Great Train Robber Biggs’s funeral draws varied crowd
Fugitive saw himself as a lovable underdog
LONDON — Defiant to the end, British train robber Ronnie Biggs was laid to rest Friday at a funeral complete with a Dixieland band, an honour guard of Hells Angels and a cheeky floral tribute.
A hearse carrying Biggs, who died last month at age 84, was escorted by 13 bikers to London’s Golders Green Crematorium.
The hearse bore a white floral wreath in the shape of a rude twofingered salute, and a coffin draped in the flags of Britain and of Brazil, where Biggs lived for three decades.
The coffin was brought into the packed chapel to the strains of the London Dixieland Jazz Band.
Biggs was part of a gang that pulled off the 1963 “Great Train Robbery” of a cash-packed Glasgowto-London mail train.
The heist netted 1.6 million pounds — worth $7.3 million at the time, or more than $60 million today — but most of the gang members were soon arrested.
Biggs was jailed but escaped from London’s Wandsworth Prison and made his way to Brazil. He lived in Rio de Janeiro for more than 30 years before returning voluntarily to Britain, and prison, in 2001.
Elderly and in failing health, Biggs was released in 2009 on compassionate grounds.
To the end, he said he hoped to be remembered as a lovable rogue — though that label was rejected by some, including the widow of the mail train’s driver, who was injured in the robbery and never fully recovered.