Ronnie Biggs

Ronald Arthur Biggs (8 August 1929 – 18 December 2013) was a British criminal who helped plan and carry out the Great Train Robbery of 1963. He subsequently became notorious for his escape from prison in 1965, living as a fugitive for 36 years, and for his various publicity stunts while in exile. In 2001, Biggs returned to the United Kingdom and spent several years in prison, where his health rapidly declined. He was released from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2009 and died in a nursing home in December 2013.

Biggs was born in Stockwell, London, on 8 August 1929. As a child during the Second World War, he was evacuated to Flitwick, Bedfordshire, and then Delabole, Cornwall.

In 1947, at age 18, Biggs enlisted in the Royal Air Force. He was dishonourably discharged for desertion two years later after breaking into a local chemist shop. One month after that, he was convicted of stealing a car and sentenced to prison. On his release, Biggs took part in a failed robbery attempt of a bookmaker's office in Lambeth, London. During his incarceration in HM Prison Wandsworth, he met Bruce Reynolds.

After his third prison sentence, Biggs tried to go straight and trained as a carpenter. In February 1960, he married 21-year-old Charmian (Brent) Powell in Swanage, the daughter of a primary school headmaster. They had, in total, three sons together.

In 1963, Biggs, who needed money to fund a deposit on the purchase of a house for his family, happened to be working on the house of a train driver who was about to retire. The driver has been variously identified as "Stan Agate", or because of his age, "Old Pete" or "Pop". The train driver's real name is unknown, since he was never caught. Biggs introduced the driver to the train robbery plot, which involved Reynolds. Biggs was given the job of arranging for Agate to move the Royal Mail train after it had been waylaid.

On the night of the hold up, Biggs told his wife he was off logging with Reynolds in Wiltshire. The gang then stopped the mail train in the early hours of 8 August 1963, which was Biggs's 34th birthday. Agate was unable to operate the main line diesel-electric locomotive because he had only driven shunting locomotives on the Southern Region. Therefore, the driver of the intercepted train, Jack Mills, was coshed with an iron bar and forced to move the engine and mail carriages forward to a nearby bridge over a roadway, which had been chosen as the unloading point. Biggs's main task had been to get Agate to move the train, and when it became obvious that the two were useless in that regard, they were banished to a waiting vehicle while the train was looted.

When the men had unloaded 120 of the 128 mailbags from the train within Reynolds' allotted timetable, and returned to their hideout at Leatherslade Farm, various sources show that the robbery yielded the participants £2.6 million (equivalent to about £45.4 million in 2023); Biggs's share was £147,000 (equivalent to £2,600,000 in 2023). With their timetable brought forward due to the police investigation closing in, Biggs returned home on the following Friday, with his stash in two canvas bags.

After an accomplice failed to carry out his instructions to burn down Leatherslade Farm to destroy any evidence there, Biggs's fingerprints were found on a tomato sauce bottle by Metropolitan Police investigators. Three weeks later, he was arrested in South London, along with 11 other members of the gang. In 1964, nine of the 15-strong gang, including Biggs, were jailed for the crime. Most received sentences of 30 years.