The Sun.
London, England, 1857-01-10 00:00:00

THE BULLION _ROBBERY.

The approver Agar has made some further extraordi-
nary disclosures, in connection with the frauds upon the
South-Eastern Railway, since the committal of the pri-
soners charged with this robbery. It had been suspected
that Pierce, and probably Tester and Burgess, were con
cerned in the abstraction of the sum of money, amounting
to nearly 8001., which was stolen from an iron safe on the
basement storey of the station sometime previously to the
bullion robbery ; and after due consideration it was re-
solved to question Agar on this point, with a view of dis-
covering whether he could throw any light on the transac-
tion. Upon being interrogated, Agar at once made a clean
breast of it, and declared that to himself aad Pierce be-
longed all the guilt of this robbery, which was effected
by means of duplicate keys, obtained by Pierce exactly
as in the case of the gold dust robbery.
The antecedents of Pieree, in connection with the
South-Eastern Railway Company, show that he has been
steeped in crime for years past. He first came into the
service of the company, as a ticket printer, about eight
years ago. The press then and now in use on all the
principal railways is a patent machine, consequently the
ticket cards are of one description—uniform size, and
alike in typographical appearance ; so that if the ticket-
printer is a rogue, and in league w►th similar characters
on any other railway, no difficulty can arise in supplying
any number of spurious tickets of any required class.
Some time previously to Mr. Finnigan resigning the
office of superintendent of the South-Eastern Railway
he had a clerk of the name of Pierce in his office, and on
a particular morning this gentleman received a letter,
addressed to " Mr Wm. Pierce," which he opened, be-
lieving it to be intended for himself. On perusing it he
discovered it to have been written by a person in the
employ of the London and North-Western Railway
Company, at Euston Station, requesting Pierce, the
ticket-printer of the South-Eastern Company, to print a
certain number of first-class tickets for particular sta
tions on the London and North-Western Railway, and
to have them ready at a certain place on a day named.
Mr. Pierce handed the letter to Mr. Finnigan, who at
once detected the guilty complicity of the company's
printer, and, promising the messenger that the request
contained in the note should be attended to, be at once
drove to Euston Station and explained what had hap-
pened to Captain Huish. After due consideration, there
being reason to fear that the messenger was sensible of
having committed an error in the delivery of the note
entrusted to him before he left Mr. Finnigan, it was
agreed that the immediate dismissal of the writer of the
letter and Pierce, the ticket-printer, was the only plan
to be adopted ; and this was done the next day. And
thus terminated the official connection of Pierce with the
South-Eastern Company. _ _

Mr. Finnigan, while in the service of the company, in-
variably himself arranged the guards' duty, and under
the plan he adopted of never allowing a guard to work
the same train for more than four weeks in succession,
the great loss which the company have now to suffer
would have been altogether avoided. The introduction of
a new system in the office of the superintendent, although
its active management had passe'l out of Mr. Finnigan's
hands, had the effect of transferring this duty to Tester,
one of the persona charged with being concerned in the
robbery, and he availed himself of his privilege to keep
Burgess on the mail train during the two months of April
and May, while the bullion robbery was in contempla-
tion, a course which could not have happened under the
former arrangement of Mr. Finnigan. Burgess, having
been guard of the mail train during April, could not, ac •
cording to the usual rota, have had the same duty to
perform until the month of September, and as Agar was
apprehended for forgery in August, the probability is
that the whole scheme of the robbery would have failed.