Ronnie Biggs - Great Train Robbery

Great Train Robbery

Biggs was born in Lambeth, London. As a child during the Second World War, he was evacuated to Flitwick, Bedfordshire for a time. In 1947, at age 18, he joined the RAF but was dishonorably discharged in 1949 for desertion, serving for only two years. In 1960, he married Charmian Powell, daughter of a local primary school headmaster, with whom he had three sons (one deceased). In 1963, Biggs participated in the Great Train Robbery. Together with other gang members, he stole £2.6 million from a mail train, the equivalent of around £40 million (US$67 million) today, after holding up a mail train from Glasgow to London in the early hours of the morning on 8 August 1963 (his 34th birthday). Jack Mills, the engine driver, was beaten with an iron bar in the course of the robbery. In 1964, 9 of the 15-strong gang that were at the track were jailed for the crime. Most received sentences of 30 years. Biggs served 19 months before escaping from Wandsworth Prison on 8 July 1965 by scaling the wall with a rope ladder and dropping on to a waiting removal van. He initially fled to Brussels via boat, then to Paris with his wife Charmian and two sons, Nicholas and Chris, where he acquired new identity papers and underwent plastic surgery.