by Andrew Cook
43 Memorandum of 24 May, ibid.
44 So is he said to have cried to the police who arrested him. Brust, ibid., p.48. See also pp.60-61.
45 Letter to ‘Murdoch’ from Sir E. Bradford, 21 November 1902, TNA HO 144/668/X84164.
46 Report by W. Melville MVO, 25 November 1904, MI5 file PF NE 4570.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
Chapter 8: W. Morgan, General Agent
1 Probably the Eagle Insurance Office, where James Melville later worked according to his Who Was Who entry.
2 From the will of William Melville, proven in April 1918: ‘I bequeath to Bridget Moore (née Joyce) of Plymouth the sum of thirty pounds free of duty in recognition of her kindness and the excellent manner in which she looked after my children on the death of my first wife.’ (Family Division of the High Court of Justice, Principal Probate Registry, 20 April 1918, No.864).
3 A thought which occurred to Bernard Porter as late as 1985 when ‘One of the very few files from this period to which the Home Office still denies access is one which contained correspondence about the expenses he claimed… It is unfortunate for his memory that the available historical record is so incomplete, giving rise to what may be unworthy and are certainly uncorroborated qualms.’ Bernard Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1985. These documents are now available and give evidence of payments to, for instance, Coulon.
4 Quoted in Michael Smith, The Spying Game: The Secret History of British Espionage, Politico’s Publishing 2003.
5 Christopher Andrew, Secret Service, Heinemann 1985.
6 Smith, ibid.
7 Smith, ibid.
8 Smith, ibid.,p. 55.
9 Andrew, ibid.
10 Note of 30 November 1906 from Major George Cockerill at the War Office to Sir Charles Hardinge, who has recently taken over from Sir Thomas Sanderson at the Foreign Office: ‘I promised to enquire whether we had any record here of the origin of the system under which we obtain Secret Service funds from the Foreign Office. I have ascertained that it dates from the early part of 1886 and that the arrangement was initiated by Mr Sanderson (as he then was) and Sir Henry Brackenbury.’ TNA HO 3/133.
11 Quoted in Andrew, ibid., p.31.
12 Memo from Sir Thomas Sanderson annotated by Lord Lansdowne, 16 September 1903.
13 Sir Edward Henry to Sir Thomas Sanderson, 28 September 1903. The money discussion must by now have taken place. To a great extent arrangements were in place well before anything was put in writing by the parties concerned.
14 Memoir by William Melville MVO MBE, TNA KV1/8, p.3.
15 Vernon Kell’s curriculum vitae, attached to letter dated 19 September 1909 to the War Office, TNA KV 1/5.
16 For a full account of this period in Reilly’s life see Andrew Cook, Ace of Spies – The True Story of Sidney Reilly, Tempus Publishing 2004.
17 Anthony Wood, Great Britain 1900-1965, Longman 1978, p.49.
18 Wood, ibid., points out that this treaty was key to the eventual Entente (1904) between England and France. The French were already committed by treaty to come to the aid of Russia if required; any Japan v. Russia conflict might draw them into a war with England.
19 Armgaard K. Graves, Secrets of the German War Office, T. Werner Laurie 1914.
20 Graves, ibid., p.41.
21 Graves, ibid, p.45.
22 British intelligence reports to this effect from 1918 are listed in Cook, ibid., notes to Chapter 8.
23 Letter from E.G. Pretyman MP, Civil Lord of the Admiralty, to Sir Charles Greenway, 30 April 1919 (Record of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Ltd, Volume 1, (1901-18), pp.50-51, BP Archive, University of Warwick.
24 See Cook, ibid., in particular the chapter ‘The Broker’ in which his skills at misinformation on the one hand, and public relations on the other, are described.
25 ‘Lenin, Iskra and Clerkenwell’, edited version of the lecture given by Tish Collins, (Librarian, Marx Memorial Library) at the 69th Marx Memorial Lecture (Marx Memorial Library, London); Lenin by Robert Service, p.169ff.
26 Herbert Fitch, Traitors Within, p.11ff.
27 MI5 file PF NE 4570.
28 Memoir by William Melville MVO MBE, TNA KV1/8, p.8; Julian Marchlewski (1866–1925) alias Kujawiak and Karskii was the anarchist Melville met in Whitechapel. In 1893 he collaborated with Rosa Luxemburg to form a socialist underground movement in Russian Poland. A delegate to the Second International, he edited a socialist publication for several years in Poland and then went into exile. He was considered by other revolutionaries to be more committed to Polish independence than to the overall Marxist cause.
29 Report by V. Rataev (Okhrana, Paris) to Department of Police, St Petersburg, 24 February 1903. Fond 102, Inventory 316, 1898, Article i, Section 16, Paragraph A, pp.84-85, State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), Moscow.
30 Akashi Motojiro, Rakka ryusui, Colonel Akashi’s Report on his Secret Co-operation with the Russian Revolutionary Parties during the Russo-Japanese War, Finnish Historical Society, Helsinki, 1988, p.46.
31 Akashi, ibid., pp. 32, 47, 52.
32 Memoir by William Melville, ibid., p.9 et seq.
33 Memoir by William Melville, ibid.
34 Memoir by William Melville, ibid.
35 Memoir by William Melville, ibid.
36 Memoir by William Melville, ibid.
37 Letter from Colonel Davies at War Office (Winchester House, St James’s Square) to Sir Thomas Sanderson, 5 January 1905, TNA HD 130.
38 Sir Edward Henry refers to a claim for defamation by a man called Parmeggiani who claimed not to be the anarchist of that name referred to in Sweeney’s memoir. The outcome, in October 1905, was unsuccessful for the plaintiff.
39 Sir Edward Henry to Colonel Davies, 21 January 1905, TNA HD 3/130.
40 From Colonel Davies to Sir Thomas Sanderson, 23 January 1905, TNA HD 3/130.
41 Note from Sir Thomas Sanderson initialled at end by L, 25 January 1905, TNA HD 3/130.
42 From Colonel Davies to Sir Thomas Sanderson, 31 January 1905, TNA HD 3/130.
43 Memoir by William Melville, ibid., p.9.
44 Sir Thomas Sanderson to ‘Johnstone’, 10 October 1905, TNA HD 3/131.
45 Sir George Clarke to M.D. Chalmers, 7 February 1905, TNA HD 317/43.
46 M.D. Chalmers to Sir George Clarke, 7 February 1905, TNA HD 317/43.
47 Report of 18 November 1905, TNA HD 3/131.
48 Under the Official Secrets Act of 1889.
49 Report of 21 November 1905, TNA HD 3/131.
50 Note scribbled on Sanderson’s cover note of 29 November 1905: ‘Yes: the suggestion at the end seems a reasonable one L’.
51 Letter from M.D. Chalmers in the office of the Secretary of State, Home Department, to Sir Thomas Sanderson, 30 November 1905, TNA HD 3/131.
Chapter 9: Shifting Sands
1 I am indebted to Dr Nicholas Hiley for the information that the article and the letter appeared in the Daily Express of 28 February 1906 (p2 col. 8) and 2 March 1906 (p5 col. 7) respectively.
2 From the outside, there is today only one clue to Melville’s decade there: an unusually robust cast-iron garden gate, tall and ornate, with a design of Tudor roses. The black iron railings, no doubt removed during some munitions drive in the Second World War, remain as a row of stumps half-hidden by a hedge.
3 Memoirs of William Melville MVO MBE, p.15, PRO KVi/8.
4 Melville memoirs, ibid, p.16.
5 Armgaard K. Graves, Secrets of the German War Office, T. Werner Laurie 1914. His account is to be treated with circumspection. Steinhauer, who had not hired him and was probably miffed at the amount of money this man had got out of the War Office, says all Graves ever sent to Berlin was either worthless information or requests for money. See Steinhauer, below.
6 Steinhauer, the Kaiser’s Master Spy, ed. Sidney Felstead, The Bodley Head, 1930.
8 Letter from Cleays to Captain Repington, 19 March 1906, TNA HD 3/133.
9 Sir Thomas Sanderson to Sir Charles Hardinge, 22 March 1906, TNA HD 3/133.
10 Lt-Col Charles A’Court Repington, Vestigia, Constable and Co., 1919.
11 Felstead, ibid., p.ii.
12 Major Cockerill to Sir Charles Hardinge, 30 November 1906, TNA HD 3/133.
13 Melville memoirs, ibid.
14 Melville memoirs, ibid.
15 Michael Smith, The Spying Game: the secret history of British espionage, Politico’s Publishing 2003.
16 Melville memoirs, ibid.
17 Melville memoirs, ibid.
18 Melville memoirs, ibid.
19 History of the Development of Military Intelligence, The War Office 1855 to 1939, Lt-Col William R.V. Isaac, TNA WO106/6083.
20 Details about the 1907 study are to be found in Nicholas P. Hiley, The Failure of British Espionage against Germany 1907-1914, Historical Journal 26, 4 (1983) pp. 867-89.
21 Steinhauer, ibid.
22 Steinhauer, ibid.
23 Christopher Andrew, Secret Service, Heinemann 1985. Rué later became a double agent and was responsible for entrapping the inept British ‘spy’ Bertrand Stewart in 1911.
24 Hiley, ibid. Hiley says there was a man at Kiel but does not name him; but Hector C. Bywater and H.C. Ferraby, Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service, Constable 1931, strongly suggests Bywater.
25 Smith, ibid., p.63 says that this information appears in a series of articles about the Secret Service printed in the Daily Telegraph in September 1930. The author was almost certainly H.C. By water.
26 Hiley, ibid., mentions that mail could have been sent to another London office. According to the December 1908 Secret Service account (TNA HD3/138) E was already receiving £5 for ‘rent’ and a separate annual payment of £200 paid half-and-half by the Secret Service fund and the Admiralty; who E was and why rent was paid is unclear. The three offices known to have been clearing-houses for mail were at 24 Victoria Street (Melville until – almost certainly - December of 1908), Temple Avenue after that date (Melville again) and (from autumn of 1908) the 64 Victoria Street office of Edward Drew who was known as D.
27 Letter marked ‘Private’, Lord Fisher to Sir Charles Hardinge, 30 January 1909, TNA HD3/139.
28 Quoted in Hiley, ibid.
29 Letter from Sir Charles Hardinge to the British Ambassador at Constantinople, 12 January 1909, TNA HO 3/139.
30 Hiley, ibid.
31 Letter from Vernon Kell to the War Office, 19 September 1909, TNA KV 1/5.
32 Note prepared for DMO on 4 October 1908, almost certainly by James Edmonds. At this date Edmonds and his assistant were both writing briefing documents for the DMO in an attempt to get a reorganisation of the Secret Service. TNA KV i/i.
33 Secret Service accounts for August 1909 submitted to General Staff, TNA HD 3/138.
34 Alan Judd, The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service, Harper Collins 2000, p. 144.
35 Judd, ibid. , p. 144.
Chapter 10: The Bureau
1 The affair of wide repercussions in which a French army officer called Dreyfus was vilified and exiled from causes rooted in anti-semitism in the French military establishment. Emil Zola’s J’Accuse was the key document in the fight to clear his name.
2 Central Officer’s Special Report, Enquiry re Kaulitz Farlow, signed P. Quinn Chief Inspector; MacNaghten’s covering note dated 31 March 1902. PRO HO 45 /1042/X77377.
3 See Andrew Cook, Ace of Spies – The True Story of Sidney Reilly, Tempus Publishing 2004, p.78ff.
4 Cook, ibid., for more about the St Petersburg paper, and the Ozone Preparations Company and its business in patent medicines. The location in Fleet Street is interesting but its significance in news-gathering or placing news remains a matter for speculation.
5 George Dilnot, Great Detectives and their Methods, Houghton Mifflin 1928.
6 Judd, The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service, Harper Collins 1999, has details of this period.
7 For instance the nitpicking opposition to a claim for £2 p.a. from the Consul General in Genoa in return for news of ships coming and going from the port, TNA HO 3/139.
8 Judd, ibid., p. 120.
9 Diary of Vernon Kell: 1910/1911, TNA KV 1/10. The order would be rescinded following a meeting held on 30 August.
10 Judd, The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service, Harper Collins 1999.
11 Diary of Vernon Kell, ibid.
12 Hector C. Bywater and H.C. Ferraby, Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service, Constable 1931.
13 Judd, ibid. , p. 203.
14 They were caught spying while on leave in August 1910 and jailed. For reference to the internal naval enquiry that followed their release see Judd, ibid., p.237. They told Cumming they blamed Regnart for what happened to them (Judd, ibid., p.259). Kell’s diary for 11 October reveals that one of them, before leaving England, had told his barber in Portsmouth that he was just off to do some spying in Germany.
15 She was possibly related to Major Wodehouse, Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police, who instructed the Superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard in October to communicate ‘anything of importance’ directly to Kell ‘so as to lose no time’. See Diary of Vernon Kell, ibid., 12 October and 17 October 1910.
16 Diary of Vernon Kell, ibid., 6 September 1910.
17 The Times Thursday 8 September 1910 p.4 col. e.
18 Diary of Vernon Kell, ibid., 6 September 1910.
19 The Times 10 September 1910 p.5 col. e quotes both German papers.
20 The Times 16 September p.7 col. d, 21 September 1910 p.7 col. b, and 29 September 1910 p.9 col. e.
21 The Times 11 November 1910 p.4 col. d and 15 November 1910 p.5 col. e.
22 Mistakenly identified by the press at the time as ‘Dr Phil Max Schultz’ because he was a DPhil.
23 The Times 29 August 1911 p.4 col. c.
24 The Times 4 November 1911 p.9 col. g.
25 Inspector Herbert Fitch, a former Scotland Yard Special Branch officer, in Traitors Within published in 1933 by Doubleday Doran of New York, was able to take entire credit for investigating this case and several others. He joined Special Branch in 1903 and claims to have spoken four languages. It is certain that he sometimes made arrests in Melville’s cases and was used by Melville on shadowing duty. He was demoted to the rank of sergeant on 6 December 1923 for ‘rendering himself unfit for duty through drink while on duty’ and resigned from the Metropolitan Police a month after his demotion on 8 January 1924, PRO, MEPO 4/347, 4/447, p.120.
26 Diary of Vernon Kell, ibid., 11 August 1910. Churchill was Home Secretary 1910-11.
27 MI5 file PF 363/1: Steinhauer, Gustav, TNA KV 4/112.
28 The ‘chance remark on a train’ version is also ascribed to Captain Eric Holt-Wilson, who replaced Stanley-Clarke as Kell’s assistant several months after the event. It seems to this author that something is lacking, and that is the account of the further surveillance in London which comes from Bywater and Ferraby, below. Steinhauer, whose book is commended in his MI5 file as ‘a very fair account of his organisation in this country’ blames the carelessness of an unnamed German Admiralty official. Others have named the man as Captain von Rebeur-Paschwitz, who was connected with German naval intelligence.
29 Hector C. Bywater and H.C. Ferraby, ibid.
30 MI5 file PF 363/1: Steinhauer, Gustav, TNA KV4/112.
31 Steinhauer, ed. Sidney Felstead, The Bodley Head 1930.
32 This emerged at Ernst’s trial in 1914.
33 Judd, ibid., p.95.
34 Diary of Vernon Kell, ibid., 13 October 1910.
35 Estimates vary between twenty and thirty thousand.
36 Michael Smith, The Spying Game, the Secret History of British Espionage,
Politico’s Publishing 2003.
37 Diary of Vernon Kell, ibid., 16 August 1910. The ‘Stores’ refers to the Army and Navy Stores in Victoria Street.
38 MI5’s Seniority List and Register of Past and Present Members made up in 1919 shows that the service believed in keeping secrets within the family: the Chief Clerk, employed from March 1910, was J.R. Westmacott.
39 Judd, his biographer, ibid.,(p121) refers to Ashley Gardens in the Vauxhall Bridge Road – it was actually Ashley Mansions.
40 Diary of Vernon Kell, ibid., 3 March 1911. Maybe this led to the flushing-out operation which took place in July, when the SSB placed a news item about wireless telegraphy experiments near Dorking and Kell and Melville went down there to see if any foreigners turned up to watch (ibid., 7 and 8 July 1911) Unfortunately they arrived a day late, when the Royal Engineers had demonstrated their skill and left.
41 Diary of Vernon Kell, ibid., 24 February 1911. Kell’s friend is still so important that his name is blanked out of the records. Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, is a possible candidate; owner of the Daily Mail, he was convinced that Germany could and would attack.
42 The Times Wednesday 26 July 1911 p.12 col. a.
43 The Act quoted in The Security Service 1908-1945: the Official History, PRO Publications 1999, p.68.
44 The Times Wednesday 26 July as above.
Chapter 11: Drift to War
1 Correspondence between the police and MI5 concerning Jacob Peters began in 1920; he later became Vice Chairman of the Cheka, a forerunner of the KGB. His daughter, who years afterwards worked at the British Embassy in Moscow, was at one point scrutinised by MI5. (See TNA KV 3/1026). Correspondence about what happened to Peter the Painter, greatly illuminated by people who were part of the émigré political scene at the time, is in TNA KV 3/39 and includes material from after the Second World War. The conclusion was that Peter the Painter later returned to Britain after the First World War and worked for ARCOS as Anton Miller (maliar is Russian for ‘painter’). He may have been wrongly executed as a British spy in the mid-1920s. The Sidney Street file compiled by the Okhrana, State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), Moscow, Fond 102, Osobiy Otdel, 1910, article 359.
