Armed Robbery - Sheffield 1983

[ceegee]

I'm just re-reading one of J P Bean's "other" books "Crime in Sheffield" and in it he mentions a post office raid in Sheffield in Feb 1983 when over £86,000 in cash was stolen. The post office was Shoreham Street near the football ground. He then mentions that this money stolen was at the time his book was written - 1987 - a record for the city.

I was wondering if anyone knows if that is still the case, or has it been superceded

[RichardB]

and looking backwards, how much would have been needed to have been stolen in say 1883 to make it "bigger"" ?

[RichardB]

In this report "Policing Armed Robbery in South Yorkshire" - there is mention of a "over £1 million" robbery; although no further details are given. Most of the rest makes an interesting enough read.

Report

58 pages, though well labelled so "Met" data is easy to scroll past.

I'm just re-reading one of J P Bean's "other" books "Crime in Sheffield" and in it he mentions a post office raid in Sheffield in Feb 1983 when over £86,000 in cash was stolen. The post office was Shoreham Street near the football ground. He then mentions that this money stolen was at the time his book was written - 1987 - a record for the city.

I was wondering if anyone knows if that is still the case, or has it been superceded

[Bayleaf]

In this report "Policing Armed Robbery in South Yorkshire" - there is mention of a "over £1 million" robbery; although no further details are given. Most of the rest makes an interesting enough read.

Report

58 pages, though well labelled so "Met" data is easy to scroll past.

If I read it correctly it was in 1993, so perhaps someone with access to past newspapers might be able to pin it down?

Post Offices seem to be a particularly lucrative targets in South Yorkshire. The table in the report shows the average stolen in successful raids on PO's was £8,379 compared with the next highest which were banks, which netted an average of £5,652. Easier targets too I suppose.

[Only me]

There was a lot of high value cash robberies on post office vans in Sheffield during the 1970s to 80s. During that period money was usually delivered to post offices using normal mail vans which is hard to believe. In more recent years the post office invested in high security vans for cash delivery.

I find it interesting that the Black Panther Donald Neilson targeted a post office at Rawmarsh, Rotherham and possibly others within Sheffield. It is estimated that Neilson earned around £18,000 during his criminal career. (£200,000 in todays money) Neilson was a nasty piece of work and would kill anyone who got in his way.