The robbery is one night. The legal and tabloid story runs for decades.
Sums are 1963 pounds unless an inflation note is labelled as later.
Timeline
- Bridego Bridge
The Glasgow–Euston TPO is robbed in Buckinghamshire. About £2.6 million in used notes is taken from 120 bags. Jack Mills is assaulted.
- Leatherslade found
Police locate the gang's farm hideout. Fingerprints and debris become central exhibits for the Flying Squad.
- Arrests
Most of the gang are arrested in the months after the robbery. Bruce Reynolds remains at large.
- Aylesbury trial
Mr Justice Edmund Davies sentences several men to terms of up to thirty years at Aylesbury.
- Wilson escapes, recaptured
Charles Wilson escapes prison and is later recaptured in Canada, a first proof that the sentences would be hard to hold.
- Biggs escapes Wandsworth
Ronnie Biggs leaves Wandsworth Prison. He will reach Brazil and become the English tabloid exile of the case.
- Reynolds arrested
Bruce Reynolds, treated as the planner, is caught in Britain and later sentenced, closing the leadership file.
- Jack Mills dies
The driver dies. English obituaries treat his assault as the human cost the celebrity robbers never cancelled.
- Biggs returns
Ill, Biggs returns to Britain and is returned to prison. He is released on compassionate grounds in 2009 and dies in 2013.
- Fiftieth anniversary
BBC drama and newspapers restage the night. The cultural file is still larger than the remaining legal questions.
After Aylesbury the timeline is escapes, recaptures and television — not a new mystery about who did it.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.