Mayfair Robbery With A Vintage Flavour

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31754, 10 August 1968, Page 13

Mayfair Robbery With A Vintage Flavour

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, Aug. 9. It was like one of those vintage silent-film cops-and-robbers routines. Exit, firing shotguns, nine masked raiders with £4OOO loot from the Mayfair (central London) headquarters of Thos. Cook, the international travel agents. From an adjoining antique shop the Thin Red Line of the Mayfair militia—one musketeer, two swordsmen, and an off-duty policeman charged to the rescue. Bu* just too late . . . the villains evaded their ambush yesterday afternoon, and fled with the booty. The robbers, injuring six Cook’s employees with squirts from ammonia guns, seized currency and travellers cheques. As they left the building, from out the adjoining anti-que-weapons shop called “Regimental” charged Major John Wilkinson, aged 47 (twice wounded in the Sec-

ond World War), armed with an 1854 cavalry carbine from the shop’s wares. Major Wilkinson, a member of the famed sword and razorblade makers, Wilkinson’s, was supported by two of his sons armed with cavalry swords of “Charpe of the Light Brigade” vintage. An antique weapon collector, Peter Butcher (an offduty policeman) came behind shouting: “I’m a police officer.”

But the robbers fled in a van.

“Still, it was a jolly good show,” said the Major.