1964: ‘Great Train Robbers’ get 300 years
Some of the longest sentences in British criminal history have been imposed on men involved in the so-called “Great Train Robbery”.
Sentences totalling 307 years were passed on 12 men who stole £2.6m in used bank notes after holding up the night mail train travelling from Glasgow to London last August.
The judge at Buckinghamshire Assizes in Aylesbury, Mr Justice Edmund Davies, said it would be “positively evil” if he showed leniency.
The robbery was the biggest-ever carried out in Britain.
The scale and style of the theft led to comparisons with rail robberies of the Wild West and the hunt for the perpetrators captured the public imagination.
But the judge said the robbers’ crime had in no way been “romantic” and was obviously motivated by greed.
The attack on train driver Jack Mills was proof of their violent tendencies, he added.
“Anybody who has seen that nerve-shattered engine driver can have no doubt of the terrifying effect on law-abiding citizens of a concerted assault by armed robbers,” the judge said.