The Tottenham Outrage and Walthamstow Tram Chase

Not since the days of highwaymen and footpads had armed robbery been seen in London. Geoffrey Barton explains the political backdrop to the arrival in the UK of armed revolutionaries driven by their own frenzied missions, causing citizens to go in fear. Laws were passed to deal with aliens and terrorism but as the author explains the civil police were ill-equipped to deal with the problem. Although well known to local people, the Tottenham Outrage of 1909 when two Latvian robbers, Jewish refugees, intercepted a payroll has been comparatively hidden to the wider world (unlike the notorious Siege of Sydney Street which took place two years later). Resulting in the most spectacular police pursuit in history it involved a hundred police officers and up to a thousand citizens in running to ground two desperate police killers. The book follows every inch of the six-and-a-half miles and minute of the two-and-a-half hours of the chase. It also pays minute attention to the people and places involved as well as the aftermath. As former Head of Firearms Training Operations for the Metropolitan Police Service, Mike Waldren writes in his Foreword, ‘The officers…did their best relying on guts and determination to see them through an unprecedented incident.’ The first in-depth account of an iconic event - fascinating police, social and local history based on extensive first-hand research.