Ronald Arthur Biggs (8 August 1929 – 18 December 2013) was a British criminal who helped plan and carry out the Great Train Robbery of 1963. He subsequently became notorious for his escape from prison in 1965, living as a fugitive for 36 years, and for his various publicity stunts while in exile. In 2001, Biggs returned to the United Kingdom and spent several years in prison, where his health rapidly declined. He was released from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2009 and died in a nursing home in December 2013.
Ronald Arthur Biggs was born in Stockwell, London, on 8 August 1929. As a child during the Second World War, he was evacuated to Flitwick, Bedfordshire, and then Delabole, Cornwall.
In 1947, at age 18, Biggs enlisted in the Royal Air Force (RAF). He was dishonourably discharged for desertion two years later after breaking into a local chemist shop. One month after that, he was convicted of stealing a car and sentenced to prison. On his release, Biggs took part in a failed robbery attempt of a bookmaker's office in Lambeth, London. During his incarceration in HM Prison Wandsworth, he met Bruce Reynolds.
After his third prison sentence, Biggs tried to go straight and trained as a carpenter. In February 1960, he married 21-year-old Charmian (Brent) Powell in Swanage, the daughter of a primary school headmaster. They had, in total, three sons together.
In 1963, Biggs, who needed money to fund a deposit on the purchase of a house for his family, happened to be working on the house of a train driver who was about to retire. The driver has been variously identified as "Stan Agate", or because of his age, "Old Pete" or "Pop". The train driver's real name is unknown, since he was never caught. Biggs introduced the driver to the train robbery plot, which involved Reynolds. Biggs was given the job of arranging for Agate to move the Royal Mail train after it had been waylaid.
On the night of the hold up, Biggs told his wife he was off logging with Reynolds in Wiltshire. The gang then stopped the mail train in the early hours of 8 August 1963, which was Biggs's 34th birthday. Agate was unable to operate the main line diesel-electric locomotive because he had only driven shunting locomotives on the Southern Region. Therefore, the driver of the intercepted train, Jack Mills, was coshed with an iron bar and forced to move the engine and mail carriages forward to a nearby bridge over a roadway, which had been chosen as the unloading point. Biggs's main task had been to get Agate to move the train, and when it became obvious that the two were useless in that regard, they were banished to a waiting vehicle while the train was looted.
When the men had unloaded 120 of the 128 mailbags from the train within Reynolds' allotted timetable, and returned to their hideout at Leatherslade Farm, various sources show that the robbery yielded the participants £2.6 million (equivalent to about £47.5 million in 2025); Biggs's share was £147,000 (equivalent to £2,700,000 in 2025). With their timetable brought forward due to the police investigation closing in, Biggs returned home on the following Friday, with his stash in two canvas bags.
After an accomplice failed to carry out his instructions to burn down Leatherslade Farm to destroy any evidence there, Biggs's fingerprints were found on a tomato sauce bottle by Metropolitan Police investigators. Three weeks later, he was arrested in South London, along with 11 other members of the gang. In 1964, nine of the 15-strong gang, including Biggs, were jailed for the crime. Most received sentences of 30 years.
Biggs served 15 months before escaping from Wandsworth Prison on 8 July 1965, scaling the wall with a rope ladder and dropping onto a waiting removal van. He fled to Brussels by boat before sending a note to his wife to join him in Paris where he had acquired new identity papers and was undergoing plastic surgery. During his time in prison, Charmian had started an extramarital relationship and was pregnant by the time of his escape to the Continent. Choosing to support her husband, she had an illegal abortion in London and then travelled with their two sons to Paris to join Biggs.
In 1966, Biggs fled to Sydney, where he lived for several months before moving to the seaside suburb of Glenelg in Adelaide, South Australia. By the time Biggs and his family arrived in 1966, they had spent all but £7,000 of his £147,000 (equivalent to £2,700,000 in 2025) share of the train robbery proceeds: £40,000 on plastic surgery in Paris; £55,000 paid as a package deal to get him out of the UK to Australia; and the rest on legal fees and expenses.
In 1967, just after their third child was born, Biggs received an anonymous letter from Britain telling him that Interpol suspected that he was in Australia and that he should move. In May 1967, the family moved to Melbourne, where he rented a house in the suburb of Blackburn North while his wife Charmian and their three sons lived in Doncaster East. Biggs had a number of jobs in Melbourne before undertaking set construction work at the GTV Channel 9 Television City studios. In October 1969, a newspaper report by a Reuters correspondent revealed that Biggs was living in Melbourne and claimed that police were closing in on him. The story led the evening news bulletin at Channel 9 and Biggs fled his home, staying with family friends in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Five months later, he fled on a passenger liner from the Port of Melbourne, using the altered passport of a friend; his wife and sons remained in Australia. Twenty days later, the ship berthed in Panama and within two weeks Biggs had flown to Brazil.
Following disclosure of Biggs' fathering a child in Brazil, Charmian agreed to a divorce in 1974, which was completed in 1976. Allowed by authorities to remain in Australia, she reverted to her maiden name of Brent and sold her story for £40,000 (equivalent to £300,000 in 2025) to an Australian media group to enable her to purchase the rented house that the family had lived in at the time of Biggs's flight to Brazil. Charmian later undertook a degree and became an editor, publisher and journalist. Her sons—who later visited Biggs a few times in Brazil—live anonymously. In 2012, Charmian was a consultant on the five-part ITV Studios docu-drama Mrs Biggs, which recounts the couple's time from first meeting to Biggs's flight to Brazil.
In 1970, when Biggs arrived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil did not have an extradition treaty with the United Kingdom. In 1971, Biggs's eldest son, Nicholas, aged 10, died in a car crash in Melbourne.
In 1974, Daily Express reporter Colin MacKenzie received information suggesting that Biggs was in Rio de Janeiro; a team consisting of MacKenzie, photographer Bill Lovelace and reporter Michael O'Flaherty confirmed this and broke the story. Scotland Yard detective Jack Slipper arrived soon afterwards, but Biggs could not be extradited because his girlfriend, nightclub dancer Raimunda de Castro, was pregnant. Brazilian law at the time did not allow a parent of a Brazilian child to be extradited.
During 1974, in Rio, Biggs, an avid jazz fan, collaborated with Bruce Henri (an American double bass player), Jaime Shields, and Aureo de Souza to record Mailbag Blues, a musical narrative of his life that he intended to use as a film soundtrack. This album was left undiscovered until it was finally released in 2004 by whatmusic.com.
In April 1977, Biggs attended an informal drinks party on board the Royal Navy frigate HMS Danae, which was in Rio for a courtesy visit, but he was not arrested. Though in Brazil he was safe from extradition, Biggs's status as a criminal meant he could not work, visit bars or be away from home after 10 p.m. To provide an income, Biggs's family hosted barbecues at his home in Rio, where tourists could meet Biggs and hear him recount his involvement in the robbery, which, in fact, was minor. Biggs was even visited by former footballer Stanley Matthews, whom Biggs afterwards invited to his apartment after hearing that he was in Rio. "We had tea on the small balcony at the rear of his home, and one of the first things he asked was, 'How are Charlton Athletic doing?' It turned out he had supported Charlton from being a small boy and had often seen me play at The Valley." Around this time, "Ronnie Biggs" mugs, coffee cups and T-shirts also appeared throughout Rio.