BONNIE & CLYDE

America’s most infamous robbers were Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie Parker was a pretty Baptist born in 1911. Her father died when she was four and they moved to Texas. It was here she met 21 year old Clyde Barrow, a sadist and petty thief.
Arrested for burglary, Bonnie smuggled a gun to him and he escaped. A further period in prison led him to get someone to cut off two toes. Released on crutches, he soon joined Bonnie and they began their life as outlaws, holding up and shooting their way through America.
Natural bunglers, killing was the way they escaped. By March 1933 they were joined by Clyde’s brother and wife. Evading one shoot-out in July a major firelight led to his brother being shot up.
Bonnie and Clyde continued their killing spree and robberies until six heavily armed policemen pumped 87 rounds into their Ford Sedan on 23 May 1934. The escapades of Bonnie and Clyde had come to a bloody end.

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GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

The Great Train Robbery happened when a gang stopped and descended upon the Glasgow to London mail train at Bridego Bridge, Bucks, at dawn on 8 August 1963. Organised by small time crooks Bruce Reynolds and Thomas Wisbey, they used army lorries and dressed in balaclavas for the raid, disappearing to nearby Leatherslade Farm to lie low. But it didn’t go accorder to plan.
Train driver Jack Mills fought back, being coshed over the head. But the biggest mistake was not sweeping clean the farm when they left. Police found fingerprints of all the gang.
Although netting over £2 million the gang was rounded up over the next couple of years. Buster Edwards escaped abroad, but eventually came back. Many got 30 years. One – Ronnie Biggs escaped from prison, gaining Brazilian citizenship by getting a woman pregnant and having a son. Biggs finally came home in 2000 for hospital treatment.

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CHARLES PEACE

The greatest burglar of the 19th century was Charles Peace, a rubber faced, small and agile man born in 1832. A cat burglar for over 20 years around Manchester/Leeds and later London, by day he’d ride a cart, going into houses looking for unwanted furniture, identifying valuable goods and breaking in on a night with his tools in a violin case.
He had many personas and postures to evade detection. He murdered twice – a policeman in Manchester and a Mr Dyson, husband of a woman he was trying to seduce. He was finally arrested after shooting another policeman whilst trying to escape.
Not knowing who he was – the police thought his name was John Ward – he was found guilty of attempted murder, but a girlfriend identified him for the reward and he was sent to Leeds to face murder charges. On the train journey he tried to escape by somersaulting out of the window, but landed on his head. He was hanged in Leeds in 1879.

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COLONEL BLOOD

One early spectacular thief was Colonel Thomas Blood. Born in Ireland to a rich blacksmith in 1618, he longed for adventure, joining the Fifth Monarchy Men, an apocalyptic cult dedicated to destroying the English monarchy.
When the English Civil War broke out he did a U-turn, fighting for the Royalists, but changed sides when it was obvious they’d be defeated. Rewarded by marrying an heiress, with the 1660 Restoration of the Stuarts he fled to Holland.
In 1670 he returned to England as a doctor and failed in an attempt to kidnap and murder the Duke of Ormond. He then decided to steal the Crown Jewels. As ‘Parson Blood’ he befriended the Keeper of the jewels, Talbot Edwards. On 9 May 1671, he and three others killed Edwards and made off with the St Edwards Crown, sceptre and orb. The alarm raised, they were all caught.
Blood demanded to see the king. He then made up a story of a plot to kill him, the King believing his words and pardoning him for exposing the plot. Blood lived out his life in London’s high society.

(c) Anthony North, December 2008