BBC ON THIS DAY | 8 | 1965: Ronald Biggs escapes from jail About This Site | Text Only 1965: Ronald Biggs escapes from jail Ronald Biggs - a member of the gang who carried out the Great Train Robbery in 1963 - has escaped from Wandsworth prison. Biggs, 35, escaped by scaling a 30ft wall with three other prisoners at 1505 BST today. A ladder was thrown over the wall from the outside during the prisoners' afternoon exercise session. The escapees climbed the ladder and lowered themselves into a waiting van. They were driven away from the prison in three cars. Loaded shotgun Every police car in London has been notified and all ports and airports have been alerted. Biggs is the second of the Great Train Robbers to escape from jail - Charles Wilson is still at large after escaping from Winson Green prison in Birmingham in August last year. Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Lewis, who is investigating the escape, said the break-out was well prepared and "was engineered without a doubt with collusion inside the prison". He added this did not suggest prison officers had been involved. A Home Office spokesperson explained what happened.

He said: "At 3.05pm one of the four officers on duty in the yard saw a man's head appear above the outside wall. "The officer immediately rang the alarm bell and at the same time the man on the wall threw over a rope and tubular ladder. "The four prisoners immediately made for the ladder and climbed over the top. The prison officers tried to stop them, but were stopped by some of the others in the exercise yard. "The officers went outside and discovered a van with a platform on top parked against the wall and the ladders secured to the top of the van." Police said a green Ford Zephyr, involved in the escape, had been found abandoned tonight outside Wandsworth Common railway station. Police also found a loaded shotgun and a set of overalls inside. An operations room has been set up inside the prison and the area cordoned off. People living near the prison are being interviewed by police. Scotland Yard has warned members of the public not to approach any of the men as they may be armed and dangerous.

Ronnie Biggs, Longtime Fugitive After the Great Train Robbery, Dies at 84 - The New York Times The New York Times Europe |Ronnie Biggs, Longtime Fugitive After the Great Train Robbery, Dies at 84 Search Continue reading the main story Photo Ronnie Biggs lived as a fugitive for more than three decades after his escape from jail. Credit Getty Images Ronnie Biggs, a carpenter and petty crook who became an international celebrity for his role in one of Britain’s most famous crimes, the Great Train Robbery of 1963, and for the decades he spent afterward eluding a worldwide manhunt by Scotland Yard, died on Wednesday in London. He was 84. His publicists announced the death but did not give a cause. “Sadly, we lost Ron during the night,” they announced on Twitter. “As always, his timing was perfect to the end.” A long-scheduled two-part television film, “The Great Train Robbery,” began Wednesday night on BBC1 and was to conclude on Thursday night. Imprisoned in England since he returned there voluntarily in 2001, Mr.

Biggs was granted compassionate release for health reasons in August 2009 by Jack Straw, the British justice secretary at the time. The decision was a highly public reversal by Mr. Straw, who had earlier denied Mr. Biggs’s application, saying he had shown no remorse for the crime, in which 15 men robbed a Glasgow-to-London mail train of more than $7 million in bank notes. The train’s driver was seriously injured. Mr. Biggs, who had had several strokes and other health problems in recent years, had been serving what remained of his 30-year sentence — and a great deal of it did remain — in Norwich Prison, in eastern England. Advertisement Continue reading the main story At his death, Mr. Biggs had been living at a nursing home in the East Barnet neighborhood of north London, the Press Association news agency reported. His last public appearance was in March, when he attended the funeral of Bruce Reynolds , a fellow train robber. Mr. Biggs’s enduring reputation stemmed not so much from the heist itself as from what happened afterward.

Tried and convicted, he escaped from prison and became the subject of an international manhunt; spent the next 36 years as a fugitive, much of that time living openly in Rio de Janeiro in defiance of the British authorities; and enjoyed almost preternatural luck in thwarting repeated attempts to bring him to justice, including an instance when he was kidnapped and spirited out of Brazil by yacht. The fact that the robbery happened to take place on Mr. Biggs’s birthday also did not hurt. During his years at large, Mr. Biggs, aided by the British tabloid press, cultivated his image as a working-class Cockney hero. He sold memorabilia to tourists, endorsed products on television and recorded a song (“No One Is Innocent”) with the Sex Pistols. Photo Mr. Biggs in Rio de Janeiro in 1994, promoting his memoir. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images As much as anything, Mr. Biggs’s story is about the construction of celebrity and the ways in which celebrity can be sustained as a kind of cottage industry long after the world might reasonably be expected to have lost interest. The supreme paradox is that had he not fled Britain, Mr.

Biggs would have served his sentence and been paroled years ago. Mr. Straw’s reversal in 2009 made headlines worldwide and was vigorously debated in print and on the Internet. What seemed certain was that Mr. Biggs, who had said publicly that he wanted nothing more than to walk into a pub and order a pint of bitter before he died, would not live long enough to do so. But shortly after his release, Mr. Biggs confounded expectations by appearing to rally, igniting public speculation that he had managed to con the authorities one last time. (In fact, under the terms of his release, if he recovered sufficiently to leave the hospital he would be transferred to a nursing home.) Ronald Arthur Biggs was born on Aug. 8, 1929, in Lambeth, a south-central borough of London. By his own account, his was a close, warm household. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “My mother always made sure that my cap was square on my head and my socks were pulled up,” he told Smithsonian magazine in 1980. During the Blitz in London, Ronnie was evacuated to Cornwall, where he lived with a man he described afterward as a harsh disciplinarian.

He later rejoined his family, but after his mother’s death in 1943, Ronnie embarked on a life of petty crime. With time out for service in the Royal Air Force, he was in and out of jail until his early 30s. In 1960, Mr. Biggs married Charmian Powell, a schoolmaster’s daughter he had met on a train. They had two sons, and for the next few years, by his later accounts, Mr. Biggs settled into a happy routine as a husband and father, working as a carpenter. Photo Mr. Biggs in 1963 with police officers. He escaped from Wandsworth Prison in London in 1965, after 15 months behind bars. Credit Evening Standard/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images It was hard to make ends meet. In 1963, Mr. Biggs approached Mr. Reynolds, a man he had known in jail, to request a small loan. But Mr. Reynolds had other plans, involving a very unusual Royal Mail train. Running by night and appearing on no printed schedule, it transported vast quantities of cash between provincial bank branches and central banks in London.

The money was in the second of 12 cars. The gang Mr. Reynolds assembled included men with intimate knowledge of railroad timetables, signals and switches. Mr. Biggs recruited a retired engineer to drive the train. After midnight on Aug. 8, 1963, the gang turned a signal light along the route to red. The train ground to a halt in the Buckinghamshire countryside at 3:15 a.m. When the engineer, Jack Mills, stepped out of the cab, a waiting gang member bludgeoned him with an iron bar. The gang uncoupled the last 10 cars. Mr. Biggs’s engineer was brought on board but was unable to release the train’s brake. Mr. Mills, bleeding badly, was forced back into the cab and ordered to drive the head cars to a secluded spot down the line. There the robbers stormed the second car, subdued its crew and unloaded 120 mailbags into waiting vehicles. The whole thing was over in about 15 minutes. As was widely reported, Mr. Biggs spent most of that time sitting in a Land Rover near the railway embankment, his failed engineer beside him.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story The bank notes in the bags came to 2.6 million pounds, or about $7.3 million — roughly $70 million today. Most of the money has never been found. Mr. Mills never fully recovered from his injuries and was unable to work again. He died in 1970. Within a month, Scotland Yard had caught most of the gang, including Mr. Biggs. Convicted in April 1964, he was sent to Wandsworth Prison in London. In July 1965, after serving 15 months, Mr. Biggs scaled the prison wall with a rope ladder and took off in a waiting furniture van. He made his way to the European continent, where he had cosmetic surgery, and eventually to Australia, where his wife and their children joined him. (The couple’s third son was born there.) Photo The mail train was robbed of more than $7 million in 1963. Credit Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In 1969, as Scotland Yard began to close in, he fled again. By 1970, Mr.

Biggs had made his way to Brazil, which then had no extradition treaty with Britain. His marriage to Ms. Powell, who remained in Australia with the children, ended in divorce. Mr. Biggs lived covertly in Rio until 1974, when Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Slipper of Scotland Yard arrived there. Detective Slipper, who had pursued Mr. Biggs around the world for years, was determined to bring him back to Britain, treaty or no treaty. Happily for Mr. Biggs, his Brazilian girlfriend was pregnant: under Brazilian law, no parent of a Brazilian child could be deported. Mr. Biggs’s fourth son, Michael, was born a few months later, and the proud papa remained in Rio, living openly, bibulously and sometimes extravagantly under his own name. In 1981, Mr. Biggs was abducted from a bar by members of a British security concern. Hustled into a yacht, he was taken to Barbados, from which his kidnappers hoped to extradite him to England. But luck was with Mr. Biggs yet again: The Supreme Court of Barbados ruled in his favor, letting him return to Brazil. By this time, Mr.

Biggs’s share of the heist, reportedly £150,000, was long gone. For a few years, he managed to live lavishly anyhow, supported by his young son, Michael, who had joined a successful children’s pop group on Brazilian television. Advertisement Continue reading the main story In later years, Mr. Biggs held barbecues at his home for paying guests, sold souvenir T-shirts and appeared in TV commercials, including a Brazilian ad for a home security system. In 2001, with his health failing, Mr. Biggs returned to Britain for treatment, although he knew it would also mean prison. He flew from Brazil on a private jet furnished by The Sun, a British tabloid. The next year, Mr. Biggs married Michael’s mother, Raimunda Rothen, in Belmarsh Prison, a maximum-security facility. Mr. Biggs is survived by his wife; their son, Michael; and two sons from his first marriage, Chris and Farley. Another son from his first marriage, Nicky, died at 10 in a car crash in Australia. Detective Slipper, whose white whale Mr. Biggs never ceased to be, died in 2005.

Perhaps Mr. Biggs’s most enduring legacy is his own persona. “People say, ‘Oh, Ron, you must really want a pardon more than anything,’ ” he told People magazine in 1988. “But I say: ‘What? Stop being Ronnie Biggs?’ ” Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London. A version of this article appears in print on December 19, 2013, on Page B19 of the New York edition with the headline: Ronnie Biggs, Longtime Fugitive After the Great Train Robbery, Dies at 84. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe 50 Years On, Looking Back at the Great Train Robbery - History in the Headlines 50 Years On, Looking Back at the Great Train Robbery August 8, 2013 By Sarah Pruitt Investigators examine the Royal Mail train involved in the Great Train Robbery.

(Credit: Evening Standard/Getty Images Share this: 50 Years On, Looking Back at the Great Train Robbery Author 50 Years On, Looking Back at the Great Train Robbery URL Google They were inspired by the railroad robberies of the Wild West, and their crime became as famous as any of those heists. In the early morning hours of August 8, 1963, 15 thieves held up the Royal Mail train heading between Glasgow, Scotland and London, England, making off with 120 mailbags stuffed with some 2.6 million pounds in used bank notes. Though most of the gang was eventually captured and imprisoned, they became folk heroes to many for the scale and audacity of the theft. Fifty years later, we take a look back at the Great Train Robbery and some of its key participants. Around 3 a.m. on that fateful morning 50 years ago, Jack Mills, the driver of the Royal Mail train from Glasgow to London, stopped at a red signal located near a remote bridge at Ledburn in Buckinghamshire, northwest of London.

Unfortunately for Mills, the signal was fake; the robbers had placed a glove over the real signal and used a battery to illuminate the red light. After assaulting Mills’ co-driver, David Whitby, who had come out to check on the signal, 15 men wearing ski masks and helmets boarded the train, and one of them (it is still unknown exactly who) hit Mills over the head with an iron bar. Acting on inside information from an unknown informant known simply as “the Ulsterman,” known burglar and mastermind Bruce Reynolds and his fellow thieves knew the Royal Mail train carried large sums of money nightly, and that it was stored in the second car behind the engine. There was a particularly large haul that night, as a bank holiday weekend had just concluded in Scotland, and the thieves were able to load some 2.6 million pounds (the equivalent of 45-46 million pounds, or $69-71 million, in today’s money) into 120 mailbags. They then escaped in an ex-British Army truck and two stolen Land Rovers marked with identical license plates (to confuse the police).

At a rented farmhouse in Bedfordshire, England, the gang of thieves divided their loot and planned to lay low for a couple of weeks, even as a huge police operation kicked into gear. Rewards totaling a record 260,000 pounds were offered by insurers, banks and the Post Office for information leading to their capture. Meanwhile, the robbers decided to ditch their hideout, which police raided after a tip from a neighbor. Twelve out of the 15 thieves were eventually captured, and received prison sentences totaling some 300 years among them. The bulk of the cash they stole was never found, but the most serious casualty of the robbery was Jack Mills, who never fully recovered from his head injuries, and died in 1970. The perpetrators of the Great Train Robbery attained cult status with the international public, becoming the most famous robbers and outlaws since the “Hole in the Wall Gang” of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Bruce Reynolds went on the run in Mexico and Canada with his family and managed to elude capture for five years, but was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison (he served only 10.) Ronald “Buster” Edwards also escaped to Mexico for three years before giving himself up; his story was later featured in a movie, “Buster,” starring Phil Collins. But it was small-time hood Ronnie Biggs who became the most famous of the Great Train Robbers, pulling off an escape from Wandsworth Prison in 1965, after serving only 15 months. He had plastic surgery to change his appearance, fled England and lived abroad (in Spain, Australia and Brazil) for years, flaunting his playboy lifestyle and taunting British authorities while repeated efforts to extradite him failed. In 2001, Biggs finally returned to the United Kingdom to receive health treatment and was jailed in order to serve the remaining 28 years in his sentence. He was released in 2009 on compassionate grounds after suffering several strokes in jail.

Ahead of today’s 50th anniversary, some of the key players in the Great Train Robbery stepped briefly back into the spotlight to reflect on the case that made them famous. Douglas Gordon Goody, who was also sentenced to 30 years for his role in the heist, told the U.K.’s Guardian that he will reveal the identity of “the Ulsterman” in a documentary airing later this year. Goody and Edwards were the only members of the gang to meet the informant in person, and some authorities apparently viewed Goody (rather than Reynolds, who died earlier this year) as the true mastermind of the robbery. As for Ronnie Biggs, he celebrates his 84th birthday today, and has remained defiant about his participation in the robbery. Though he can no longer speak, Biggs communicated to journalists through a spelling board before the anniversary that he had no regrets about being one of the train robbers. In fact, he said he was “proud” to have been one of them, stating that “I am one of the few witnesses—living or dead—to what was ‘The Crime of the Century.’” Want more info on the Great Train Robbery?

Christopher Pickard, co-author of Ronnie Biggs’ autobiography, discusses the crime at Tags The Trial | RONNIE BIGGS Bookazine The Trial The Great Train Robbery trial opened on 20 January 1964 at the District Council Chamber in Aylesbury. Lord Chief Justice Edmund Davies was the presiding judge. The gang was transported each day from the prison to the court in a heavily guarded police bus. The charge was ‘conspiracy to stop a mail with intent to rob said mail’. Caught “bang to rights”, Cordrey pleaded guilty. Finger print evidence was presented and Jack Mills gave evidence. Karin Field, wife of Brian Field, was approached and asked for £3,000 to bribe the jury. Wilson told his wife to meet the would be extortionist at a house in Clapham. The extortionist was met by friends of Wilson who attempted to nail him to tree on Clapham Common. He escaped. On 6 February the retrial of Ronald Biggs was ordered after Inspector Basil Morris lets slip that Biggs had served time in prison. On 11 February the prosecution rested and the defence started. The defence won a quick victory when on 14 February John Daly was acquitted.

The trial’s summing up took four days. What was agreed was that the prosecution could not prove who had been at the track, even how many. Instead the jury were told that the prosecution’s case was to link Leatherslade Farm to the robbery, and if they could place people at the farm this was proof enough of their guilt in the train robbery. On 23 March the jury retired after a 49-day trial. The trial formally ended on 26 March with a guilty verdict on all the gang members charged. On 8 April Biggs’ retrial got underway. It lasted only until 14 April when a guilty verdict was swiftly reached. The following day Lord Chief Justice Edmund Davies passed sentence on Great Train Robbery gang. The gang was not taken back to the court, but to the Assizes where they could be held and locked in the cells before being brought in to court one-by-one to hear their sentence. Most of gang received concurrent sentences of 30 years (10,957 days) and 25 years. The crime was ‘robbery – being armed with an offensive weapon’ (30 years) and ‘conspire / robbery with violence’ (25 years).

The trial had lasted in total for 51 workings days over a period of 10 weeks. Evidence had been heard from 264 witnesses and an estimated 2.5 million words had been spoken. The words filled over 30,000 foolscap pages. The 12 jurors, who were paid 50 shillings a day, had examined 613 exhibits and listened to 21 barristers. After the sentences were handed down the gang were split up amongst some of Britain’s most secure prisons. Biggs was transferred to HMP Lincoln. In March Reynolds made his preparations to leave the UK and in May he slipped out of Britain for Mexico. First step was by plane to Ostend and then on to Brussels. On 6 June Reynolds stepped on to Mexican soil after taking a Sabena flight from Brussels to Mexico City. He travelled as “K.C. Miller”. His wife Frances stayed behind in the UK to be reunited with her son Nick. To do so, she went to Scotland Yard and asked to see Butler. She was questioned for over five hours, but she did not break.

Frances Reynolds headed for Mexico after being reunited with Nick who has been looked after for her by Mary Manson for over 10 months. Mother and son travelled as Angela and Kevin Green. Frances would become known as Angela for the rest of her life. Reynolds and Edwards followed what was going on in the UK with the gang by listening to the BBC World Service and reading the Telegraph and Times when they could get a copy. The appeals were heard in London from 13-14 July at the Old Bailey. The gang were reunited at HMP Brixton for the appeals. Wilson, however, refused to attend the appeal. Cordrey and Boal did get their sentences reduced to 14 years, while Brian Field, as a gentleman and member of the establishment, had his sentence cut to 5 years. Following the appeal Biggs was transferred to HMP Wandsworth. By not attending the appeal, Wilson was one of the few robbers not to be moved to another prison and on 12 August he escaped from HMP Winson Green, Birmingham. It was just one year and four days after the robbery.

In April 1965, Wilson, who had been living in a safe house in Knightsbridge, left the UK for the South of France. He travelled in the name of “Alloway”. Buster Edwards and his family flew from Dusseldorf to Mexico City to visit Reynolds. After Wilson’s escape, the other members of the gang all received extra tough treatment in prison. Many of them admitted later that they now looked more seriously at ways to escape. In June 1965 a plan by Goody to escape from HMP Strangeways in Manchester was uncovered. On 8 July 1965, Ronnie Biggs escaped from HMP Wandsworth in London by climbing over the wall. In August Prime Minister Harold Wilson suggested to the Treasury that they secretly replace all banknotes in the hope of flushing out the train robbers and the money from the robbery. Waxwork figures of Biggs and Charlie Wilson were now on display in the entrance to Madame Tussauds in London. In October 1965 Biggs left London by boat to Antwerp and then by road to Paris.

On 29 December Biggs flew from Paris to Sydney via Zurich, as “Terence Furminger”, a writer born on 13 June 1928. In January 1966 some of the key train robbers were transferred to HMP Parkhurst on the Isle of White (Goody, James, Wisbey, Hussey, Welch, Cordrey). On 8 February Die Gentlemen bitten zur Kasse (The Gentlemen Require Payment), a drama based around the Great Train Robbery, was first broadcast in West Germany. Horst Tappert played the part of Reynolds and the show was a major hit, even in East Germany. Three days later John Wheater was released from prison. On 4 April The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery had its premiere in London and Life magazine ran a major feature Greatest Train Robbery Legend. The story of the Great Train Robbery was not going away. A week later the Sunday Express published photos of the “wanted” men, those gang members known to be still on the run. On 12 April Jimmy White was arrested in Littlestone-on-Sea. He would be sentenced to 18 years.

In September Edwards and his family decided to return to the UK. Edwards gave himself up on 19 September and was sentenced to 15 years at Nottingham Assizes. Half of what the other robbers had received as a sentence just two years previously. The judge decided that while Buster was ‘in the hierarchy’ he was ‘not one of the leading planners.’ Bruce Reynolds and family left Mexico in December 1965 and drove to visit Charlie Wilson for Christmas in Canada. They then moved on to the South of France. In May 1967, Brian Field was released and in the August, Robbery, starring Stanley Baker and directed by Peter Yates, opened in London. 1968 saw the arrest of Charlie Wilson in Canada on 25 January, while Bruce Reynolds was arrested in Torquay, England, on 8 November. Reynolds was sentenced to 25 years in January 1969. In October 1969 Biggs was traced to Melbourne, Australia. Armed police raided his house, but they missed him by hours. On 5 February 1970 Biggs left Australia on the RHMS Ellinis as “Michael Haynes”.

Unknown to Biggs, the previous day driver Jack Mills, had died of lymphatic leukaemia. Biggs arrived in Brazil on 11 March 1970. On 20 April, Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler, the Grey Fox, died, and on 26 June, William Boal, who was never a train robber, died in prison. Ronnie Biggs Biggs later spoke of his regret that Mr Mills had been injured, but added: ‘He was not the only victim. The people who paid the heaviest price for the Great Train Robbery are the families. 'All have paid a price for our collective involvement in the robbery. A very heavy price, in the case of my family. For that, I do have my regrets.’ Despite this, Biggs came to believe the movie fantasy of a crook in the sun with girls on his arm, cocking a snook at the law. ‘One report said that during my time on the run I’ve had 2,500 girlfriends,’ he boasted. ‘I’ve been on the run for over 30 years, I have got to have had more than that.’ But the reality was more mundane.

His share of the proceeds - £147,000 - was squandered within three years of his escape. Afterwards, he simply lived on his notoriety. Old age: Biggs with his son Michael who paid tribute to his father and said he hoped to bury his ashes in Brazil. This did not last for ever and by 2001, with his health failing and his telephone cut off, he was in penury and began negotiations to return to Britain. He couldn’t afford to pay his medical bills and wanted the NHS to care for him - his comfort paid for by our taxes. After an intervention by the then Labour Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, to get him a new British passport, Biggs landed back in this country in a private jet provided by The Sun newspaper. In a surreal over-reaction, he was met on his return by almost 100 policemen - and arrested. Within hours, he was behind bars, a common criminal with 28 years left of a 30-year sentence left to serve.

At a press conference to mark his return, his Brazilian-born son Michael, then 26, broke down in tears, fuelling the grotesque idea Biggs was a heroic figure being treated unjustly. One thing is certain: other more senior members of the gang never enjoyed his creature comforts or passed away peacefully in a hospital bed, as he did. Charles Wilson was shot dead outside his Spanish villa in 1990, while Buster Edwards hanged himself in 1994. For his part, Bruce Reynolds, who masterminded the robbery, died in February this year at the age of 81. Arrest: Biggs pictured after being apprehended by police in the wake of robbery. His funeral was one of the last times Biggs was seen in public. He seized the opportunity to stick two fingers up to the photographers from his wheelchair. He still saw himself as the star of the show. In a grim mockery of the truth, Biggs even came to call himself ‘an innocent victim’ of the crime. ‘At least the Great Train Robbery made me into somebody . . . there’s a difference between criminals and crooks. Criminals blow some guy’s brains out.

I’m a crook.’ Biggs exploited his infamy relentlessly, selling T-shirts on the Copacabana Beach bearing the slogan ‘Rio - a great place to escape to’, signing photographs with the words ‘Crime doesn’t pay - not much’, and charging visitors for meeting him, calling it the Ronnie Biggs Experience. Ronald Biggs was born in Lambeth in 1929, the youngest of the four children of a London bus driver. At ten, he started to steal from local shops. At 15 he made his first court appearance, charged with stealing pencils from Littlewoods. While in the Royal Air Force, he was charged with breaking into a chemist’s - which brought a six-month prison sentence - and given a dishonourable discharge. After his release, Biggs embarked on a full-time career of crime and within a month found himself in Wormwood Scrubs, where he met Bruce Reynolds. Over the next ten years, Biggs was in and out of jail. It was in 1957 that Biggs met Charmian Powell, a headmaster’s daughter, whom he seduced after their eyes met on a train. He was 28, she was just 17.

‘In less time than it takes to say “rabbit” we were making mad passionate love in hotels, empty train carriages, and on the floor of the classroom (where Charmian’s father taught),’ he recalled in an autobiography, published in 2011. She became the small-time crook’s wide-eyed moll, and would accompany him on his nefarious jobs, once ending up on the women’s wing of Exeter prison. Target: The train after it had been ransacked by Biggs and his fellow thieves in Buckinghamshire. Scene: The train parked on an embankment in Buckinghamshire in the aftermath of the robbery. And in 1960, when Charmian was still only 20, they married, settling in Redhill, Surrey, where Biggs attempted to go straight and started a building business. Their first child, Nicholas, was born five months later followed by a second son, Christopher in 1963, just as Biggs was trying to raise the deposit to buy a house. His old crony Bruce Reynolds, with perfect timing, asked if he’d be interested in ‘a big job’ for ‘a minimum whack of £40,000’.

Biggs leapt at it. Reynolds had found out that large sums of money were transported from Glasgow to London by train, and he had assembled a gang to rob it. They included ex-boxer Buster Edwards, racing driver Roy James, and armed robber Charlie Wilson. In the early hours of August 8, 1963 - Biggs’s 34th birthday - Reynolds and his gang stopped the mail train at Sears Crossing in Buckinghamshire by putting a glove over one green signal, and wiring two batteries to show amber and red signals. They stole 120 mailbags, later reported to contain £2,631,784. ‘I can remember emptying those Post Office sacks that night and seeing money flying about in front of my eyes,’ Biggs recalled. It was subsequently estimated that, in fact, the gang’s haul was nearer £7 million, all in unmarked banknotes. The gang had based themselves at Leatherslade Farm nearby and planned to hide there for a month after the robbery. But they panicked and fled when they heard the police were to search every house within a 25-mile radius of the railway line. It was their fingerprints at the farm that led to their arrest.

Twelve of the 16 gang members were brought to trial - the other four have never been identified - in January 1964 at Aylesbury. The judge called Biggs a ‘specious and facile liar’. He was sentenced to 30 years but, just 15 months later, he escaped from Wandsworth prison by climbing a rope ladder dropped over the wall and jumping onto the roof of a removal van. After paying £40,000 for a false passport, he was spirited from London to Antwerp on a freighter, and did not return to this country for 36 years. From Antwerp, Biggs made his way to Paris, then to Australia to work as a carpenter in Melbourne, using the alias Terry King. Old age: Biggs shown launching his memoirs in 2011, when he was afflicted with illness. In 1966, Charmian joined him - using a false passport - with their two sons. A third son, Farley, was born in Australia. Biggs’s freedom in Australia was not to last.

In October 1969, Interpol discovered his whereabouts.Leaving his wife and family again, he took a boat to Panama before travelling to Rio de Janeiro, where he arrived in March 1970. Swearing his undying love for Charmian, Biggs promised they would be reunited in Brazil. Yet within days of boarding the ship, he was being unfaithful to her with a lovelorn English passenger called Molly. Biggs was never to be re-united with his wife or sons. In 1971 he refused to attend the funeral of Nicholas, who had been killed aged ten in a car crash in Australia. And in 1974 Biggs insisted, without warning, that Charmian divorce him. She still lives in Australia, as do the couple’s surviving two sons. Biggs became a celebrity. Eventually, his notoriety led Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Slipper of the Flying Squad to fly out to Rio to try to arrest him in February 1974. Slipper’s attempt to extradite Biggs to Britain failed because the robber’s then Brazilian girlfriend, Raimunda de Castro, was pregnant with his child, giving him immunity from extradition.

Soon after the divorce from Charmian, Michael was born in Rio. Haul: Two sacks of bank notes, believed to be some of the proceeds robbery found in a telephone kiosk in Southwark - much of the money was never found. In the years that followed, Biggs opened a nightclub, made a record, No One Is Innocent, with the Sex Pistols, posed naked for Playboy, wrote two autobiographies and even appeared in a TV ad for wigs. In the early Eighties, a group of Scots Guards forced him aboard a schooner and set off for Barbados, where they presented him to the authorities. But the Barbados court ruled that he should be returned to Brazil. Finally, in 1997, and with a new criminal extradition treaty with Brazil in force, Britain asked for Biggs to be returned. By this stage, Raimunda had left him, saying Biggs was ‘an unprincipled womaniser’. Once again, the Brazilian authorities declined to return him - this time on the grounds the country’s law did not allow for the punishment of an offender after 15 years. However, just months later, Biggs suffered his first serious stroke.

Frail, housebound, and barely able to speak, he celebrated his 70th birthday in 1999 by inviting almost 100 fellow criminals, including Bruce Reynolds, to his flat in the St Teresa suburb of Rio. Eighteen months later, after two further strokes, Biggs decided to return to Britain. He expected to be hailed as a hero, saying: ‘I am a sick man. My last wish is to walk into a Margate pub as an Englishman and buy a pint of bitter. I hope I live long enough to do that.’ But on his return to Britain in May 2001, Biggs was greeted not by cheering crowds but by the warders of Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh. Ronnie Biggs was no glamorous star, no modern Robin Hood robbing the rich to give to the poor. He was a crook who spent a lifetime trying to persuade the world he was a hero. He failed - and no one should mourn him for a moment. High-profile UK prison escapes - BBC News High-profile UK prison escapes Read more about sharing.

Close share panel Police are searching for two men who are believed to have used diamond-tipped cutting equipment to break through cell bars before scaling the walls of Pentonville prison and escaping. Matthew Baker, 28, was awaiting sentence following his conviction for attempted murder and James Whitlock, 31, was on remand after being charged with burglary. Escapes from British prisons are rare and when they happen they often hit the headlines. Train robber Ronnie Biggs escapes from Wandsworth prison, 1965 Image copyright PA Perhaps the best known escape of all time from a British prison took place in 1965 when Ronnie Biggs, one of the so-called Great Train Robbers, broke out of HMP Wandsworth in south London. He scaled the prison wall using a rope ladder and escaped in a removals van. Biggs had served just 19 months of a 30-year sentence for his part in the theft of £2.6m from the Glasgow to London mail train in 1963. He spent 36 years on the run in Australia and then Brazil before being rearrested when he voluntarily returned to Britain in May 2001.

He was released from prison in August 2009 on compassionate grounds after contracting pneumonia and died in December 2013 - nine months after attending the funeral of fellow Great Train Robber, Bruce Reynolds. Soviet spy George Blake escapes from Wormwood Scrubs, 1966 Image copyright Getty Images Former British spy George Blake was sentenced to 42 years in 1961 after being exposed as a Soviet double agent. He escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison in west London five years later with two other inmates, using a rope ladder with rungs made out of knitting needles. Blake fled to the Soviet Union where he began a new life, and is still believed to be living in Moscow today. IRA prisoners escape from the Maze, 1983 Image copyright PA The biggest prison escape in British history took place on 25 September 1983 when 38 IRA prisoners broke out of the maximum security Maze prison in County Antrim. The men - who had been convicted of offences ranging from murder to causing explosions - escaped after taking a number of prison guards hostage.

One prison officer was killed and another was seriously injured in the break-out, in which prisoners used smuggled guns and knives to overpower staff before hijacking a food lorry which they used to drive to the main gate. Fifteen prisoners were recaptured within hours of the escape, with most of the rest eventually tracked down by the security services. The incident was deeply embarrassing for the UK government, with then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher describing it as "the gravest [break out] in our present history." Extradition requests for three of the fugitives were dropped by the government in 2000 as part of the Good Friday Agreement. Two other men were granted an amnesty by ministers in 2002. Pub killer John Massey breaks out of Pentonville prison, 2012 Image copyright Met Police One of the UK's longest-serving prisoners, John Massey, escaped from Pentonville prison in north London in June 2012, apparently hiding in the prison gym before climbing onto the roof and scaling the wall using a makeshift rope fashioned from netting.

Then 64, Massey was serving a life sentence for shooting dead doorman Charlie Higgins with a sawn-off shotgun at The Cricketers pub in Clapton, east London, in 1975. He spent 48 hours on the run before being arrested in Kent. It was not his first escape - it is understood he broke out of Surrey's Coldingley prison in April 1994, reportedly fleeing to Spain before he was returned to custody. In 2007 he was released on parole, but broke his curfew to go and live with his dying father. He was recalled to prison and later sent to Ford open prison in West Sussex, but again absconded and went on the run for 10 months. IRA prisoners break out of Brixton Prison, 1991 Image copyright VT Freeze Frame Image caption Nessan Quinlivan (left) and Pearse McAuley Pearse McAuley and Nessan Quinlivan, both members of the Provisional IRA, escaped from Brixton Prison in south London in July 1991 after subduing one of the guards and scaling the walls.

The pair had been awaiting trial on charges relating to a suspected plot to assassinate a former brewery company chairman, Sir Charles Tidbury. After the break-out they stole a car belonging to a prison officer and drove to Baker Street Underground station - eventually fleeing to the Republic of Ireland. In August 2009, the Crown Prosecution Service said it was no longer seeking to prosecute the two men over the plot because there was "no realistic prospect of conviction". Killer John Straffen escapes from Broadmoor psychiatric hospital, 1952 Image copyright PA Convicted double killer John Straffen escaped from Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in Berkshire in April 1952 by climbing onto the roof of a shed and jumping over a wall. Within an hour of escaping he had murdered a five-year-old local girl, Linda Bowyer. He was recaptured the same day, convicted of the girl's murder and sentenced to death, though this was later reduced to life imprisonment. The previous year he had appeared in court over the murders of Cicely Batstone, nine, and six-year-old Brenda Goddard, but was found unfit to stand trial and sent to Broadmoor.

Straffen, Britain's longest-serving prisoner, died in 2007 at the age of 77. His escape in 1952 led to the installation of the Broadmoor siren to alert local residents of an inmate on the loose, an alarm which is still tested every Monday. 'Skull Cracker' Michael Wheatley absconds while on day release, 2014 Image copyright Kent Police Michael Wheatley was serving a life sentence at Standford Hill prison on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent when he disappeared while on day release on 3 May 2014. Four days later Wheatley, who had 23 previous convictions for robbery, two for attempted robbery and 18 for related firearms offences, raided a Surrey building society, making off with £18,350. He was on the run for five days before being arrested in Tower Hamlets, east London. He was jailed and told he must serve 10 years before being eligible for parole, though this was reduced to eight years. Wheatley had gone on the run twice before and each time staged a series of violent robberies before being caught and re-jailed.

He earned his nickname for using an imitation handgun as a blunt weapon to hit people - including a 73-year-old woman - during his robberies. An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that 83 prisoners had escaped from the Maze in 1983. The correct number is 38. The Great Train Robbers: Who were they? - BBC News BBC News The Great Train Robbers: Who were they? 18 December 2013 Read more about sharing. Close share panel Image caption From left to right, pictures of Bruce Reynolds, Ronald "Buster" Edwards and Ronnie Biggs released by police at the time of the robbery in 1963 British criminal Ronnie Biggs, best known for his part in the 1963 Great Train Robbery, has died at the age of 84. He was part of the gang that escaped with £2.6m from the Glasgow to London mail train on 8 August 1963. The haul the 15 men secured is the equivalent of £40m in today's money - and was a record at that time. So who was he and who were the other gang members?

Ronnie Biggs Ronald Arthur "Ronnie" Biggs was jailed in 1964 for his part in the robbery, but his subsequent escape from prison and his life as a fugitive for 36 years gained him notoriety. After fleeing over the wall of London's Wandsworth prison in April 1965, Biggs had plastic surgery and moved firstly to Australia and then Brazil, evading a number of arrests, extradition and even kidnap. During this time he courted the media with his story. Eventually in 2001, when he was very ill, he decided to return to Britain to face arrest. His health continued to deteriorate while serving the remainder of his sentence, and he was finally freed in 2009 on "compassionate grounds" by then Justice Secretary Jack Straw. He died in the early hours of 18 December at a care home in East Barnet, north London. Bruce Reynolds Bruce Reynolds, a thief and antiques dealer, planned the robbery that has become one of the most notorious in British criminal history. Nicknamed "Napoleon", he first fled to Mexico on a false passport then later to Canada with his wife Angela and son Nick.

In 1968, five years after the crime, Reynolds returned to England and was captured in Torquay and jailed for 25 years. He was released in 1978 and lived alone and broke in a small flat off London's Edgware Road. He was jailed again in the 1980s for three years for dealing amphetamines. After his second release, Reynolds went on to work briefly as a consultant on a film about the robbery, Buster, and published the Autobiography of a Thief in 1995. He died in his sleep in the early hours of 28 February 2013. Ronald Edwards Ronald "Buster" Edwards, who is perhaps best known as the subject of the 1988 film Buster, in which he was played by singer Phil Collins, is widely believed to have wielded the cosh used to hit train driver Jack Mills over the head. Like Reynolds, the former boxer and club owner fled to Mexico after the robbery, but gave himself up in 1966. After serving nine years in jail, he became a familiar figure selling flowers outside London's Waterloo station.

He was found hanged in a garage in 1994 at the age of 62. Two wreaths in the shape of trains accompanied his funeral cortege. Charles Wilson Charles Frederick Wilson was the "treasurer" who gave each of the robbers their cut of the haul. He was captured quickly and during his trial earned the nickname "the silent man" because he refused to say anything. He was jailed for 30 years but escaped after just four months only to be captured again in Canada after four years on the run. He served another decade behind bars. When he finally emerged from prison in 1978, he moved to Spain where he was shot and killed by a hitman on a bicycle in 1990. Roy James Roy John James, who was the chief getaway driver and nicknamed "Weasel", left a crucial fingerprint at the gang's farm hideout and was eventually caught after a rooftop chase. A silversmith and proficient racing driver, he planned to invest his share of the cash in new car technology. After serving 12 years of a 30-year sentence, he sold silver at a market before moving to Spain.

In 1993 he was jailed again for six years for shooting his wife's father and hitting her with a pistol. He died soon after getting out of prison, aged 62. Brian Field A crooked solicitor, Brian Arthur Field was used to make the arrangements to buy the farm hideout used immediately after the robbery. He was sentenced to 25 years in jail, but that term was later reduced to five. He died in a motorway crash in 1979. He is pictured here arriving with Leonard Field, no relation, for their first court appearance in Linslade, Buckinghamshire, in 1963. A merchant seaman, Leonard Field was sentenced to 25 years, reduced to five. He was released from jail in 1967 and moved to north London. Gordon Goody A hairdresser who was jailed for 30 years and released in 1975, Douglas "Gordon" Goody moved to Spain to run a bar after release. James Hussey A decorator known as "Big Jim", James Hussey was sentenced to 30 years and released in 1975.

After working on a market stall, he later opened a restaurant in Soho. In 1989 he was jailed for seven years for a drug smuggling conspiracy with fellow train robber Wisbey. Roger Cordrey Florist Roger Cordrey was arrested in Bournemouth after renting a lock-up from a policeman's widow. He was jailed for 20 years, reduced to 14 on appeal. Following his release in 1971, he went back to the flower business and moved to the West Country. James White James "Jimmy" White, a former paratrooper, was known as "quartermaster" for the robbery. He was caught in Kent after three years on the run and sentenced to 18 years. He was released in 1975 and moved to Sussex. Tommy Wisbey A bookie and self-confessed "heavy", it was Tommy Wisbey's role to frighten the train staff. He was sentenced to 30 years and released in 1976, but he was jailed for another 10 years in 1989 for cocaine dealing. After his release, he ran a flower stall and went to live in north London.

He suffered several strokes as his health deteriorated. Bobby Welch Nightclub boss Bobby Welch was sentenced to 30 years and released in 1976. He was later left crippled when an operation on his leg went wrong. After jail he became a car dealer and gambler in London. Bill Boal Engineer Bill Boal was arrested with Cordrey in possession of £141,000, charged with receiving stolen goods and jailed for 24 years, reduced to 14 on appeal. Reynolds claimed Boal was not involved in the robbery and was "an innocent man". He died of cancer in jail in 1970. John Wheater A solicitor who was convicted of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. He was sentenced to three years and released in 1966. He went to live in Surrey.

Question: From which prison did Ronnie Biggs escape after serving only 19 months of his sentence?
Answer: Wandsworth