The Chieftain: Victorian True Crime Through The Eyes of a Scotland Yard Detective (19 page)

As the hunt for Kelly and Deasy continued, the police came in for criticism from civil servants, politicians and even from their ‘own kind’; some detectives from G Division, Dublin, sent across to Manchester to help in the search reported back:

… English policeman, are not cheap at any price. I never met such thirsty fellows in my life … They know as little how to discharge duty in connection with Fenianism as I do about translating Hebrew or marshalling troops to fight a battle, but of course a Dublin officer is only an officer from Dublin, and London leads the day…
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Setting aside a natural rivalry between forces, this was still a damning indictment, which in fuller detail reached the desks of both the Irish chief secretary (Lord Mayo) and the Home Secretary (Gathorne Hardy who had replaced Spencer Walpole), and only reinforced their concerns about the capacity of the English police to deal with Fenian issues. Queen Victoria was also not amused and wrote to the Home Secretary: ‘the government
ought
to take
some
very stringent measures … to increase the police forces or to make the detectives more efficient.’
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While the search for Kelly and Deasy was intensive, numerous arrests were also made of men who were suspected of having participated in their rescue and in the murder of Sergeant Brett. By the end of October the Crown had selected five men (from almost thirty arrested) for immediate trial, against whom the evidence was felt to be particularly strong. The men were William Allen, Michael Larkin, Michael O’Brien, Edmund Condon and Thomas Maguire. All five were found guilty of murder by the jury and were sentenced to death. In an unprecedented development, reporters who had heard the evidence in court petitioned on behalf of Maguire’s innocence. After a Home Office review of the case, Maguire received an unconditional pardon, and the death sentence received by Condon (an Irish-American who, with Ricard Burke, had been instrumental in the planning of the rescue of Kelly) was commuted. However, despite an Irish deputation storming into the Home Office in support of a reprieve for the three remaining men, none was granted. Allen, Larkin and O’Brien were executed in public at the New Bailey Prison, Salford, on 24 November at the hands of William Calcraft who, fearing Fenian reprisal, was nervous and bungled the execution; effectively, the men were strangled to death.
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The three executed men have gone down in history as ‘The Manchester Martyrs’. Kelly and Deasy were never re-arrested; intelligence from the British Consul in New York in August 1869 indicated that Kelly ‘is now employed by the Post Office here, being in charge of Station F, a branch receiving office’, and had been employed there for at least three months.
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This rapid transition from leader of a large revolutionary republican group to working in a post office surely reinforces the maxim that reality is stranger than fiction! Nonetheless, Kelly did continue his links with Fenianism through the Irish republican movement in America.

Between the rescue in September and the end of November, concern in England and Ireland about the Fenian menace was inevitably heightened, and something approaching panic seems to have set in. There was increased suspicion that an alliance had been developed between English radicals and the Fenians, and warnings from the superintendent of the Dublin Metropolitan Police speculated that the Fenians ‘are buying up arms in Birmingham and sending them to many parts of England, and it is spoken of by several that another Fenian rising is imminent’.
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Arrangements were made in October to make additional arms available to the police by supplying a total of 174 Adams’ revolver pistols across the twenty-nine principal police stations in the London Metropolitan area.
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The safety of Queen Victoria came into question when the Mayor of Manchester sent a telegram to the Home Office on 14 October to alert them ‘of the intention of Fenians to go to Scotland and seize the person of the Queen’. Somewhat to the queen’s irritation, she was surrounded for several days at Balmoral by an increased police presence under the control of the long-serving Superintendent Walker (the same but somewhat older ‘Inspector Stalker’ who had been featured by Dickens in 1850). As Walker regularly telegraphed over the next few days, it was ‘All quiet on Deeside; no strangers about’.
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Across England, ‘Fenians’ were being seen under virtually every stone. In Reading an enthusiastic local police force arrested James Queen, a hawker, and his stepson Peter Griffin on 10 November, following claims that Queen offered to administer the Fenian oath in a public house. ‘There have been two detective officers in the town since Monday last [11 November], by order from the Home Office, and they have been engaged in making inquiries into the case. Nothing has been elicited to show that Queen is a Fenian or in any way identified with the movement.’
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Clarke was undoubtedly one of the two detectives mentioned; Griffin was freed on 11 November and Queen on 13 November, with a warning.
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However, if you turn over enough stones something significant will be found, and on 20 November Inspector Thomson, accompanied by an informer, arrested Ricard Burke and a companion, Joseph Casey, in Woburn Square, Bloomsbury, with the assistance of a local policeman, P.C. Fordham.
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Both policemen were quickly rewarded for their ‘gallant conduct’.
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The already eventful year of 1867 had still not ended and there were further developments to come, including an increase in the number of detectives based at Scotland Yard. Perhaps in response to Queen Victoria’s earlier interjection about the detective force, Sir James Fergusson (Undersecretary of State at the Home Office) wrote to Mayne on 9 November to inform him that the Home Secretary ‘is pleased to authorise the increase of the detective Police Force by the addition of one Inspector and three Sergeants’.
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A few days earlier, on 1 November, Mayne had written to the Home Secretary, putting forward an unidentified sergeant for an unspecified new appointment: ‘he is intelligent, trustworthy, and would I am confident prove himself worthy of the appointment if you think fit to select him.’
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On 26 November 1867, Clarke (now 49 years old) was promoted to inspector (the only member of the detective team who was promoted at that time).

The principal consequence of the changes to the detective department was an increase in the number of detectives to fourteen; scarcely a radical step forward, but nonetheless a small response to recent criticisms and to the undoubted under-staffing of the detective function in the Metropolitan Police. Of the detective team that existed in 1864, seven were still present in November 1867; these were Chief Inspector Williamson; Inspectors Tanner, James Thomson and the newly promoted Clarke; and Sergeants Palmer, Druscovich and Mulvany. Amongst several new sergeants, the appointment of John Meiklejohn, from V Division (Wandsworth) was to prove particularly significant in the later career of Clarke, Druscovich and Palmer, and for the subsequent reputation of the entire detective department.
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With his promotion to inspector, Clarke’s pay now rose to £200 per annum and provided him with the financial flexibility to move house. From about this time, he decided to rent a property at 20 Great College Street, Westminster, where he was to live for the rest of his life. It was within easy walking distance of Scotland Yard and had a pub a few doors away.

The Clerkenwell Explosion and Beyond

December 1867 – July 1868

Despite the successful arrest of Burke and the decision to increase the number of detectives, members of the government were still concerned about the perceived lack of efficacy of intelligence gathering and surveillance of the Fenians in England and the complacent and dismissive attitudes of Mayne; issues that Ireland’s chief secretary Lord Mayo had first raised in August and September 1866. Prime Minister Lord Derby met privately with Chancellor of the Exchequer Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Mayo on 9 December 1867 ‘to discuss establishing a “separate and secret organization” to supplement the existing police’.
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Home Secretary Gathorne Hardy was on holiday at the time and appears, like the Metropolitan Police commissioner, to have become aware of the proposals only after they were a fait accompli. Lieutenant-Colonel William Feilding, of the Coldstream Guards based in Ireland, had been identified as the ideal person to head this ‘secret service department’. Feilding had been active in investigations into Fenianism in the army and had cultivated a number of spies and informants in England and Ireland to assist him in that task. After clarification of his role and responsibilities, Feilding arrived in London on the morning of 14 December, the day after a catastrophic event had taken place which ‘graphically illustrated the dangers England faced and the incompetence of the London police’.
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Following the successful rescue of Kelly and Deasy in Manchester, it was perhaps not unreasonable to anticipate that a similar attempt could be made to free Ricard Burke. After his arrest, Burke and his colleague, Casey, were being held in the Clerkenwell House of Detention. At midday on 11 December the Home Office received a detailed tip-off from Ireland that a rescue was planned: ‘The plan is to blow up the exercise walls by means of gunpowder – the hour between 3 and 4 p.m.; and the signal for “all right”, a white ball thrown up outside when he is at exercise.’
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After its receipt at the Home Office, the information was passed quickly to the Metropolitan Police. From that point there are some significant discrepancies in the historical record with regard to the steps taken by the police.
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Suffice it to say that whatever precise steps were taken, they were inadequate and misdirected. In what appears to have been farcical incompetence, the police took too literally the phrase ‘to blow up’ (contained in the warning message), suspecting that it was the intention of the Fenians to blow up the walls (from underground) using mines, whereas it materialised that their plans were instead ‘to blow down’ the walls using a gunpowder bomb! As a consequence, there was an insufficient police presence outside the prison walls to prevent the forthcoming events. On the afternoon of 12 December, a man was seen by one witness to wheel a gunpowder barrel to the prison wall and light a fuse. A white rubber ball was thrown over the wall and was picked up by a curious warder who pocketed it. Meanwhile, having seen the ball, Burke retreated to a corner of the exercise yard to await the blast, which never came because the fuse fizzled out. The barrel was wheeled away again. The following day, the bomb was set successfully, but arrangements had been made for Burke to exercise at a different time and he was not in the yard. At 3.45–3.50 p.m. on 13 December, the explosion blew down a length of the prison wall and demolished the fronts of many houses and shops in Corporation Row.
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No prisoners escaped or died but at least six deaths occurred amongst members of the public as a direct consequence of the explosion, and no less than six more died through indirectly associated causes; 120 individuals were wounded. Once again, historical accounts of the event rarely agree on the final details of the damage caused.

Not surprisingly, criticism of the police came thick and fast, with Mayne and the detectives in particular being in the sights of the critics. Disraeli wrote to Lord Derby:

It is my opinion that nothing effective can be done in any way in these dangers, if we don’t get rid of Mayne. I have spoken to Hardy [Home Secretary] who says he ‘wishes to God he would resign’, but, surely, when even the safety of the State is at stake, there ought to be no false delicacy in such matters … I think you ought to interfere.
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Derby told Disraeli:

It is really lamentable that the peace of the metropolis, and its immunity from wilful devastation, should depend on a body of Police, who, as Detectives, are manifestly incompetent; and, under a chief who, whatever may be his other merits, has not the energy, nor, apparently, the skill to find out and employ men fitted for peculiar duties.
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Writing to the queen, Derby described the Metropolitan Police as ‘overworked and dispirited’ and ‘especially deficient as a detective force’.
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But, as others have pointed out, the disaster was not so much the result of poor detective work – it was poor everyday policing of the streets.
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Ultimately, compare the political bluster of Derby and Disraeli with the actions taken by them. Having expressed their trenchant views within their own political circles, Mayne was allowed to continue until he died in post (despite at least one report that he had offered his resignation after the Clerkenwell explosion).
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In equally contradictory style, those Scotland Yard detectives who had worked on the Fenian conspiracy were rewarded with substantial gratuities for their efforts.
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