The Great Train Robbery

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide contain descriptions of pedophilia. The source material also makes use of racial slurs, which this guide obscures.

Michael Crichton describes the historical background of The Great Train Robbery, which was inspired by an actual heist of £12,000 of gold bullion from a train in England in 1855. The robbery was particularly shocking to the Victorian public because they associated the relatively new rail system with progress, which they assumed would naturally lead to a reduction in crime. The heist challenged other common assumptions about the nature of crime: that crime is the result of poverty, is committed by unintelligent people, and “does not pay” (xvi).

The thieves of the Great Train Robbery were “professional criminals” who were caught in 1856. Crichton claims that he uses the records of the court proceedings and newspaper coverage to reconstruct the events in his historical fiction novel. (However, these “sources” are all fabricated by Crichton for the sake of the novel.)

As a South Eastern Railway train travels from London and reaches Kent, the door of the luggage car opens. Inside, a young man is fighting with a much larger guard. The guard knocks the young man out of the moving train.