Jack Mills

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For the New Zealand cricketer sometimes known as Jack(ie) Mills, see John Mills (cricketer).

Jack Mills was the driver of the train that was the centrepiece of the Great Train Robbery of 1963.

He got on the train at the driver change-over at Crewe station, his home town, in Cheshire, on the train's journey to London Euston station, a journey that would take the train through Buckinghamshire, where the gang of robbers was waiting for it. In Buckinghamshire, Mills approached the set of two signals that were normally both green. The robbers had, however, changed the first set of signals to amber, warning the driver to slow down, and the second set to red, telling the driver to stop the train. He stopped, and soon after the robbers launched their robbery. When they got onto the train, they attacked Jack with the back of an axe’s handle, and he suffered a black eye and facial bruising. He was handcuffed to the train's 2nd man, David Whitby, in the engine compartment of the driver's cab. After the robbery, Jack was taken to the Royal Buckinghamshire Hospital in Aylesbury, where he and his 2nd man had to wait for a free police officer to remove the handcuffs.

Jack Mills, who was 58 at the time of robbery, never fully recovered from his injuries, and never returned to work. In 1970 he died of leukemia ^[1] which an inquest confirmed, perhaps unsurprisingly, was unrelated to his injuries. As an innocent victim in such an infamous crime, he is very often mentioned when the subject is raised in the press, sometimes in the erroneous belief that his death was caused by his injuries from the robbery.