Blood on the Tracks: A History of Railway Crime in Britain (11 page)

Seething with rage, Wells went straight from work and bought a pistol and some ammunition. It seems that the next day, or shortly after, he threatened Walsh with the pistol. The latter’s response was to tell Wells that his conduct would be reported to the station master. The next morning Wells had the pistol about his person when he went to work and was told to report to the stationmaster. The latter official tried to be conciliatory and suggested that if Wells apologised to Walsh, it would be possible to avoid starting disciplinary proceedings. He then told Wells to leave while he wrote a report on the matter. The report was then read to Wells who was clearly incensed. He knew his job was on the line but it seems that he was past caring.

He stormed over to where he knew Walsh would be and shot him in front of witnesses. Walsh died shortly afterwards. Firing the pistol seems to have assuaged the burning sense of outrage that had motivated Wells to such drastic measures and he seemed confused and cowed by the enormity of his action.
He was found a short distance away, sitting in a railway carriage. The pistol was beside him and he made no attempt to resist arrest.

Little could be offered in mitigation and after a brief trial Wells was condemned to be executed. The sentence was carried out and was perhaps of more significance than the squalid crime itself, because Wells was spared the added humiliation of a public hanging. He was the first felon condemned for a capital offence who was hanged privately behind the walls of a prison.

Murder and Mayhem with Burglary Thrown In

It is said that all human beings have potential for good and for evil. It is not often that we come across a group of men who were not only murderers but brutally, gratuitously violent desperadoes with absolutely no saving graces. However, in 1885 the activities of a gang of four such men were responsible for an outbreak of mayhem around the eastern end of the Solway Firth and down what became known as the West Coast Main Line, all the way from Carlisle to Lancaster. The four men were well known to the police; indeed their case notes would have filled a fair-sized pantechnicon. Their names were Anthony Rudge, John Martin, James Baker and William Baker. The last two, although sharing the same name, were not related. The police regarded them all as exceptionally dangerous.

Events in October 1885 were to show just how ruthlessly vicious and dangerous they could be. Rudge made a speciality of stealing what would now be called ‘designer dogs’ to order. A hardened recidivist, he mixed stealing dogs with robbery and was then being sought by the police in connection with a robbery at Brixton in south London. Martin was perhaps the most dangerous of the men. He was wanted in connection with the murder of a police inspector who he had shot while evading arrest after a burglary at Romford in Essex. James Baker’s speciality was receiving stolen goods and William Baker often used violence when engaged in robbery. All of them were well acquainted with the residential and other facilities of Her Majesty’s prisons.

They were career criminals whose activities were usually carried out in urban environments where they could enjoy relative anonymity. Had any police officer been watching them as they congregated at the small Dumfriesshire town of Gretna he could only have come to one conclusion, which was that they were clearly up to no good. Gretna is just north of the river Sark which marked the border between England and Scotland at this point, and it achieved immortality as being the place to which eloping couples from England fled in order to get married, an eighteenth-century Scottish law allowing the ceremony of legal marriage to take place by means of a declaration in front of witnesses.

They had arrived at Gretna on a special train put on for a local sporting event, but it was not sport that they had in mind – it was burglary, and no ordinary burglary at that. They were planning to break into Netherby Hall, the ancestral home of Sir Frederick Graham. They knew that his wife owned some very fine and valuable jewellery, and with their contacts they were certain that they could find a ready market for their booty. Netherby Hall is about two miles north-east of the small market town of Longtown, itself about three miles east of Gretna. The core of the hall is a pele tower, a small fortress which was designed to withstand a short siege, very necessary in the lawless days when these debatable lands were being fought over by the Border Reivers, the ruthless cut-throat gangsters who terrorised the Borders for centuries.

However, the gang had little interest in matters historical when they arrived at Gretna, where their first action was to deposit some cases at the station. They reconnoitred Gretna and its surrounding district as far as Longtown and made some enquiries which elicited the information that the Graham family was in residence at Netherby. The next day James Baker retrieved one of the cases from the left-luggage office at Gretna station.

They spent much of the day in a pub close to the station, and it is probable that the contents of the case had a bearing on the planned burglary because one of the pub’s customers saw them apparently engaged in making a wax impression of some keys. The gang were not the kind of people who looked as if they would welcome enquiries about their activities. A sensible man would avoid catching their eyes. The customer discreetly mentioned what he had seen to the pub landlord but the latter was too busy to do anything about it.

It was dark when the gang entered the grounds of Netherby Hall. They broke in without being detected and made their way to the room where Lady Graham kept her jewellery. This was seized and the gang left the scene quickly. The burglary was discovered shortly afterwards. Various precious items were missing and it was clear that a ladder had been used to gain entry. An outraged Sir Frederick was informed. His immediate response was to send a rider to enlist the help of the police while he gathered a posse of grooms, footmen, gamekeepers and other male servants. They proceeded to scour the estate and the whole neighbourhood for the scoundrels who had had the temerity to relieve his wife of her expensive bangles and baubles.

Within an hour all the roads were under observation and two police officers ran into the gang. Without hesitation the gang fired a number of shots into the darkness. The officers were both hit and injured. The gang disappeared. Another officer shortly afterwards stopped them but had to back off when it was clear that they had guns and were prepared to use them. It was about two in the morning when a signalman in an isolated signal box heard footsteps crunching the ballast close by and he was just able to make out three men
trudging along the track in the direction of Carlisle. Bravely, but as it turned out unwisely, he left the box and chased them some distance whereupon they turned on him and beat him insensible.

Later on two men were seen in a shunting yard at Carlisle and a bloodstained jemmy was found. There were no more sightings during the day and it looked as if the gang had gone to ground until darkness. It was thought that they were probably still on railway property, perhaps hiding in a wagon somewhere. Carlisle was a major railway centre served by no fewer than six mainline railway companies and there was such an abundance of goods depots and sidings around the city that looking for the men was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

The next sighting was at Southwaite, a small wayside station on the London & North Western Railway Company’s main line to the south of Carlisle. There a stranger asked the stationmaster if and when there was a train to London. He seemed displeased with the response and disappeared. The stationmaster had heard about the events of the previous night. He did not like the stranger’s appearance and attitude and he telegraphed the railway police.

Shortly afterwards at Plumpton, another small station, the next but one down the line towards Lancaster and London, the stationmaster caught sight of three men acting suspiciously and he also alerted the railway police. Two men, who it turned out were Rudge and James Baker, went into a local pub for refreshment and left rather abruptly, perhaps sensing that their presence was attracting unwanted attention.

Soon after they had left a number of people heard a single shot, and a local man walking his dog heard cries for help from the roadside. It was PC Byrne, the village bobby, whose misfortune it was to have run into Rudge and Baker. They had shot him in the head. His life was ebbing away at the moment of his discovery by the passer-by. There was nothing that could be done for the dying man.

By whatever means, the gang members were managing to make their way southwards because the next sighting was a few miles away at Penrith where a policeman saw three men moving about suspiciously near the railway. It was dark, of course, and they vanished, but he alerted the railway staff who searched a goods train about to depart southwards. The guard was instructed to keep an eye out and no sooner was the train slowly leaving the sidings at Penrith than he saw three men rush out of the line-side shrubbery and climb into one of the wagons.

Not wanting the intruders to think that they had been spotted, the guard acted in a very level-headed way. He wrote messages on pieces of paper, wrapped them round lumps of coal and threw them out as his train passed Shap. This was a common way in which engine drivers or guards tried to contact signalmen or traffic control if they had something they wanted to tell
them but did not want to stop the train. It was all a bit hit-and-miss, but by something of a miracle one of these messages was quickly picked up and the Shap signalman telegraphed ahead to Tebay to request that the local police meet the train at that point, ready to arrest the three men.

In fact the constabulary were not there but the railway company had gathered every available man to meet the train. Anyone familiar with the Tebay district will know that life on those northern fells was hard and there were hard men among the reception committee awaiting the arrival of the goods train. These men had equipped themselves with a variety of ersatz but intimidating weapons, mostly tools of their trade, and they proceeded to investigate the train, starting at the engine and working backwards. The noise they made obviously disturbed the gang who took a desperate decision and leapt out of the truck, without warning, hoping to catch their pursuers by surprise.

Martin was chased by the engine driver who proved remarkably fleet of foot but paid for it by being severely injured by Martin when he caught up with him. However, the fugitive quickly found himself surrounded by brawny lads who, by sheer weight of numbers, seized him, pinioned his arms and tied him to a handy telegraph pole before he was able to get his shooter out. Rudge also ran like lightning but was likewise overwhelmed and tied to a telegraph pole. He also did not use his gun.

Why the men did not use their shooters in this dire situation is a mystery. We have already seen that they had been fully prepared to use them and had done so in the last couple of days. James Baker managed to evade his pursuers and must have got into another truck on a different goods train because he was spotted in it by two railway workers at Oxenholme. At Lancaster another railwayman spotted Baker and challenged him. The two of them fought like wildcats and Baker was eventually overcome.

Rudge, Martin and James Baker were taken back to Carlisle under guard. A huge crowd turned out at Citadel station seething with hatred, and only with some difficulty were they prevented from lynching the men. The items of jewellery that the gang had stolen had been jettisoned from the trains they had ridden south on and most were recovered quickly, including the most valuable of them which was known as the ‘Diamond Star’. The men were charged with murder and appeared at Carlisle Assizes on 18-20 January 1886. The three of them were found guilty and were hanged at first light on 8 February. William Baker was regarded as an accessory and received a lengthy term of penal servitude.

A memorial was put up in memory of the valour of PC Byrne. It was erected close to Plumpton station. The station closed in May 1948 but the memorial is still in situ. It is a mute reminder of the devotion to duty of a brave man and the profligate and calculating brutality of Messrs Rudge, Martin and the two Bakers.

Murder in the Pursuit of Theft

Most freight traffic conveyed by rail in the twenty-first century moves in container and bi-modal trains. These travel at considerable speed and, even when at a standstill, are hard to break into and enter for the purposes of theft. In the past, however, and even as late as the 1960s and 1970s, many consignments were carried in small wagons and vans. These spent much of their transit time marshalled in trains waiting in loops and sidings for a clear road between trains given greater priority. Equally they might spend hours or days in sidings where they were sorted and marshalled into other trains.

These situations made them very vulnerable to the attentions of thieves. Some consignments such as cigarettes or bottled spirits were highly attractive to the light-fingered fraternity. It is worth remembering that before the growth of the road haulage industry in the 1920s and 1930s, railways had something approaching a monopoly in the conveyance of freight, goods and almost every kind of merchandise across the country.

One of the main concerns of the railway police was to guard consignments against pilfering, whether in warehouses and goods sheds or in wagons moving about or waiting in sidings and yards. Their forces, however, were thinly stretched given the sheer extent of the railway system.

In 1887 there was a spate of breaking into and stealing from wagons waiting in goods sidings at Wigan in Lancashire. A Detective Sergeant in the London & North Western Railway Company’s police force, Robert Kidd and a local detective officer called Osbourne were detailed to keep watch. This was nervy if boring work, and the two men were getting fed up; they had had the sidings under surveillance for six weeks without anything untoward happening and nothing to show for their efforts. Perhaps they had been spotted and their presence was deterring the thieves. Perhaps the thieves had simply turned their attentions elsewhere. Regardless the watch had to be maintained and the men met up as usual, this particular occasion being Saturday 29 October.