Few people now bear in mind the great robbery of registered letters from the Hatton Garden Branch Post Office, London, in November, 1881, which was effected with skill and daring, and yet with simplicity as to method. At 5.0 p.m. on the eventful day the members of the staff were busily engaged, when, lo! the gas suddenly went out, and the office, which was full of people at the time, was left in darkness. The lady supervisor obtained matches, went to the basement and there found that the gas had been turned off at the meter. When the gas had been turned on again and lighted, it was discovered that the registered letter bag, which had already been made up and was awaiting the call of the collecting postman, was missing. The bag contained 40 registered letters, and their value was estimated at from £80,000 to £100,000. In the many years which have elapsed since the great robbery no clue to the perpetrators of the daring deed has been discovered. No further attempts at such robberies took place for some time, but in the year 1888 several daring burglaries took place at post offices in London. The Smithfield Branch Post Office was the first broken into, the thieves staying in the office from Saturday night to Sunday night. During that interval they removed the safe from under the counter, placed it in the Chief Officer's enclosure, broke it open and rifled the contents. Cash and stamps to the value of about £180 were stolen. In the autumn of the same year the Aldgate B.O. was burgled—a Saturday night being chosen for the exploit. The manner in which the burglary was effected leaves little doubt that the depredation was committed by the same gang of thieves. The safe was broken open, but in this case it was left under the counter, where it stood, and was there rifled of its contents. The interior of the office, including a part of the counter under which the safe stood, was fully visible from the outside, the woodwork in front of the office having been kept low for the purpose, and it was marvellous that the thieves were not detected, as a poor woman had just been murdered by "Jack the Ripper" within 200 yards, and the road in front of the post office was thronged with excited people. The thieves in this case got off with cash and stamps to the value of £328.
Later in the same year, the South Kensington Branch Post Office was entered by burglars under precisely similar circumstances. The thieves only obtained the small sum of £6, as, being disturbed, they decamped in haste, leaving behind them their tools and certain articles of clothing. They had removed the safe, weighing 1½ cwt., from the public office without being observed, although it was taken from a spot immediately in front of a large window, through which police and passers-by could command full view of the office. The Westbourne Grove and Peckham Branch Post Offices were also burglariously entered in the same year. Although the burglars were not discovered in connection with these post office robberies, and none more daring of their kind have occurred since, they probably were imprisoned for some other misdemeanour. Was it—it may well be asked—this same gang of burglars released from durance vile who committed the post office robbery which in 1901 took place at Westbury-on-Trym, a suburb of Bristol, three miles distant from the city? For daring it might well have been they, as the following account will demonstrate.
The post office, be it said, was in the middle of the village and within 200 yards of the Gloucestershire Constabulary Depôt, and actually within sight of it. It was during the early hours of the morning of the 18th October that the burglary took place. Not far from the post office building operations were being carried on, and from the houses in course of erection the thieves obtained a ladder and a wheelbarrow. Making their way to the side of the premises, one member of the gang, by means of the borrowed ladder effected an entrance through the fanlight over the postmen's room door, and marks of damp stockinged feet revealed the fact that they crept through a sliding window into the post office counter room, where the safe was located. The street door was then opened to their confederates, and the safe, weighing nearly 2 cwt., was carried to the barrow outside. The thieves retired to a partially completed dwelling for the purpose of examining the contents of the safe. They broke open the carpenter's locker, and many tools were subsequently found on the floor. These evidently had not assisted the gang to any great extent, as they found it necessary to use a heavy pickaxe. The noise they made seems to have aroused the inmates of the neighbouring houses, and it is said that one resident struck a light and actually saw them at work, but he concluded that they were merely doing something in connection with the extensive drainage alterations which had been in progress for many months. This light apparently disturbed the thieves, for they departed with their burden and the pickaxe and retraced their steps. Close to the Parish Institute they managed, in spite of the darkness, to discover a gap in the hedge, and having forced the wheelbarrow through this, they left unmistakable traces of the route taken across the adjoining field.
THE OLD POST OFFICE, WESTBURY-ON-TRYM.
Having wheeled the safe some 300 or 400 yards, and some 50 yards beyond the cottages in Canford Lane, they again brought the pickaxe into requisition, and some hours later a workman discovered the safe, with one end broken into dozens of pieces, lying near the hedge. He at once gave information to the police. It was afterwards found that, although the thieves had removed the paper money from the safe, they had thrown the postal orders, money order forms, stamps, licenses, etc., into a neighbouring field, where they were found strewn about in great disorder. The safe contained postal orders stamps, postcards, and cash of the total value of £315. Cash to the value of £25 was the extent of the thieves' booty, and they left behind them three £5 notes, half a sovereign, and two sixpences, which were found on the grass. As all the articles were dry, it was apparent that the robbery took place after 2 a.m., up to which time there had been rain. The officials at the office had begun their morning's work quite unconscious of what had happened, when Police Sergeant Greenslade appeared with the handle of the safe. The fact of the officials not having been disturbed may be accounted for by the circumstance that blasting operations had been carried on at night in the immediate neighbourhood for some twelve months before. The sub-postmistress and her family, it appeared, did not retire to rest until very near midnight, and it is supposed that they were in their first heavy sleep, but it is a mystery why the dog, a sharp fox terrier, remained quiet.
The safe was kept in a prominent position in the shop—two people slept just over it—and the exterior of the shop was well lighted at night by a large public lamp. Sleeping in the house were several females and males, one of the latter being an ex-Sergeant-Major of Dragoons, 6 feet 2 inches in height and of great bodily strength. Next door lived a baker whose workman is about early in the morning, so it may be inferred that the burglars had no small amount of nerve. Within a week another robbery took place at a mansion within a mile of the post office. This occurred in the evening. Whether or not this second burglary was the work of the same gang which carried off the post office safe, there is similar evidence of most carefully laid plans and of intimate acquaintance with the house and the habits of its occupants.
Ere the excitement of these two burglaries had passed off as a nine days' wonder, another robbery equally bold in character took place, and this time in the very centre of the city of Bristol, and in its most frequented thoroughfare. A jeweller's shop window was rifled at 6.0 a.m., at a time when the police were being relieved. The thieves got off with about £2,000 worth of rings, etc. These three burglaries in conjunction seem to indicate the work of one gang of professional burglars hailing probably from the Metropolis.
A little time later, a post office safe in the West End of London was rifled, the burglars discarding old methods of violence in breaking it open, and using a jet of oxyhydrogen flame to burn away a portion of the safe door!