The Railway Robberies from West End Sidings

An Act of Parliament was passed in July 1863, authorising the Midland Railway to build an extension from Bedford to a London terminus on Euston Road at St Pancras. 

The company acquired a large amount of land along the route, near the village of West End (later, this became West Hampstead).

There was no local station when the line opened to traffic in 1868. ‘West End’ station was a later addition, opening on 1st Match 1871 in a converted villa on Iverson Road. Access to trains was via a footbridge over the lines. Despite the absence of a passenger service, the original construction work included building a large area of sidings to the west of West End Lane, to store or tranship goods in wagons. Appropriately, they were given the name of West End Sidings and could hold around 900 wagons. The job of moving wagons and goods was undertaken by railway workers known as ‘shunters’, men assigned to specific sidings.

1915 Map showing West End Sidings and the surrounding streets

Thefts from the Sidings

In 1908 the Midland described ‘serious and heavy losses’ at West End Sidings. All sorts of goods had been stolen, including bicycles packed in crates. That September, Frank Black aged 27, appeared in court. Carriage rugs, shirts, cutlery and dresses, the proceeds of six robberies of goods in transit between November 1907 and July 1908, had been found at his home. 

Born in Newcastle, Frank had been employed as a labourer when he joined the Coldstream Guards in 1899. For the past two years he had been working in the Sidings as a platelayer, responsible for maintaining the track. One newspaper described him as a ‘systematic plunderer of the railway company’s property’. 

Frank lived at 75 Ravenshaw Street where the rear wall backed onto the railway lines. The goods had simply been lifted over and into his back garden. It seemed unlikely he had been acting alone – think of the weight of those bicycles – but Frank was the only one charged. He got nine months in Wormwood Scrubs.

‘An organised system of plunder!’

During WWI, the railways played a vital role in moving men and materials around the country. At West Hampstead, a combination of reduced security and the large amount of goods in transit, prompted a series of thefts from the Sidings, which one paper likened to looting. Previously wagons had been protected by railway police, but their numbers had been drastically cut since the beginning of the War. 

Between the beginning of April and the end of August 1915, goods valued around £350 had been stolen, (equivalent to about £28,000 today). Army property including boots, shirts and knitted ‘wraps’ intended for the soldiers at the Front had disappeared. Among the other articles stolen were ladies’ furs, mackintoshes, wines and spirits, bottled beer, cigars and cigarettes, 4,300 cigarettes from one consignment alone, shoes and tinned milk. 

A surveillance operation was mounted by railway police, but they were always spotted by the workers in the Sidings. This forced them to the conclusion that the majority of the 16 shunters employed at West End were involved in the robberies.

Eventually enough evidence was collected and 24 policemen, some of them railway detectives, raided homes in West Hampstead and Cricklewood. Thirteen of the shunters were arrested. Their ages ranged from 28 to 44, all trusted employees of the railway company, with periods of service ranging from 11 to 22 years. At their appearance at Marylebone Police Court, the magistrate commented that ‘an organised system of plunder had been going on among the shunters’ and he couldn’t understand how they could be, ‘such perfect fools as to throw away so much they held dear for so little.’ In other words, the men would almost certainly lose their jobs and in some cases their homes, which were owned by their employer. 

These included properties in Needham Terrace Cricklewood where two of the shunters, James Henry Fortescue and George Charles Martin lived. They were among the 10 men sentenced to a month’s hard labour, including Thomas Frederick Ashman who lived in Willesden. Charles North was arrested the day before he was due to get married; along with colleague Fred Cheshire, he was sentenced to 21 days imprisonment.

One man pleaded ‘not guilty’ and was further remanded. His name was Francis Brevan Bishop. He told the police who searched his Hendon home, ‘You will find nothing here belonging to the Railway Company,’ and said the items of clothing the police removed had been given to him by another man. That October, he was acquitted.

Francis Brevan Bishop accused again

Two years later, three shunters and a signalman were up before the magistrates charged with stealing a quantity of potatoes on or around the 19 February 1917, from a truck in transit between Cricklewood and West End Sidings. Poor harvests meant that potatoes were in short supply. There was a familiar name among the accused, that of Brevan Bishop, although early reports incorrectly described him as ‘Thomas’ not Francis. This time, the value of the goods stolen was much lower: 15sh or around £42 today. The intention seems to have been to make an example of the men, but despite pursuing a robust prosecution, the Midland Railway lost its case.

At the first court appearance, charges against Bishop were withdrawn, pending fresh ones being brought. The case continued against the other three men, Thomas Asher, Charles John Port and Walter Thomas Hilsden. Hilsden and Port were also accused of stealing a case of boot polish and Hilsden alone, four bottles of wine. 

The attention paid to these thefts and the large number of witnesses called, took up a day of court time and may seem out of proportion to the level of thieving. But Britain was at war and pilfering was viewed as symptomatic of a prevailing ‘low state of morality’. One local paper commented: ‘One can have no sympathy with men in regular employment who take advantage of trust imposed in them not only to make their employers suffer pecuniarily but call upon them to engage a big force of police to prevent stealing.’

The new charges against Bishop accused him of the theft of a bag of potatoes valued at 12sh from West End Sidings and a sack worth 1sh. Bishop said he’d borrowed the sack and the goods had been given to him by an employee of the company who owned a potato storage shed on the Sidings. A fellow worker backed him up, saying that the shunters received small ‘gifts’ for favours done, such as working unpaid overtime to unload a wagon or moving a wagon to a better position to speed up unloading. Bishop was discharged for lack of evidence, and his three colleagues were also acquitted of all charges.

What happened to the accused men?

We have not been able to reliably trace them after their court appearances in 1915 and 1917, with three exceptions. 

Thomas Frederick Ashman fought in WWI. He enlisted at Cricklewood and joined the 11^th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. He had transferred to the Labour Corps when he died of wounds on 30 July 1918 and is buried in France, at the Mont Huon Military Cemetery, Le Treport. 

Walter Thomas Hilsden was living at 70 Sumatra Road in 1939. He gave his occupation as a railway signalman as it had been back in 1917, so his acquittal must have meant he kept his job. Likewise, Francis Bishop, still living at 275 Hendon Broadway in 1939, had kept his job, having risen to the position of a ‘railway leading shunter.’ This was his address at death, on 5 February 1965 at West Hendon Hospital. He left £187.

1948 view, looking east on the Midland main line. The houses in Westbere Road and Mill Lane are shown left & centre. (Wiki Commons, copyright Ben Brooksbank)

West End Sidings

The name lives on in the appropriately named West End Sidings Estate which occupies part of the site of the Midland Railway sidings. Camden Council bought the 14 acres of derelict land from British Rail in 1973, and the estate was built from about 1978 and completed by 1982.