Two teenage girls kidnapped at gunpoint and forced to rob a bank. A shocking sign of just how far our modern society has descended into chaos. Broken Britain, for sure.

Except this didn’t happen in 2012. It happened on 14th September 1964 – in the days before the sexual revolution and the permissive society had even got going. And it wasn’t even the lead story in the following day’s Sun newspaper (which also happened to be issue 1 of the Sun, which I’m running this series of posts on).

So what happened?

On the afternoon of 14th September 1964, 18 year old Ann Caton of Niels Ing Farm, Stainforth near Settle and 17 year old Dale Kinder of Mear Beck Farm, Long Preston, Settle were kidnapped at gunpoint as they took a lunchtime stroll along a country lane at Gargrave, near Skipton. The gunman had a pistol and a shotgun. He ordered the two girls into a van.

The girls were then driven to Cross Hills near Keighley, Yorkshire where Ann was given a briefcase and ordered to go into Martin’s Bank “and get some money”. The gunman kept Dale in the van as a hostage, but Ann alerted the bank and the police were soon on their way.

When he realised something was up, the gunman drove off with Dale, eventually abandoning her in the moors before making his escape.

Leaving aside that the gunman doesn’t appear to have been the sharpest tool in the box (how exactly did he think Ann would persuade the bank to fill the briefcase with money and not alert the police?) it’s interesting that a crime which should surely dominate the media if it were to happen today didn’t even qualify as the top story back in ’64.

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