1971 burglary of a bank in London, England
The Baker Street robbery was the burglary of safety deposit boxes at the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank in London, on the night of 11 September 1971. A gang tunnelled from a rented shop two doors away to come up through the floor of the vault. The value of the property stolen is unknown, but is likely to have been between £1.25 million and £3 million; only £231,000 was recovered by the police.
The burglary was planned by Anthony Gavin, a career criminal, who was inspired by "The Red-Headed League", a Sherlock Holmes short story in which criminals tunnel into a bank vault from the cellar of a nearby shop. Gavin and his colleagues rented Le Sac, a leather goods shop two doors from the bank, and tunnelled during weekends. The interior of the vault was mapped out by one gang member using an umbrella and the span of his arms to measure the dimensions and location of the furniture. The gang initially tried to use a jack to force a hole in the vault floor and when this failed they used a thermal lance. When this also failed to work, they used gelignite to blast a way through. Once inside, they emptied 268 safety deposit boxes. The gang had posted a lookout on a nearby roof, who was in contact via walkie-talkie, and their radio transmissions were accidentally overheard by Robert Rowlands, an amateur radio enthusiast. He called the police, who initially did not take him seriously, so he used a small cassette recorder to make a recording of the burglars' conversations. The second time he contacted the police they accepted what he was saying, and began hunting for the burglars while the break-in was in progress. They searched 750 banks in an radius, but failed to locate the gang.
Police found the members of the gang soon after the break-in; one of the burglars, Benjamin Wolfe, had signed the lease for Le Sac in his own name and informers provided information that led to Gavin. At the end of October 1971 police arrested Wolfe, Gavin, Reg Tucker and Thomas Stephens. They continued to search for other members of the gang, including one woman, for five years, but no further arrests were made. Gavin, Tucker and Stephens were sentenced to twelve years in prison; Wolfe received a sentence of eight years, less than the others as he was in his 60s.
There have been several rumours connected with the burglary, including one that the government issued a D-Notice to censor the press; that one of the safety deposit boxes contained compromising photographs of Princess Margaret and the actor and criminal John Bindon; and that photographs of a Conservative cabinet minister abusing children were found. There is no evidence to support these claims and they have been widely dismissed. Some of the rumours inspired the story for the 2008 film "The Bank Job". Many of the papers relating to the burglary remain under embargo at the National Archives until January 2071.
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Background.
In 1970 Anthony Gavin, a 38-year-old photographer from North London, began planning the burglary of the branch of Lloyds Bank at 185 Baker Street, in the Marylebone district of the City of Westminster, London. His plan was inspired by "The Red-Headed League", an 1891 Sherlock Holmes story in which criminals tunnel into a bank vault from the cellar of a nearby shop. A former army physical training instructor with connections to several career criminals, Gavin is described by the journalists Tom Pettifor and Nick Sommerlad as "a forceful personality ... [who] had the propensity to be physically threatening". According to Paul Lashmar, the head of journalism at the University of Sussex, Gavin was a member of a gang headed by Brian Reader, who was also involved in the burglary, although Reader firmly denies that he had any involvement in the events at Baker Street.
Prelude.
Gavin asked Reg Tucker, a second-hand car salesman who had no criminal record, to reconnoitre the bank. Tucker opened an account with £500 in December 1970 and two months later he rented a safety deposit box in the branch; over the next few months he visited his box thirteen times. Bank practice of the time was for staff to leave customers in private while visiting the vault. As soon as Tucker was alone, he would measure the room using the span of his arms and an umbrella he brought with him; he was aided in getting exact measurements by the regularly sized floor tiles, each of which was square. He drew a map of the room, plotting where the cabinets were and the position of the furniture. Thomas Stephens, another second-hand car salesman with no criminal record, was used to acquire the tools needed for the break-in, including a thermal lance and a 100-ton jack; one of Reader's friends, Bobby Mills, was employed to be the lookout man. Two others were brought in for the job, one of whom was an explosives expert. Another of Gavin's friends, Mickey "Skinny" Gervaise, a burglar-alarm expert, was brought on board, as were two men who have never been identified: "Little Legs" and "TH". Lashmar reports that TH was a contact of Detective Inspector Alec Eist, whom he describes as "by reputation the most corrupt Yard officer of the 1950s to mid-1970s". The journalist Duncan Campbell describes Eist as "One of the most active bent officers from the 1950s to the 1970s".
In May 1971 the owners of the leather goods shop Le Sac at 189 Baker Street—two doors down from the bank—sold the lease of the premises for £10,000 to Benjamin Wolfe, a 64-year-old seller of ornaments and knick-knacks, and a contact of several gang members. The building had a basement that, the group calculated, was at the same level as the bank vault.
Burglary.
Road works nearby meant the trembler alarms in the vault floor were turned off after several false alarms. A member of the local security company alerted the gang of the timing of the digging and when the alarms were off. Work began on the tunnel on the Friday evening of the August bank holiday 1971 and continued until 10 September 1971. To avoid being overheard, they dug only during the weekends. Gavin led the digging of the tunnel from Le Sac to under the vault floor. He later said that he lost in the process. The entry hole he, Tucker and a third gang member created in Le Sac was wide and through of concrete. Gavin dug until he reached the walls of the Chicken Inn's basement, then dug down and continued under the building, using their basement floor as the roof of the tunnel. The tunnel was long when finished, and at the end, under the vault, the gang created a cavity . The digging created of waste, which was hauled back into Le Sac and dumped towards the rear of the premises. The tunnel, which needed no supports, was later described in court as "a magnificent piece of engineering".
The gang began their entry into the vault on Friday 10 September, after the bank closed for the weekend. The gang placed a lookout man on a rooftop overlooking the bank, and kept in contact by using walkie-talkies. Their intention was to use the 100-ton jack to force a hole in the reinforced concrete floor, and railway sleepers were laid on the floor to support it. What they did not know was that there was an old well under where the tunnel ended, and the pressure of the jack pushed the bottom of their tunnel down into the well, rather than raising the vault's floor upwards. The gang then used the thermic lance in an attempt to cut through the floor; when this failed they drilled holes in the underside of the vault floor and packed them with gelignite. On Saturday the gang co-ordinated the blast of the explosives with the movement of traffic in the area to mask the noise. A hole was blasted through the floor and into the vault. The tunnel was cleared of the debris created, and the hole was widened with a hammer and chisel. By the time they had finished, the exit of the tunnel measured .
At around 11:00 pm on Saturday 11 September Robert Rowlands, an amateur radio enthusiast living in a flat in Wimpole Street, half a mile (800 m) away from the Lloyds branch, picked up the walkie-talkie conversations of the gang. He heard comments over the radio that made him think a local cigarette shop was being burgled. At 11:30 pm, he phoned the police; the local police officer thought it was a prank call, and told Rowlands that he should record the conversation if anything interesting was overheard. Rowlands thought it was a good idea, so used a small cassette recorder to make a record of the conversations. At around midnight he recorded dialogue between the gang inside the shop and the nearby lookout about their need to take a break:
First voice: Right, well listen carefully. We want you to mind for one hour from now until approximately one o'clock and then to go off the air, get some sleep and come on the air with both radios at six o'clock in the morning.
Second voice: I suggest we carry on tonight, mate, and get it done with.
First voice: Look, the place is filled with fumes where we was cutting. And if the Security come in and smell the fumes we are all going to take stoppo and none of us have got nothing. Whereas this way we have all got 300 grand to cut up when we come back in the morning. And if Security have naused it for us, well at least we have got something.
The disagreement between the lookout and gang continued for a while, and the lookout said "Money may be your God, but it's not mine, and I'm fucking off!" Eventually, after input from a woman's voice and a fourth person who seemed to carry more sway than the others, the lookout agreed to remain on the roof overnight. The lookout man was also given an update on the progress they had made in opening the safety deposit boxes: "We have done 90 per cent of the easy ones and we now face the hard ones."
At 2:00 am Rowlands decided he had enough material recorded to call the police again; he did not recontact his local station, but phoned Scotland Yard directly. Scotland Yard sent members of the Flying Squad to listen to the tapes, and they confirmed that they thought a burglary was taking place. The officers stayed with Rowlands until 8:30 am on Sunday 12 September when the gang returned to the shop and radioed the lookout. One of the gang members in the shop thanked him for staying on the roof all night and informed him that they planned to finish the job early that afternoon. At one stage in the morning a waiter from the Chicken Inn restaurant heard noises from within the bank and peered through the windows of the building to see if anything could be seen. Shortly afterwards Rowlands and listening policemen heard the final radio transmission "Would you like to change to the other channel, over". Rowlands thinks this was the code for leaving the bank.
Police contacted bank staff and local security firms to open up their branches as they began to check 750 banks in an radius. Each branch was visited by both bank staff and police. They visited the Baker Street branch of Lloyds at 3:30 pm on 12 September. They found the vault secure; they were unable to open the vault to check as it was time locked. It is not known if the gang were still in the vault at the time, although police suspect that they were, but keeping quiet following a warning from the lookout.
During the burglary 268 safety deposit boxes were opened, about a quarter of the boxes present; the gang did not try to crack the bank's safe. Lord Hailsham owned one of the boxes in the bank; at the time of the robbery he was Lord Chancellor, the most senior member of the judiciary. Estimates of the amounts stolen vary between £150,000 and nearly £4 million. Because of the way the gang communicated the