He was evacuated to Bedfordshire for a period of time. In 1947, after the war, he would joined the RAF before eventually being dishonourably discharged for desertion after having served only two years with the military. Biggs married Charmian Powell in 1960 and they had three sons.
What occurred later would skyrocket Ronnie Biggs and others into a position of fame and history. On August 8 1963, Ronnie Biggs and 14 others led by Bruce Reynolds attacked a Royal Mail train heading from Glasgow to London in the early hours of Thursday morning. Although unarmed, they had managed to escape with a total of around £2.6 million.
Mike Gray is one of Biggs’s greatest defenders, describing him as “a very ordinary humble man” going on to say “He was not and never has been a violent criminal, he only got involved in the train robbery because he knew a retired train driver, and Biggs’s best mate was the mastermind of the robbery, Bruce Reynolds. None of the great train robbers had ever heard of Biggs before, he is just like your family granddad, his whole life has been of a working class background and hes had to fight for every penny/dollar offered to him.”
Gray first contacted Biggs in September 1989, when Biggs was living in Rio De Janeiro. At the time, there was no extradition treaty between Brazil and the U.K, which meant that legally Ronnie Biggs could not be extradited from Brazil by the British government.
Gray was struck by case from the very beginning and became obsessed with finding Biggs while he was on the run. He collected as many clippings about the man as he could, mainly – bizarrely – from the publication Loot, which had an edition in most countries of the world at that time. What he really wanted was to get in contact with the man himself. And eventually he got hold of his address and sent him a letter. It was the start of a real friendship.
Gray and Biggs began to send letters and photographs back and forth to each other for around a month until Biggs gave him his telephone number. They would speak to each other roughly every month until Biggs’ voluntary return in May 2001 when he was imprisoned. Gray would visit him in prison too.
When asked why he would want this generation and those ahead to know about Ronnie Biggs and The great train robbery, Mike responded “First of all, crime does NOT pay.” then adding “All the great train robbers lost out on years of life, lost family, had the majority of the money stolen from them while they served 30 year prison sentences, etc, But from the historical point, it was Britain’s biggest cash robbery, then 2.6 million, but today some 55.2 Million.”
“The police did a great job of tracking the robbers and the courts obviously sided with the police and handed down severe draconian sentences of 14 to 30 years, and in those days (1964) parole was not Home Office legislation.”
“The Great Train Robbery Quiz Book”, “The Ronnie Biggs Quiz Book”, and “101 Interesting Facts on Ronnie Biggs and The Great Train Robbery”, all consisting of quiz like questions and facts about Ronnie Biggs and the robbery itself.
It’s clear throughout my research of Biggs and his life, that he was a man who quickly obtained the skill of being able to circumvent the British law enforcement for a long period of time, though sometimes out of sheer luck. It is interesting how the crime was conceived, conducted, and what it resulted for its participants. But we must never confuse this interest with the fact that it was indeed a crime.
Brixton Blog
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-- Radio and TV
An excellent book, I really enjoyed the 101 Facts on Ronnie and the Train Robbery.
Keith Nicol, EuroWeekly News
After the superb Ronnie Biggs quiz book, another excellent publication Mike, keep them coming.
Liam Galvin, Film & TV Producer
A very interesting and informative book, full of train robbery unknown facts, very enjoyable.
Jamie Riordan, Propeller Media Ltd (Producer/Founder)