Communications and Crime
| Author | William O. Gay |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X7304600303 |
| Date | 01 July 1973 |
| Published date | 01 July 1973 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
WILLIAM
O.
GAY,
Q.P.M.,
M.A.
Chief Constable,
British Transport Police
COMMUNICATIONS AND CRIME
2.
The Nature and Extent of
Transport Crime
Men have been seen to walk on the moon and nobody can say
to what destiny those steps will take humanity. Transport is said
to bring civilization, but it also brings problems. When the Mont-
golfier brothers made their first balloon ascent in 1783, Horace
Walpole, who saw it, expressed the hope that the "new mechanic
meteors" would prove to be "only playthings for the learned or
the idle and not be converted into engines of destruction". In later
years some men saw the railway locomotive as an engine of
destruction and foretold nothing but the destruction of amenity,
of tranquillity, female virtue and much else.
The
railway enthusiast
saw the puffer as the herald of the dawn of Utopia. Thieves,
unfortunately, just saw the railways as a golden opportunity. In
the Annual Register in 1832, a writer on the "Advantages of Rail-
roads" said the new means of transport could almost guarantee
freedom from theft. In the event the new enterprises were soon
reporting criminal damage, theft, and other manifestations of
human misconduct. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway re-
ported malicious obstructions of the track in their first year and
the Royal Commission of 1836-39 heard agreat deal about
organized theft and casual pilferage. On Derby Day, 1838, the
Metropolitan Police, not for the first time, helped the Railway
Police when a mob of 5,000 stormed Nine Elms Station, took over
atrain and caused the cancellation of all services for the day.
In the early days, it should be mentioned, the railways
ran
excur-
sions
not
only to race meetings
but
to public executions and illegal
prize fights. In 1840, for example, a special train was run from
Wadebridge to take people to see two men hanged at Bodmin and
in 1849 hundreds travelled by train to see James Rush hanged at
Norwich for a double murder.
The
disgraceful scenes at the execu-
tion of Franz Muller, the first railway murderer, in 1864, when
July (973 206
"open robbery and violence
had
its way virtually unchecked"
contributed to the abolition of public execution in 1868. In the
same year the railways were made subject to a heavy penalty for
running trains to prize fights. Some modern football crowd scenes
seem to be
not
unlike those prohibited spectacles.
The Scene is Set
The patterns of crime on the railways and the methods used by
criminals who exploited the opportunities offered were established
early and have merely varied in frequency and seriousness accord-
ing to the state of the nation at the time. Criminals, in the main,
are not very clever. Like historians, they tend to repeat each other.
They also have a vanity or perhaps amental block which impels
them to attempt a crime when others have failed, in the belief
that they will succeed. Certainly the crimes committed in the rail-
way's infancy
and
age of puberty have persisted through to its
maturity and old age. They will continue through its period of
re-invigoration.
Railway terminals in London in particular soon became a Mecca
for opportunist thieves of all kinds. Henry Mayhew in his account
of London's underworld between 1851 and 1862 made special
reference to the pickpockets, male and female, who operated on
the stations. Luggage thefts were soon reported. Thieves who
had
previously worked the canals
and
stage coaches and knew all
about the techniques of "touching the rattler", "flying the basket",
and "the drag lay" were soon frequenting the stations on re-
connaissance and making the acquaintance of possible useful
contacts on the staff. "There is not a railway terminus in or about
London", reported the Illustrated London News on September 27,
1845, "which has not been plundered to a very large extent and
the detection of the robbers until lately has defied the most skilful
ingenuity of the several railway officers". A
man
was arrested
after being "watched for nearly five weeks, during which time he
had
as many residences at different parts of the town". He and
an accomplice were convicted and, appropriately, transported for
14 years for thefts at Paddington and other stations. Luggage thefts
still continue - there were 1,468 in 1972 and 135 thieves were
arrested. Some notorious convicts have begun their life of crime
stealing luggage, branched out into more desperate ventures and
ended their days as elderly shambling sneak thieves barely able
to carry the cases they
had
stolen.
The patience and determination of some of the early thieves
was demonstrated in a gold robbery in 1855, sensational in its day.
Acting on information from, and with the active assistance of,
a highly placed railway official,the principal thief boarded aLondon
Bridge-Folkestone train, entered the guard's van, stole some gold
bullion by substituting lead shot to make up the weight and left
207 July 1973
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