- Michael Crichton on The Great Train Robbery (1975)
On the busy streets of London during the Victorian era of Britain (1837-1901), the poor and the rich walked next to each other. The immense amount of lower class people living in terrible conditions and upper class of men and women living in great conditions was what mainly split the country into fifty-fifty halves of people from two different social classes, but around that time also the amount of middle-class families appearing started to get more frequent as England became the world's richest country; be it because of oil, metal manufacturing or early stages of rapid technological development. A whopping 10% of all work for women was about housework such as working as maids in massive manors or in hotels for tourists. The mindset of that era was still such that females, regardless of their position at work, are supposedly dumber and weaker than men. Women did not have exactly disastrous living spaces and many of them were raised in caring homes where they would sometimes stay living even as adults, due to the massive sizes of the manors owned by the upper class families. However women were still thought as possessions after marriage, and never something that men would claim would have been interesting to talk to. The problem the parents of females faced was that even if their daughters were well-educated, it was technically all for naught as there was a very heavy stigma at place towards ladies doing any other work than being the "rulers of the house."
You see, if the daughters from rich families were to start working, they would lose status. There were many jobs available for women from knitting to being a nurse or an accountant (even if women were commonly not thought to be smart or useful), however any accepted work for women was believed to be for the lower class. Women were boring. Men and dogs were men's best friends. Because of this very common mindset the educated women had a very monotonous style and were raised on learning the attitude of how ladies should act, which they did instead of yet starting to fight against the stigma that had been in place for centuries. Because of the pressure of being forced to do nothing, the girls of the rich houses that were not allowed to do menial things were said to go crazy, bending in agony, even losing their sense of sight, hearing, smell, and so on. All things considered, it was absolutely necessary for women to get married during the Victorian era, however, if they were married then the money they made would according to the law belong to the husbands, even though women's rights had been improved a bit.
However there was a group of women that broke the stigma, did things that ladies were never expected to do or acted in ways that ladies would never have been expected to act. In other words they acted in ways that made men feel that they were interesting and alive, and just entertaining to be around with. Those were the prostitutes of the Victorian era. It is known that prostitutes used to be everywhere in England back then and they dressed up in any way imaginable so that it would be hard to tell superficially what they were about. Rather than simply being only seen in pubs, streets, bordels and so on, the so-called high-grade women who sold themselves would act as keepers of beautiful hotels, visit theaters all the time or practice horse riding. There were multiple ways to lure rich people to paying for their services from physical acts to psychological manipulation of making the men need the women, they are after all, much more interesting that the ladies men were used to. However girls as young as twelve and even younger were forced to act in mature ways and were known to sell themselves and live with adult boyfriends that worked as thieves. Some of these men thieves even got by only with what the young girls were making via prostitution or re-selling stolen clothes and such.
After year 1930, as the Liverpool-Manchester railway, the first really notable train railway in the world, was built, the amount of people enjoying the adventures on the rails exploded in popularity. You see, before trains were created, the average traveling time using horse omnibuses and other popular ways to move from place to place was very long. Long-distance traveling with good vehicles moved at around 10 km/h. Average speed for trains was about 70 km/h. The more train stations were being built, the better they looked with very stylistic curvy glass windows and nice atmosphere. Railways were being built at such rapid rates that barely anyone could keep up, however they, along with detailed depictions of crimes, public executions and obviously the interest of the ravaging Jack the Ripper in 1888, were constantly the talk of day and things that you could read about. Train stations due to being such a huge thing, a dream method for people to travel elsewhere, meant much also religiously in the Victorian era as many started to think of these stations as sort of addictive chapels of sort. The higher class people spent years on business trips and the visitors to London grew exponentially, with about 10% increase in population each year. Middle of the Victorian era was also really the start of when we started to actually make ID's of people so that they could be identified.
The pre-Victorian era had of course already split people into different social classes and the gambling and cheating nature of the men and spending nature of women as well as masses using certain styles of clothing were at their peak along with the crime rates in the 1860's. It was so bad that there had to be many guards and officers at any give point in time at train stations and on the streets since children would steal from elderly, women would steal clothes from children, many clever tricks were built to keep stealing wallets from unsuspecting people, and a rather enormous amount of small groups of different levels of criminals existed in the society; some downright loathing the ones who use violence and mug bypassers. The amount of street gangs peaked in 1862-1863 so much so that in 1863 England had the most amount of people being hanged since 1838 because of new street laws being put into place in order to try to tone down the amount of ruthless crimes being done against people, especially cases happened during evenings. The human right problems according to the law were pretty complex during this era as well because, as mentioned already, everything the women that were in marriage would gain by working, would belong to their husbands, and women were still not allowed to own property, also, in that logic the law mentioned that the husbands have to take burden of the crimes of their wives - such as printing fraudulent money. Women used men in many different ways to their own benefit and also worked alone or together with them in order to rob people by being distractions, and so on. However in the 1850's you couldn't get death sentences anymore for even the biggest robberies; they were saved for murderers. I believe the reason for that was partly the knowledge of people getting framed for crimes they did not commit.
Michael Crichton's historical crime novel The Great Train Robbery (1975) takes us back to this magical era as a small group of people planned and acted to do one of the more influential crimes in history. The novel tells a fictionalized version of a real life story that happened in 1855 as a gentleman thief known by names such as "Edward Pierce" and "Mr. Smith" masterminded a robbery that began to be known as "The Crime of the Century" and "The Most Sensational Modern Deed."
As Edward Pierce, a rich, professional gentleman thief, learns of the placements of four different keys that go on two different safes, he, along with Robert Agar, a professional picklocker, Barlow, a thug with a large scar on his face, Miss Miriam, a mysterious woman, and the small-sized man Clean Willy, known to as the best snakesman in England, decide to plan almost a year to steal a 12 000 pound gold shipments that are meant to be sent as payment for British soldiers. In current day's economy, the gold would be over 100 000 pounds in worth.
The story takes us through the time when Edward Pierce first learns during a party that the trains traveling from London to Crimean Fort carry two different safes that carry over 10 000 pounds worth of gold. The safes were made by the most famous safe creator company in the world at that time, and each of those safes consist of two "impossible-to-pick" locks. It doesn't take long for Pierce to learnt that the four keys are in three different places; two hanging on the necks of high-ranked employees and two keys in a safe at a train station guarded by policemen and guards. All four of those keys needed to be waxed and replicated. The first part of the story focuses on getting the keys and setting up the Victorian England to the reader, as it is important to explain why they simply needed the keys as there were no explosives at that point in time. "The key is the heart of the whole job."
The second part of the story focuses on the theft itself, taking place on a running train full of twists and turns as Pierce does stunts that most gentleman thieves in fictional series do, such as smuggling people, showing his smarts and traveling on the roof of a moving train with no safety measurements in order to go pick a lock of a closed door from the outside. The presentation of Edward Pierce is really like what you'd expect from a genius gentleman thief nowadays.
The third part of the story deals with the after effects of the robbery, how it affected everything and how it went unseen due to much heavier events that affected Britain in various ways. The biggest reason for the lack of press pressure during the court case of Edward Pierce, Agar and others is the Indian Rebellion which was filled with injustice and killing intent and the rebellion happened when the court case of the gold robbery happened, taking most media attention to the rebel's actions instead. Note that because this post talks mostly about historical events surrounding the main event that happened in the book, much like the book itself, I'll be talking about the rebellion which the book also did talk about and I feel that it is worth talking and thinking about, however you can skip it if you are not interested in learning about it. The review continues after the hellish Indian Rebellion overview.
What I write next is what I have understood of the Indian Rebellion. It is quite interesting to think about but might hurt someone with strong religious beliefs, regardless of what they believe in.
The Indian Rebellion
In 1857 England had 34 000 european soldiers and 250 000 Indian sepoy soldiers in India. Europeans that invaded india had by then already put out certain local religious beliefs and acts such as burning the widows of dead men alive and ritual murders. So the Indians were not happy and were already feeling as if they were being insulted.
A certain event happened in which the English started using new rifles, the Enfield rifles, that had cartridges that were covered in heavy grease as they came straight from the factory. The cartridges worked in a way that you had to bite it to get the powder out. The Indians soon realized/claimed that Englishmen were using pig and cow grease on the cartridges and that it was all a secret ploy to contaminate the Indian people and make them break the caste laws.
Even though the English officials worked quickly to make it so that the cartridges would have no grease on them as they come from the factory, and they would make the Indians oil them up with vegetable oil, by then it was already too late.
This caused the Indian Rebellion to happen against the richest country in the world, England. The most famous episode of the Indian Rebellion happened in Cawnpore, a city of 150 000 people. In Cawnpore 1000 English people, including 300 women and children, had to be under fire for 18 days. The style of living there "insulted all human rights" but soon after the Rebellion had started, the people tried to live as normally as they could. The soldiers drank and ate, the children played around the cannons, and even one marriage was said to have been held in the midst of constant 24/7 rifle and cannon shooting between the English and the Indian.
However as the days stretched on, the food started running out. Men got only one meal a day and soon they had to eat their horses. Women had to get rid of their underwears for the cannon firing, and water was only found outside of the camp. Whoever went to get it, was instantly shot down. The day temperatures reached 60 celsius and many died from the sun.
In the 12th of June 1857 the other building of the two camps went up in flames. All the medicine was lost. But the Englishmen did not give up.
In the 25th of June 1857 the sepoy soldiers announced ceasefire which the English agreed to. The English people were to go to boats that would take them to Allahab, a city 150 kilometers away.
The evacuation started in June 27th, 1857 at morning. The English moved onto 40 different river boats as they were surrounded by sepoy soldiers. When the last English people were on the boats, the Indian boat men instantly hopped off the boats and the sepoy soldiers started firing at the boats that were moving on low waters. The river filled with dead bodies as the Indian horsemen rode on the low waters and killed all the men with their scabbards.
All the English women and children were kept in a clay building where they were kept in deadly heat until in July 15th 1857 professional Indian butchers entered the building and gutted them and cut them all to pieces as they were alive.
That's the condensed version of the "Indian Rebellion" of 1857.
Of course this led to the Brits wanting revenge and even New York Times was agitated as the news were demanding that the corpses of all the rebels will have to be hanged on the trees and buildings of Cawnpore. The British soldiers shot Indians out of cannons, mutilated them and pillaged entire towns, killing many more civilians than the Indians had as they put down all the rebels, however, we have to understand that the Victorian era was very strong on religious beliefs, thinking the Indians were devils for doing what they did for their reasons, while the Indians couldn't understand the British. There was nothing else left other than a hellish spiral of hatred and fear.
Back to the review now.
Crimes done by very handsome, clever, courageous and calculating male criminals that seem rich, dress well and act in appreciating manner towards everyone, especially ladies, is a fairly known character type in modern fiction. Kaito Kid known from Magic Kaito and Detective Conan series is one of these jewel stealing gentleman thieves, as is the famous Lupin III from an anime series of the same name, and the most notoriously known fictional gentleman thief Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc of course counts as one of those types as well. Edward Pierce seems to be one of the original big-shot gentleman thieves, even though Britain was known to have many thieves who dressed well and did scams, mugging, creating false money, you name it. Actually the main reason for posting this review now is that it's Kaito Kid's birthday, which is June 21st.
M.C.'s The Great Train Robbery focuses on the events that took place a year prior, during and after The Great Gold Robbery which took place in 15th of May 1855 was a rather grand piece of news for how it was pulled off and done, even if the media attention few years later during the court case had diminished.
Now for my thoughts it was quite an inspirational piece of work, almost everything about it from the way the robbery was presented to chapter formats and the writing style was what I could also be using for a historical-type series, thus I could consider this book inspirational and I actually felt interested to learn more, knowing that it's based on a real story amped my interest towards paying attention to what was being said, which is why I'm so interested in writing about the Victorian era in this post. The story flows very well despite being rather non-linear, for example it begins with explaining what the culprits said after they were caught, and doesn't feel like there's too much information although it does info-dump all the time for important reasons, to get the reader to understand what happened and is about to happen in the story, such as understanding methods of why there had to be alarms on coffins because people were afraid of being put under the mud post-death as there was heavy fear towards being announced dead as they were alive, the world was just that different back in the day and it would be very hard to understand and immerse to the story if the author did not stop once in a while to explain the situation.
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| Poster of the film adaptation. Directed by Crichton himself. |
Michael Crichton's historical crime novel The Great Train Robbery (1975) takes us back to this magical era as a small group of people planned and acted to do one of the more influential crimes in history. The novel tells a fictionalized version of a real life story that happened in 1855 as a gentleman thief known by names such as "Edward Pierce" and "Mr. Smith" masterminded a robbery that began to be known as "The Crime of the Century" and "The Most Sensational Modern Deed."
As Edward Pierce, a rich, professional gentleman thief, learns of the placements of four different keys that go on two different safes, he, along with Robert Agar, a professional picklocker, Barlow, a thug with a large scar on his face, Miss Miriam, a mysterious woman, and the small-sized man Clean Willy, known to as the best snakesman in England, decide to plan almost a year to steal a 12 000 pound gold shipments that are meant to be sent as payment for British soldiers. In current day's economy, the gold would be over 100 000 pounds in worth.
The story takes us through the time when Edward Pierce first learns during a party that the trains traveling from London to Crimean Fort carry two different safes that carry over 10 000 pounds worth of gold. The safes were made by the most famous safe creator company in the world at that time, and each of those safes consist of two "impossible-to-pick" locks. It doesn't take long for Pierce to learnt that the four keys are in three different places; two hanging on the necks of high-ranked employees and two keys in a safe at a train station guarded by policemen and guards. All four of those keys needed to be waxed and replicated. The first part of the story focuses on getting the keys and setting up the Victorian England to the reader, as it is important to explain why they simply needed the keys as there were no explosives at that point in time. "The key is the heart of the whole job."
The second part of the story focuses on the theft itself, taking place on a running train full of twists and turns as Pierce does stunts that most gentleman thieves in fictional series do, such as smuggling people, showing his smarts and traveling on the roof of a moving train with no safety measurements in order to go pick a lock of a closed door from the outside. The presentation of Edward Pierce is really like what you'd expect from a genius gentleman thief nowadays.
The third part of the story deals with the after effects of the robbery, how it affected everything and how it went unseen due to much heavier events that affected Britain in various ways. The biggest reason for the lack of press pressure during the court case of Edward Pierce, Agar and others is the Indian Rebellion which was filled with injustice and killing intent and the rebellion happened when the court case of the gold robbery happened, taking most media attention to the rebel's actions instead. Note that because this post talks mostly about historical events surrounding the main event that happened in the book, much like the book itself, I'll be talking about the rebellion which the book also did talk about and I feel that it is worth talking and thinking about, however you can skip it if you are not interested in learning about it. The review continues after the hellish Indian Rebellion overview.
What I write next is what I have understood of the Indian Rebellion. It is quite interesting to think about but might hurt someone with strong religious beliefs, regardless of what they believe in.
The Indian Rebellion
In 1857 England had 34 000 european soldiers and 250 000 Indian sepoy soldiers in India. Europeans that invaded india had by then already put out certain local religious beliefs and acts such as burning the widows of dead men alive and ritual murders. So the Indians were not happy and were already feeling as if they were being insulted.
A certain event happened in which the English started using new rifles, the Enfield rifles, that had cartridges that were covered in heavy grease as they came straight from the factory. The cartridges worked in a way that you had to bite it to get the powder out. The Indians soon realized/claimed that Englishmen were using pig and cow grease on the cartridges and that it was all a secret ploy to contaminate the Indian people and make them break the caste laws.
Even though the English officials worked quickly to make it so that the cartridges would have no grease on them as they come from the factory, and they would make the Indians oil them up with vegetable oil, by then it was already too late.
This caused the Indian Rebellion to happen against the richest country in the world, England. The most famous episode of the Indian Rebellion happened in Cawnpore, a city of 150 000 people. In Cawnpore 1000 English people, including 300 women and children, had to be under fire for 18 days. The style of living there "insulted all human rights" but soon after the Rebellion had started, the people tried to live as normally as they could. The soldiers drank and ate, the children played around the cannons, and even one marriage was said to have been held in the midst of constant 24/7 rifle and cannon shooting between the English and the Indian.
However as the days stretched on, the food started running out. Men got only one meal a day and soon they had to eat their horses. Women had to get rid of their underwears for the cannon firing, and water was only found outside of the camp. Whoever went to get it, was instantly shot down. The day temperatures reached 60 celsius and many died from the sun.
In the 12th of June 1857 the other building of the two camps went up in flames. All the medicine was lost. But the Englishmen did not give up.
In the 25th of June 1857 the sepoy soldiers announced ceasefire which the English agreed to. The English people were to go to boats that would take them to Allahab, a city 150 kilometers away.
The evacuation started in June 27th, 1857 at morning. The English moved onto 40 different river boats as they were surrounded by sepoy soldiers. When the last English people were on the boats, the Indian boat men instantly hopped off the boats and the sepoy soldiers started firing at the boats that were moving on low waters. The river filled with dead bodies as the Indian horsemen rode on the low waters and killed all the men with their scabbards.
All the English women and children were kept in a clay building where they were kept in deadly heat until in July 15th 1857 professional Indian butchers entered the building and gutted them and cut them all to pieces as they were alive.
That's the condensed version of the "Indian Rebellion" of 1857.
Of course this led to the Brits wanting revenge and even New York Times was agitated as the news were demanding that the corpses of all the rebels will have to be hanged on the trees and buildings of Cawnpore. The British soldiers shot Indians out of cannons, mutilated them and pillaged entire towns, killing many more civilians than the Indians had as they put down all the rebels, however, we have to understand that the Victorian era was very strong on religious beliefs, thinking the Indians were devils for doing what they did for their reasons, while the Indians couldn't understand the British. There was nothing else left other than a hellish spiral of hatred and fear.
Crimes done by very handsome, clever, courageous and calculating male criminals that seem rich, dress well and act in appreciating manner towards everyone, especially ladies, is a fairly known character type in modern fiction. Kaito Kid known from Magic Kaito and Detective Conan series is one of these jewel stealing gentleman thieves, as is the famous Lupin III from an anime series of the same name, and the most notoriously known fictional gentleman thief Arsene Lupin by Maurice Leblanc of course counts as one of those types as well. Edward Pierce seems to be one of the original big-shot gentleman thieves, even though Britain was known to have many thieves who dressed well and did scams, mugging, creating false money, you name it. Actually the main reason for posting this review now is that it's Kaito Kid's birthday, which is June 21st.
M.C.'s The Great Train Robbery focuses on the events that took place a year prior, during and after The Great Gold Robbery which took place in 15th of May 1855 was a rather grand piece of news for how it was pulled off and done, even if the media attention few years later during the court case had diminished.
Now for my thoughts it was quite an inspirational piece of work, almost everything about it from the way the robbery was presented to chapter formats and the writing style was what I could also be using for a historical-type series, thus I could consider this book inspirational and I actually felt interested to learn more, knowing that it's based on a real story amped my interest towards paying attention to what was being said, which is why I'm so interested in writing about the Victorian era in this post. The story flows very well despite being rather non-linear, for example it begins with explaining what the culprits said after they were caught, and doesn't feel like there's too much information although it does info-dump all the time for important reasons, to get the reader to understand what happened and is about to happen in the story, such as understanding methods of why there had to be alarms on coffins because people were afraid of being put under the mud post-death as there was heavy fear towards being announced dead as they were alive, the world was just that different back in the day and it would be very hard to understand and immerse to the story if the author did not stop once in a while to explain the situation.
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