Gloves, £2.6 Million and No Conviction: The Story of Danny Pembroke

“I knew he was different. But he never discussed what he did for a living.” - Danny Pembroke Jr.

In the early hours of 8th of August 1963, a Royal Mail train travelling overnight from Glasgow towards London was brought to a halt in the Buckinghamshire countryside. Waiting for it was a gang containing some of Britain's most experienced criminals. They tampered with the railway signals, overpowered the crew and removed more than £2.6 million in cash, an almost unimaginable amount of money at the time. The Great Train Robbery became one of the most famous crimes in British history. Ronnie Biggs became internationally famous, Bruce Reynolds became known as the mastermind and several members of the gang received enormous prison sentences. Yet one man seems to have accomplished what every criminal involved had originally hoped to do. Danny Pembroke took part in the robbery, collected his share of the money and was never convicted of the crime.

Pembroke was born in 1936 and came from south London. He completed National Service before entering a world considerably less respectable than the Army. According to later accounts, he became associated with criminals involved in robbing trains travelling between London and the south coast. This is important because the Great Train Robbery was not dreamed up by a collection of amateurs who suddenly decided to stop a mail train. Several of the men involved had years of experience in armed robbery, theft and attacks on railway cash shipments. Pembroke appears to have belonged to this world long before August 1963.

His son, also called Danny, later described a father who was clearly involved in something unusual but rarely discussed his criminal activities with his family. One particularly strange recollection concerned Pembroke dyeing his hair grey when he was still a relatively young man. His son thought very little of it at the time, only discovering years later that his father had apparently used disguises during earlier robberies. There was clearly considerably more to the family breadwinner than appeared on the surface.

By 1963, Pembroke had become connected with the men planning what would become the Great Train Robbery. Inside information had reportedly revealed that large quantities of used banknotes were regularly carried aboard the travelling post office train from Scotland to London. The gang selected a location near Bridego Railway Bridge, close to Ledburn in Buckinghamshire, and developed a method of manipulating the railway signals so that the driver would believe he was approaching a genuine red light. It was a relatively simple idea, but if it worked, the train would stop exactly where they wanted it.

Shortly after 3 a.m. on 8th of August 1963, driver Jack Mills stopped the train at the false signal. When his assistant David Whitby climbed down to contact the signalman, he discovered that the telephone lines had been cut. Masked men appeared and Mills was struck violently over the head, suffering a serious injury. The gang then uncoupled the locomotive and the high-value coach containing the money before moving them forward to Bridego Bridge, where vehicles were waiting below.

The robbery itself was remarkably efficient. More than 100 mailbags containing approximately £2.6 million were thrown from the carriage into waiting vehicles. The gang disappeared into the countryside with what was then the largest cash haul from a robbery in British history. No firearms were discharged, although the serious attack on Mills makes the later romantic image of the Great Train Robbers as harmless lovable rogues rather difficult to accept. This was not a clever prank against the establishment. It was a carefully organised and violent robbery.

The gang drove to Leatherslade Farm, an isolated property approximately 27 miles from the robbery site. The farmhouse was intended to provide somewhere for them to disappear while the initial police search took place. They divided the money, ate, drank and apparently congratulated themselves on having successfully carried out one of the most audacious robberies Britain had ever seen. Unfortunately for most of them, they then made an astonishing mistake. They behaved as though nobody would ever find the farm.

Members of the gang touched furniture, ate food and moved around the property without sufficient concern about fingerprints. Most famously, some reportedly played Monopoly while hiding there, allegedly using real money from the robbery during the game. The original plan involved destroying or thoroughly cleaning the farmhouse after they left, but this never happened. When police eventually discovered Leatherslade, it became an extraordinary source of forensic evidence. Fingerprints recovered from the property helped connect several members of the gang to the robbery and the police investigation quickly began closing in.

Danny Pembroke appears to have behaved very differently. According to his son's later account, Pembroke kept his gloves on even while the other robbers were relaxing at the farmhouse. He seemed to understand that everything they touched could eventually place them at the scene. More extraordinarily, his son claimed that Pembroke would not even use the farmhouse toilet. Instead, when necessary, he took a shovel outside and dug a hole rather than leave biological evidence behind in the house.

At first this level of caution sounds almost ridiculous. In hindsight, it may have been one of the smartest decisions made by anybody involved in the robbery. Police recovered evidence linking numerous gang members to Leatherslade Farm, but they apparently found nothing capable of proving that Danny Pembroke had ever been there. The other men had just participated in the largest cash robbery in British history and then relaxed by playing Monopoly. Pembroke, meanwhile, seems to have behaved as though Scotland Yard was already standing outside.

The police certainly suspected him. His home was searched and he was questioned about the robbery. Suspicion, however, is not the same as evidence. Without fingerprints, reliable witnesses or physical material capable of directly placing him at the farmhouse or robbery scene, prosecutors could not simply put him before a jury and hope for the best. Knowing that somebody may have committed a crime and being able to prove it beyond reasonable doubt are two very different things.

The identities of several men who escaped prosecution became one of the lingering mysteries surrounding the Great Train Robbery. Books and memoirs referred to unidentified participants using pseudonyms, and later writers have disagreed about precisely which names referred to which men. Pembroke eventually became widely identified as one of these missing participants, and police appear to have suspected his involvement remarkably early. Nevertheless, he was never convicted of the Great Train Robbery.

There is also a darker allegation surrounding him. Some later accounts have suggested that Pembroke may have been the man who struck Jack Mills over the head during the robbery. Mills suffered a serious injury and never completely returned to the life he had known before the attack. The identity of the man responsible has remained disputed, and Pembroke was never charged with assaulting Mills. It would therefore be wrong to state categorically that he did it, but his name has repeatedly appeared in later discussions of the attack.

Then there is the strange matter of £47,245. By December 1963, police had arrested several members of the gang but had recovered only a fraction of the stolen money. On 3rd of December, an anonymous telephone call directed police to a telephone box in Great Dover Street in south London. Inside were bags containing £47,245 in cash, and some of the notes were identified as money taken during the Great Train Robbery.

Later accounts connected this money with Danny Pembroke. One version of events suggests that Pembroke became concerned somebody would eventually inform on him and that some form of unofficial arrangement was reached through senior detective Frank Williams. Money would be returned and Pembroke would effectively be left alone because the police did not possess sufficient evidence to prosecute him anyway. The exact circumstances have never been established beyond doubt, so the story should be treated carefully. Nevertheless, almost £50,000 from Britain's most famous robbery genuinely did turn up inside a telephone box, which is strange enough on its own.

Pembroke then did something many of the other robbers failed spectacularly to do. He kept quiet. Ronnie Biggs escaped from Wandsworth Prison in 1965 and eventually became one of the most recognisable criminals in the world. He lived in Australia and Brazil, appeared regularly in newspapers and seemed almost to enjoy the strange celebrity that developed around him. Bruce Reynolds fled Britain and travelled through Europe and Mexico before eventually being captured in 1968. Buster Edwards became sufficiently famous that a film was made about him starring Phil Collins.

Danny Pembroke largely disappeared from the story. He reportedly spent time in the United States, including Florida, while the investigation cooled down. He later returned to Britain and lived a remarkably ordinary life considering what he had apparently done. Accounts describe him working as a London taxi driver and later living in Kent. He had five children, apparently avoided conventional bank accounts and, according to his family, rarely discussed the robbery that could have put him in prison for decades.

There is something almost absurd about that contrast. British newspapers spent years following Ronnie Biggs around the world while another man involved in the same robbery appears to have been driving members of the public around London in a taxi. His passengers presumably had absolutely no idea who was sitting in the driver's seat.

Pembroke died at home on 28th of February 2015 at the age of 79. He had never been convicted of taking part in the Great Train Robbery. Indeed, for much of his life his exact involvement remained something discussed in police accounts, criminal memoirs and the mythology surrounding the robbery rather than something established in a courtroom. He had lived more than half a century after the crime without receiving the enormous prison sentence handed to so many of the men who took part alongside him.

Four years after his death, however, his son spoke publicly. In the 2019 documentary The Great Train Robbery: The Hidden Tapes, Danny Pembroke Jr. confirmed that his father had been involved. He described the precautions Pembroke had taken at Leatherslade Farm, including his refusal to remove his gloves and his apparent determination not to leave forensic evidence behind. The man police had suspected for decades could no longer be prosecuted, but one of the lingering mysteries surrounding the robbery had finally received an answer from inside his own family.

It is tempting to romanticise the Great Train Robbers. British popular culture has often portrayed them as lovable rogues who carried out an ingenious crime against the establishment. The reality was less charming. Jack Mills was violently attacked, millions of pounds were stolen and the gang consisted largely of experienced professional criminals. Danny Pembroke should therefore not be transformed into some harmless folk hero simply because he was clever enough not to get caught. But clever he certainly appears to have been.

Most of the gang believed the remote farmhouse made them safe. Pembroke apparently behaved as though it did not. They removed their gloves while relaxing. He kept his on. They used the farmhouse normally. He supposedly took a shovel outside rather than use the toilet. They left fingerprints and other evidence behind. He appears to have left virtually nothing capable of proving that he had ever been there.

The Great Train Robbery eventually produced some extraordinary prison sentences. Several men initially received 30 years. Ronnie Biggs escaped but spent decades unable to return freely to Britain. Bruce Reynolds remained a fugitive before eventually going to prison. Others watched their shares of the money disappear while they sat behind bars. Pembroke, meanwhile, was questioned, had his home searched and lived knowing that police strongly suspected him.

Yet they could not prove it.

For more than fifty years, one of the men involved in Britain's most famous robbery lived without ever being convicted for it. Perhaps the most important thing Danny Pembroke did during the Great Train Robbery was not helping to stop the Royal Mail train, carrying bags containing millions of pounds or escaping from Leatherslade Farm. It was something considerably simpler.

He remembered to keep his gloves on.