9 August 2013
Martin Beaumont, High Sheriff of Cheshire, spoke yesterday at a memorial service for Jack Mills and David Whitby, the drivers injured in the Great Train Robbery 50 years ago on August 8 1963.
“Their lives were ruined by what happened,” Beaumont told friends and family at Crewe Station where the men had signed on that night. “It’s a great tragedy that the robbery was glorified.”
The High Sheriff was in short trousers in 1963, about to go to Stowe, where he was a contemporary of Virgin Trains boss Sir Richard Branson. “I hadn’t thought of that connection,” Beaumont told me over a Virgin cup of tea. “I didn’t know him well but he was an eccentric boy. I wasn’t surprised he left after O-levels.”
