page_title: Great Gold Robbery
section_title: Immediate aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Great Gold Robbery / Immediate aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Agar and Pierce melting the gold at Cambridge Villa
context_page_description: The Great Gold Robbery took place on the night of 15 May 1855, when a routine shipment of three boxes of gold bullion and coins was stolen from the guard's van of the service between London Bridge station and Folkestone while it was being shipped to Paris. The robbers comprised four men, two of whom—William Tester and James Burgess—were employees of South Eastern Railway, the company that ran the rail service. They were joined by the two planners of the crime, Edward Agar, a professional career criminal, and William Pierce, a former employee of SER who had been dismissed for being a gambler.
  During transit, the gold was held in "railway safes", which needed two keys to open. The men took wax impressions of the keys and made their own copies. When they knew a shipment was taking place, Tester ensured Burgess was on guard duty, and Agar hid in the guard's van. They emptied the safes of 224 pounds of gold, valued at the time at £12,000, then left the train at Dover.
context_section_description: When the steamer carrying the gold arrived in Boulogne, one of the crew saw that the bullion boxes were damaged, but thought that as staff at Folkestone had not mentioned it, then there seemed no reason for them to worry. The boxes were weighed on arrival at Boulogne where the box from Abell was found to be 40 pounds (18 kg) lighter than it had been in London, whereas the other boxes both weighed more. They were transported to Paris, where they were weighed again, with the same results as at Boulogne. When they were opened the lead shot was found and the news relayed back to London.
  When the working day began on 16 May, Pierce and Agar went to a money-changer's shop with some of the American Eagles and obtained £213 for them; at a second such shop gave them exchanged 200 of them to get a cheque for just over £203.
  The three bullion merchants demanded recompense for the lost gold—most of Abell's gold was insured through SER, but the company denied any culpability, claiming that the robbery must have taken in place in France. The French authorities pointed out that as the weights of the boxes in France both matched, and differed from that in England, it must have occurred in the UK; both the French and British companies stated "that the crime was an impossibility", according to Thomas. Newspapers reported that "It is supposed that so well planned a scheme could not have been executed in the rapid passage by railway from London to Folkestone". Burgess was examined, but not deemed a suspect because of his 14 years of service to the company. Tester had been seen at the SER offices while the train was still en route to Folkestone, so was also discounted as a potential thief. An reward of £300 was soon advertised in several newspapers.
caption: Agar and Pierce melting some of the gold at Cambridge Villa
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