The Hatton Garden Job – a dry run?

In 1987 (the year of Hurricane Fish) and early 1988, I was on attachment to Barclays Bank’s Edgware Road Branch / Business Centre for a few months.  The branch is in a parade of shops and flats on the Edgware Road about fifteen to twenty minutes brisk walk from Marble Arch and the temptations of Oxford Street.  The branch is on the southern end of the parade and was set out, as far as I can remember, at the time, with a banking hall and some customer services on the ground floor.  The strong room was in the basement.  The machine room and various management offices were on the first floor.  On the second floor were a number of Personal and Corporate Sector departments, all the Relationship Managers’ offices and the Business Centre Director’s office.  Behind this, were all the staff facilities for this floor (kitchen and rest rooms) and a large free-standing strong-room.

 

This strong-room (internally about 2 ½ by about 2 ½ metres as far as I can remember - which was quite capacious) was in an area that bank customers do not normally see.  But some customers (or workers) did see it, and the large door with the usual dual combination locks.  Well, somebody obviously talked about it to somebody who listened very carefully or somebody overheard the conversation, started to put two and two together and made a plan for an audacious raid.  There were two fatal flaws to this plan and I will come to these later.

 

I do not know how long it took for the bank robbers to make their preparations, but one day (after a Bank Holiday weekend), the early-morning team came in to discover all the damage.

 

The robbers had got access to one of the flats which shared a party wall with Barclays’ offices and broke through this wall to get into the bank’s premises.  They then set to work on the top floor strong-room using sledge hammers, chisels and (I presume) other heavy duty power tools to break in.  They did not get in.  Even though they inflicted tremendous damage to the concrete wall, they did not get through the net of steel rods embedded in the structure of the wall.   The steel framework held firm and the robbers - who did not appreciate the massive strength of the wall - had to leave completely empty-handed.

 

I do not know whether any of the robbers were caught and brought to justice as I moved on to another branch shortly after this and then to a Head Office department – but you do wonder whether some of them might have been in the same gang that carried out the Hatton Garden job some years later in 2015; it was much the same plan that they carried out.

 

The two flaws?  Well, I have mentioned the first of these, they did not appreciate the construction of the strong-room and their tools were not adequate to the task of breaking through the walls.  Secondly, a mistake made by many thieves over time, there was no money, bullion, jewels or anything portable and of value in the strong-room.  The contents of the strong-room were composed entirely of security documents (guarantees and deeds over land and buildings for instance), so they could not be sold to anybody.  Yes, it would have been very difficult to re-construct any stolen security documents, but the thieves would not have been able to make anything from their theft.

 

I know that I have been the victim of crime and it was a devastating experience each time.  Criminals steal huge amounts of money each year; but it is a truly wonderful experience to witness them fail to get away with anything at all!