Baker Street robbery
1971 CE.
Shown on the map at 51.522°, -0.158°.
The Baker Street robbery was the burglary of safety deposit boxes at the Baker Street branch of Lloyds Bank in London, on the night of 11 September 1971. A gang tunnelled 40 feet (12 m) from a rented shop two doors away to come up through the floor of the vault. The value of the property stolen is unknown, but is likely to have been between £1.25 million and £3 million; only £231,000 was recovered by the police. The burglary was planned by Anthony Gavin, a career criminal, who was inspired by "The Red-Headed League", a Sherlock Holmes short story in which criminals tunnel into a bank vault from the cellar of a nearby shop. Gavin and his colleagues rented Le Sac, a leather goods shop two doors from the bank, and tunnelled during weekends. The interior of the vault was mapped out by one gang member using an umbrella and the span of his arms to measure the dimensions and location of the furniture. The gang initially tried to use a jack to force a hole in the vault floor and when this failed they used a thermal lance. When this also failed to work, they used gelignite to blast a way through. Once inside, they emptied 268 safety deposit boxes.
Text from the Wikipedia article Baker Street robbery, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.