The saga of the Great Train Robbery has continued unabated for the past five decades. Speculation centred on many of the unanswered aspects of the robbery has been hotly debated by a host of authors and TV documentaries.
One of the principal sources of conjecture has been the identity of the ‘Irishman’ or the ‘Ulsterman’ who allegedly provided the inside information that enabled the robbery to be committed.
There have been a number of views over the years. DCS Butler was always sceptical about the ‘insider’ theory. He believed his view was substantiated when, after Jimmy White’s arrest, he was closely questioned about the robbery and how it had been organised. Without betraying any names or identities, White spoke in some detail about the preparations, which appear in his arrest file. Butler placed particular emphasis on the following quote:
I asked what kind of money could be expected and I was told that after the August Bank Holiday we could expect about £2,000,000 to be on the train, but in any event there would be someone in Glasgow to count the bags when the coach was being loaded and no move would be made unless there was a known large amount in the coach. Later on one of the men left the farm to go to a telephone. He returned with the news that the Scottish Night Mail Train was well and truly loaded and the spy in Glasgow had reported that lots of high value bags had been put aboard.1
Butler’s view was that the ‘spy in Glasgow’ was not necessarily anyone working for the Post Office, and that the information supplied by this individual was all that was needed to launch the operation to hold up the train.
Bearing in mind that it was supposedly Brian Field who had contact with the insider, the police and IB had hoped that Brian Field or John Wheater, who they saw as the weakest links, might eventually reveal further details in prison. However, once Brian Field’s sentence had been downgraded on appeal, he no longer saw any benefit in the possibility of talking and instead concentrated on his early release. Wheater, however, was a different kettle of fish. In 1966 he divulged that:
I did get the impression that there were some other people involved who were not brought to trial and have not been named by the Police. And one thing I learned pointed back to well before the raid – to a link between the gang and somebody in Post Office security. This somebody made contact through an intermediary with one of the men who stood trial, and it was this man – one of my fellows in the dock – who gave me the information when I was discussing with him how he became involved. The intermediary - a relation, I think, of the Post Office security man – put up the proposition that large sums of money were being moved by train at various times, and that it was there for the taking so to speak. This made my fellow prisoner a lynch pin in the whole thing. I was never able to discover who the intermediary was. I was told that after the robbery money was passed to the intermediary for himself and for the Post Office man. Each was said to have received one full share of the total sum stolen and that would be between £140,000 and £150,000.2
Percy Hoskins, the crime editor of the Daily Express, also later recalled that a certain senior Scotland Yard officer had called at his Park Lane apartment and over a drink divulged off-the-record that a senior Royal Mail officer was strongly suspected of being the man mentioned in Hoskins’s 20 April 1964 story speculating about the ‘inside man’. According to the information given to Hoskins:
The man had joined Royal Mail in Belfast twenty or so years before, had worked his way up through the ranks and eventually moved to England after the war where he settled into a quiet middle class suburb in south London.3
Hoskins’s informant had added that the man now held a key post in Royal Mail security, and had written down his name and address on the strict understanding that the brief background information he had given Hoskins would only ever be used in a story if the man in question were to be arrested. Hoskins knew that he had no legal grounds for a story of any kind, but his curiosity, if nothing else, had to be satisfied.
One Wednesday a few weeks after his conversation with the Scotland Yard officer, Hoskins took the train to Beckenham Junction and walked a short distance to the ‘pleasant tree lined road of spacious semi-detached houses’ where the man lived with his wife and mother. It was the middle of the day and Hoskins (rightly) sensed that the man would be at work. When he knocked at the smart bay-windowed house, the wife opened the front door and Hoskins spoke to her for a few minutes on a pretext.
This man certainly fitted the bill in every sense, but was he really the man who had, on several occasions, supplied top-grade information to a gang of criminals, albeit through an intermediary? He was apparently a popular and outwardly honest man who was spoken of most highly by his superiors and colleagues.
One mystery surrounding Brian Field was eventually solved by Tommy Butler. While the appeal hearings were in progress he had received information suggesting that:
... the persons who deposited the bags and the cash at the spot were Brian Field and his father. We were informed that this action had been taken because (a) Wheater’s (and therefore Field’s) part in the affair was under active investigation, and (b) because Karen Field insisted upon its removal from her house, where Brian Field had taken it. Therefore, at the Appeal Court, shortly after the conclusion of that part of the proceedings involving Brian Field, I saw Field senior and inferred in general terms that he might have something to impart to police concerning the money found in the woods. He declined to discuss the matter, but was patently fearful.4
Six months later, Butler received further information to the effect that a visit to Brian Field’s father, Reginald Field, in the near future would probably lead to a full disclosure of what had happened. Butler therefore visited Reginald Field’s home at 141 Constance Road in Whitton, Middlesex on 9 February 1965 with DS Nevill. Apparently, after some hesitation, Field made a full written statement:
I Reginald Arthur Field wish to make a statement. I want someone to write down what I say. I have been told that I need not say anything unless I wish to do so and that whatever I say may be given in evidence.
I am the father of Brian Arthur Field who is at present serving sentence. I can’t be certain of the exact date but one day in August 1963 I came home from work sometime about 6.30 pm and went into my garage. There are two doors but I do not use a padlock on them. I keep the doors shut with a bolt. I don’t know exactly when it was but on the weekend before the Bank Holiday Monday my car was struck by another vehicle whilst I was stationary in the kerb. It was somewhere the other side of Guildford. There was a lot of damage to the car and I could not drive it away. It was towed to a local garage the name of which escapes me. The matter was reported to the police because my wife had to be taken to hospital as she had slight concussion. My car was a Hillman index No MP 4393. Because of this fact when I came home on the night I have mentioned there was no car in my garage. The garage is normally kept in a very tidy condition because I like to put my hands on anything I want.
I went into the garage to get a piece of wood I had left there. The garage lies to the back of the house and there is a driveway to the street. On opening the door of the garage I saw on the floor at the back of the garage one case and three bags. There was one holdall, an embossed leather case, a brief case and a round leathery sort of hat box. I had not been into the garage for several days so I don’t how long they had been there. I naturally went and looked into them and found that they contained money. The money was done up in separate bundles tied with brown paper bands. I immediately realized that this must be money to do with the train robbery which was reported in the papers at that time. I had no idea how it came to be in my garage. I decided that the best thing to do was to get rid of it as soon as possible. As I had no car I had to give the matter a lot of thought because there was too much to carry. Eventually I thought of Gordon Neal who lives in Blandford Avenue and who had grown up with my son. I told him that I had found some money in my garage which I felt sure had come from the train robbery and asked if I could borrow his car to go and get rid of it. Gordon volunteered to drive the car for me. I put the money in the car and we drove out to Dorking where I threw the money out of the car and we continued our journey and came home. I feel sure that I dumped the money at about 11 pm on the night before it was found at a place I know to be Leaf Hill, Dorking. I got out of the car and threw the money into the woods. I want to get this off my chest as it has been playing on my mind for a long time and it has been making me ill. Now I have told you about it I wish to God I had done so before. I feel as though I can have a good night’s sleep now it is over and done with.
I have read the above statement and I have been told that I can correct alter or add anything I wish. This statement true. I have made it of my own free will.
(signed) R A Field5
Butler and Nevill then sought out Gordon Neal who corroborated everything Reginald Field had said and made a statement as such. Butler’s conclusions, in light of the new disclosures, are outlined in a report to Commander Hatherill:
The amount found leads one to strongly suspect that it is not the total share awarded to Brian Field for his participation in the offence. It therefore follows that someone diverted a portion of it prior to dumping that found in the wood. Although there is no evidence to prove it, there are firm grounds for believing that Brian Field accompanied his father and Neal to Dorking. His presence would have probably been insisted on by both.6
When Brian Field was released from prison in 1967 he changed his name and identity and promptly disappeared without trace. A decade later he died in a motorway accident. The truth about the Ulsterman and Field’s other secrets died with him.7
So far as the legacy of the robbery and the sentences handed down to those involved was concerned, it undoubtedly contributed to an upsurge in armed robbery during the following decade. The net result is probably best summed up by south London gangland boss Eddie Richardson:
If they could be given thirty years for when they weren’t carrying guns, what was the point in not being armed? Guns reduced the risk of being caught, and if you did get caught, they couldn’t give you longer than thirty years. There was nothing to lose.8
Notes
1. POST 120/102 (originally closed until 1996; opened 1997).
2. POST 120/95 (originally closed until 2001, opened 2002); DPP 2/3735 (originally closed until 2045; redacted version opened 22/9/10).
3. Percy Hoskins Papers.
4. MEPO 2/10571 (still closed at time of writing).
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Brian Field changed his name by Deed Poll to Brian Mark Carlton. He died on 28 April 1979 (Register of Deaths 1979, Registration District of Hounslow, Entry No 232).
8. Eddie Richardson, The Last Word (Headline, 2006), p. 108.