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Eastcastle Street robbery

1950s crimes in London1950s in the City of Westminster1952 crimes in the United Kingdom1952 in LondonEngvarB from July 2014
Individual theftsMay 1952 events in the United KingdomOrganised crime events in the United KingdomRobberies in EnglandUnited Kingdom history stubsUnsolved crimes in the United Kingdom

The Eastcastle Street robbery was the holdup of a Post Office van in London in May 1952 which, at the time, was Britain's largest postwar robbery. The robbers escaped with £287,000 (estimated to be worth, in 2019, approximately £8,320,000). It occurred around 4:20am on Wednesday 21 May in Eastcastle Street just off Oxford Street, central London, when seven masked men held up a post office van. The robbers used two cars to sandwich the van. The first car emerged slowly from a side street causing the van to slow down, the second car then pulled up alongside. The driver and two attendants were dragged out and coshed and the van was stolen. It was later found abandoned near Regent's Park; 18 of the 31 mailbags were missing. It was found that the van's alarm bell had been tampered with.The robbery heralded the start of the 'project' (i.e. a carefully planned and executed) crime. The mastermind behind the raid was London gangster Billy Hill and the robbers included George "Taters" Chatham and Terry "Lucky Tel" Hogan.Prime Minister Winston Churchill demanded daily updates on the police investigation and the Postmaster General, Earl de la Warr, was required to report to the Parliament of the United Kingdom on what had gone wrong. Yet, despite the involvement of over 1,000 police officers, no one was ever caught.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Eastcastle Street robbery (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Eastcastle Street robbery
Eastcastle Street, London Fitzrovia

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N 51.5165 ° E -0.1383 °
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Busaba Eathai Oxford Circus

Eastcastle Street 52-53
W1W 8ED London, Fitzrovia
England, United Kingdom
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Princess's Theatre, London
Princess's Theatre, London

The Princess's Theatre or Princess Theatre was a theatre in Oxford Street, London. The building opened in 1828 as the "Queen's Bazaar" and housed a diorama by Clarkson Stanfield and David Roberts. It was converted into a theatre and opened in 1836 as the Princess's Theatre, named for then Princess Victoria before her accession as queen. After an unsuccessful series of promenade concerts, alterations were made on the interior, and the theatre was reopened on 26 December 1842 with Vincenzo Bellini's opera La sonnambula. The theatre, by now under the management of John Medex Maddox, presented operas and other entertainments, such as General Tom Thumb. The theatre is best remembered for Charles Kean's Shakespeare revivals, beginning in 1849 and continuing for ten years. Kean presented these in lavish and well-researched "authentic" productions and also presented French drama. Dion Boucicault became the theatre's leading actor, and Ellen Terry and Henry Irving got their starts at the theatre. Thereafter, the theatre presented mainly melodrama. H. J. Byron wrote a series of Christmas pantomimes for the theatre, beginning in 1859 with Jack the Giant Killer, or, Harlequin, King Arthur, and ye Knights of ye Round Table and followed the next year by Robinson Crusoe, or Harlequin Friday and the King of the Caribee Islands! In 1863, Sefton Parry, recently returned from Cape Town, appeared as Cousin Joe in the farce The Rough Diamond. In 1864, a particularly popular drama was presented at the theatre called The Streets of London. The theatre was demolished and rebuilt in 1879–80. After this, the theatre continued to present melodramas, including The Lights o' London (1881) and The Silver King (1882). The theatre closed permanently in 1902 after its last success, The Fatal Wedding, and the building became a warehouse. It was demolished in 1931 and replaced by a Woolworth store, and then subsequently by the Oxford Walk shopping centre. The site is now the location of a sports store.