Status Updates From The Great Train Robbery

They compare notes and then Pierce offers to find him a made dog. In the conversation, he lets Trent know that he is single, even though he hopes to marry. He also acts like he’s rich without a care in the world.

After an obscure announcement is made, some go to another room with their dogs. Another announcement tells the crowd they have until a certain tie to decide what to do (place bets). Several dogs compete to determine which one can kill the most rats before the bell rings. An announcer narrates the action to the crowd. Pierce uses this chance to talk with Trent whose dog does not win.

Ch. 11 I remember reading in a Wodehouse that folks in England will bet on almost anything. While animal fighting had lost its luster, three forms of dog fight sports still existed: dog on dog, dog on badgers in chains, and dogs on rats. Training and selling dogs to fight was illegal in the Victorian Era, therefore these sports were popular. Trent takes his dog to a pub where dogs are welcome.

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Ch. 10 Pierce goes to see a dog trainer and, after long conversations, going back and forth, he negotiates buying the best "made dog" which is trained to catch rats. The trainer assumed Pierce has an infestation of rats. However, it has something to do with the dog.

Ch. 9 The "bungled" pickpocket told Pierce what he needed to know. He has a serious problem. The street is patrolled. The help is honest. Trent and his wife live a predictable routine life. They don't seem to have vices. After a month of surveillance, he is getting desperate. Then he sees something that gives him an idea than getting hit by a vehicle in front of Trent's home.

He seems to know the area well. He asks for and finds a tween girl who knows the whereabouts of Willie, his potential snakesman. He gives her a gold coin and she tells him he’s at Newgate, which he already knows. He bribes her to give Willie a very strange message, but clearly it’s intended to give Willie a tip-off about a potential escape. If he can escape Newgate, he’s got the job.

At the time, it was called a rookery where criminals and prostitutes lived. The images are interesting: crows (which are thieves) and their haphazard nests. A large rookery near St. Giles was called the Holy Land and there was nothing sacred about it. The police abandoned patrolling this area because it was so danger. Pierce walks in, dressed as a gentlemen, but bulges implied that he was heavily armed.

Ch. 8 There is a lot of padding to help readers understand the Victorian which I love because I’m learning more about that time and place in history. The author mentions what contemporaries thought of London’s size (Henry James, Nathanial Hawthorne, Dostoevsky). Even though slums was a thing, the growth was so explosive they didn’t have a name for it even though they were seeing the pattern.

Ch. 7 Pierce watches a team of pickpockets practice their trade in London. Then he has an odd request. He asks if they could bungle the job in a way that doesn’t look obvious. Pierce offers him five quid and the guy turns him down. He accepts the job for ten quid.

He gathers intelligence and eventually deduces that the key is kept at home. This chapter lines up with Napoleon’s buttons. It talks about how dangerous explosives were before TNT. I laughed in the last chapter when it mentioned Sherlock Holmes prowess at learning railway schedules. Cigarettes had recently been invented but it wasn’t clear if they were gentlemanly.

Burglars could carry it away (if small), cut a hole in the safe and release the lock, or get the key (or make a copy). Pierce can’t do this until he figures out where the key is kept. Trent was not well liked because he was very fastidious with his employees and has very strict moral codes for them. They had to bring their own pens and, in the winters, coal. So, he hung out at various establishments near the bank.

Ch. 6 They need a snakesman (a slightly built person) to help with the robbery but first they need to know where the key is. In those days, safes had keys for combination locks had not been invented. Pierce has accounted for three of the four keys. The other is held by Edgar Trent, the president of the bank. Burglars had three ways at breaking into safes and each had different pros and cons.

The two discuss different aspects of the job and how to get around obstacles. They do not have a solution yet, but they collected a lot of information during their observations. What they need is a good snakesman, but the best is in Newgate prison, according to Agar.

For the most part, they just observed all that was going on. Finally, Agar asked why they were there. Then Pierce said there are two keys that he wants to have. Agar thinks there is too much foot traffic. He can easily break-in but people are the problems. During the day, there’s too many. At night, a police officer patrols. He could do it quickly if the offices were unlocked.

There was a lot of coming and going at the railway office. There were lots of storage spaces and workers going back and forth. You’d think that someone would have noticed two men setting on a bench, checking their pocket watches (that were really stop watches), all day long (July 1854). They returned the following week and did the same. It was Pierce and Agar, of course. Nobody noticed.

Ch. 5 At this time, London had no central station. There were a few crossing points. Sometimes passengers had to take coaches to make connections. As Christopher Wren pointed out two centuries earlier, Londoners had a hard time agreeing on anything. Worse, they would complain about a thing and then, when a new thing was built to replace it, they would complain about the new thing and how much they missed the old.

Someone brings up the guy who was thrown off the train. His face is so battered that he cannot be ID’ed. The fool lets himself to get talked into sharing all of the security measures they use for gold shipments. The final key (ha, ha) is that he is one of four people who have keys to the safe. He wears it around his neck at all times. It sounds like a job for a talented screwsman. I bet the devil delights in boredom.

Ch. 4 is about an unwitting accomplice. I would say “Incompetent Fool.” Henry Flower is a banker. He rubs elbows with clients so he is at a dinner with 8 men in May 1854. One is Edward Pierce. First they talk about plans for the first subway to be built in London. He’s bored. Then they talk about cholera and plans to fix London’s sewage. He’s bored. I swear that the most dangerous people on earth are bored people.