Photocop Scoops Great Train Robbery Reward
A photographic and scrapbook archive of Great Train Robbery's DC John Bailey has sold at auction for £13,000 at Dominic Winter Auctioneers today, four times estimate. Bailey was the Scenes of Crime photographer for the Buckinghamshire Constabulary.
Online, September 25, 2013 (Newswire.com) - The Great Train Robbery scrapbooks archive of DC John Bailey has sold at auction today for £13,000. Bailey, 81, of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, was the Scenes of Crime officer for Bucks Police Photography and Fingerprint Department at the time and one of the first detectives to arrive at "Train Robber's Bridge" near Mentmore, in the early hours of 8 August 1963.
"Within two days it had been styled the 'crime of the century' by Fleet Street. You couldn't be unaware of what was going on," commented John who has finally called time on his crime photography lecturing and put his photos and scrapbooks into auction.
The centrepiece of the archive was John's meticulously compiled album of 200 black and white photographs of the crime and ensuing investigation and trial. Also in the archive were Bailey's original notes on the case, plus five albums of cuttings and ephemera including an original £10,000 Reward poster.
Auctioneer Chris Albury from Dominic Winter's of South Cerney, Gloucestershire, who sold the collection, commented: "We've had a steady stream of people coming into view the archive, a few of whom have had some involvement with the case over the years. In the end it came down to a phone and commission bidding battle with the anonymous UK winning bidder intending to keep this as an archive we understand."
"It is one of those stories that just keeps running and everyone has mental images of it, many based on John's black and white photographs which are dripping with 1960s' atmosphere. Seeing photos of all those bags of recovered cash, the mug shots, the famous Monopoly board, etc., is still curiously compelling fifty years on. You have to keep reminding yourself this wasn't some 1960s' TV series but a terrible crime where, money aside, the train driver Jack Mills was koshed and badly traumatised."
In total around 2.5 million pounds (equivalent to 40 million pounds today) was stolen, of which only some £400,000 was ever recovered. The so-called Robbery mastermind Bruce Reynolds died on 30th April aged 81, and at a fiftieth anniversary dinner John Bailey was belatedly awarded the Chief Constable's Commendation for his part in the case.