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Authors: Andrew Cook

Tags: #M15’S First Spymaster

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According to a key informer, J.P. Walsh had been among the instigators of the ‘Irish Invincibles' who had claimed responsibility for the Phoenix Park murders of 1882. He had been living in America. The murders – and it is worth remembering this as a footnote to what follows – had been committed by stabbing with surgical knives bought in Bond Street by an American ‘Dr Hamilton Williams'. In Monro's view of events in 1888,

[The dynamitards]… resolved on a new line of tactics. They professed to think that Irish Americans were not good agents for outrage, as their accent called attention to them. This sounds prudent; the real reason was that the Irish American had had enough of the danger and judiciously wished to throw the burden on the shoulders of other persons. With this object in view they resolved to inaugurate a system of assassination… to be carried out by Irishmen, not Irish Americans.
10

Walsh was understandably averse to landing on English soil and allegedly intended to direct the plot from France. A Scotland Yard detective, probably Melville, followed Walsh and one day saw him deep in conversation with another Dubliner called McKenna under the Arc de Triomphe. Monro wanted Walsh interviewed, and had to wade through channels, in the usual way, via the Foreign Office and the Ambassador, to get the French police to order him to attend the Préfecture to be questioned.

Walsh, informed that he must pay a visit to police HQ, was sublimely unconcerned. Six years earlier the French Department of Justice had declined to extradite him from Le Havre, when he was caught fleeing Dublin after the murders. He had been minding his own business in Brooklyn ever since, so they couldn't hurt him now. In he swaggered to the Préfecture, little knowing that among his French interrogators, speaking to him through an interpreter, would be one William Melville, whose account continues:

Walsh arrived at 9.30 a.m. at the Préfecture and was questioned through one of his officers by M. Goron, Chef de la Sûreté. In answer to questions he said his name was John Stephen Walsh, and he was born at Milford, County Cork, and was single and by profession a labourer. He took the name of Walters because he had come to France to receive some money which a man in England owed him. If this man corresponded with him (Walsh) he would bring himself under suspicion there, as he (Walsh) was outlawed in connection with the Phoenix Park murders. He was now staying in Paris for pleasure.

He said he would prefer to be hanged to revealing the name of above man, but said that he met him at Boulogne on 14th inst. when he received £20 from him. That was at the Hotel de l'Union, but neither of them stayed there, each returning home.

Melville, as a Frenchman, put a question. What job did this man do?

In reply to me, he said the man that gave him the money was a publican. Knowing that Walsh had received two letters yesterday, one from Omaha, United States, the other from Manchester, I questioned him as to his correspondence, when he said he had received a letter also from Preston, but declined to say from whom, but it was clear it was from the publican. On my briefing him re American acquaintances, he said that for the months up to November last, he worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and was well known to a Mr McGee a foreman there. During this time he lodged with John Ross 96 Adam Street, Brooklyn. Last January he went to Omaha to look for work and admitted meeting Thomas Brennan there. Pressed as to his letter of yesterday from Omaha, he said it was from John Groves of that city, but would not give his address. He said latter was a clerk or kept an office.

Thomas Brennan was also wanted for the Phoenix Park murders. Melville was well informed; he knew the names, and where certain Irishmen were hiding out, and he knew who he was looking for. He relentlessly asked questions in French, heard them interpreted, and heard the answers back in English – and made scribbled notes as they were interpreted to him in French. This Groves had sent Walsh some money: £60 in three notes. Melville said he did not believe this story – how could it be in three notes? Walsh asked if he had to produce the notes and –

M. Goron said it was voluntary, but I said quickly that he should show them. On this he drew from a belt worn inside his trousers three £20 Bank of England notes. M. Goron said this was a delicate matter, there being no charge against Walsh. I however snatched the notes hurriedly and found that they were:

1st
Serial No. 59/W No.66929. of 17th February 1887. This one was stamped at some office apparently with the figures 5989 and also 8668.
2nd
4/V No.64906 of 20th March 1886.
3rd
4/V No.85348 –
ditto

Walsh refused to give any answer as to why Groves sent him the money beyond that he was a friend, and thought, he (Walsh) might want it. He had no acquaintances at Paris but knew a Mr Casey, whom he saw when in custody at Havre in 1883, but did not see him since.
11

Melville asked him about a ‘carroty' fellow in whose company he had been seen (probably McKenna, living in Paris as Sylvester). Walsh told him the carroty man was an American he'd met by accident. And yes, he had met him again yesterday, but said it was by chance.

This pushy French policeman was making him uneasy. He hadn't walked in expecting a grilling. He would answer no more questions. He demanded reassurance from the Préfet, who had been quietly observing, that none of this information about himself, or the banknotes, would reach the English police.

The silence was broken by Melville: ‘Walsh, man, I am an inspector from Scotland Yard.'

Walsh's exact response is not recorded but we have it on Monro's authority that it was ‘more emphatic than reverent'.
12
He was allowed to go and McKenna was shadowed – so obviously shadowed that he dared not meet Walsh, but had to go back to his hotel. The two detectives sat down at a restaurant across the street and ordered
un verre.
After some time McKenna came out. The detectives got up to follow him. McKenna turned around crossly and came back. This he did several times. He was not a happy man. When finally he came out again they waved him over for a drink. He had been worn down; he could not resist. The glasses were on the table and the rounds were being thoughtfully consumed when around the corner who should come but – Walsh. When he saw McKenna sitting with two detectives he sprang to a certain conclusion about the cause of his own predicament. And he said so to McKenna, roundly abusing him. In the stand-up shouting match that followed, the two detectives crept away.

A couple of days later both men were gently escorted to Le Havre by train, Walsh travelling with Melville and McKenna with Sergeant Flood.

The two conspirators were so irate still with one another that they declined to travel in the same carriage. On the way to Havre Walsh attempted to pump Inspector Melville as to the ports which were watched by the Police. Inspector Melville naturally was not lavish in the information given, but he rather implied that there was not a port in the world where Scotland Yard was not strongly represented. On arrival at Havre, many of the employees at the wharves and shipping who knew Melville well owing to his having been formerly stationed at Havre, came forward effusively and greeted him. To Walsh this sight suggested that all these men must be allies of Melville in the police, and his comment, with an oath was ‘There are scores of them.'
13

Monro gleefully informed the press that Walsh and McKenna were on their way home from France with their tails between their legs. Someone in America issued a denial that Walsh was in Europe at all; he was in Omaha. At this Monro sent a wire to Pinkertons, suggesting that if any American newsmen cared to see Walsh and his former friend Roger McKenna for themselves they could meet SS
Gascogne
when she arrived from Le Havre.

Walsh and McKenna were greeted on the NewYork waterfront by about forty news hounds. Walsh was in an abusive mood, and no one was left in much doubt that he had been made to look foolish. ‘Thus the Walsh assassinations scheme was extinguished by the slaughter and ridicule of both England and America', concluded James Monro, recalling the event with great satisfaction fifteen years later.

Perhaps Sir Charles Warren felt, in the summer of 1888, that his Assistant Commissioner was stealing the limelight. His own standing with the public had never been lower. In November of 1887 he had called out thousands of troops to assist in policing a demonstration in Trafalgar Square; shots were fired and two people killed. The
Pall Mall Gazette
called it Bloody Sunday. Notwithstanding the roar of protest that greeted his rigid and heavy-handed methods, he threw his weight about more than ever. Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary, could not keep him in check; ‘indeed he took the attitude that the Commissioner once appointed by the Crown had certain powers by statute in the exercise of which he was responsible to no higher official.'
14

He was particularly incensed by Monro's direct line of communication to the Home Office. The long working hours and endless ramifications of the Dynamite Plot had pretty much worn Williamson out, and he had to take sick leave. Monro put forward the name of MacNaghten, an old friend of his from Bengal, to the Home Office, suggesting that he should assist with Williamson's work under the title of Assistant Chief Constable. The Home Office agreed but Warren ‘blocked the appointment with a mean little whispering campaign.'
15
As for Monro, he was summarily removed from the room that the Assistant Commissioner had always occupied at Scotland Yard (‘one of the best in the collection of dog-holes in which the Metropolitan Police have their headquarters')
16
and sent to work alongside Section D at Whitehall Place. This inevitably marginalised the work of the section, besides causing offence to the man on whom rank had so obviously been pulled. ‘The department itself, established in another street, was looked upon somewhat as… a rival rather than a branch of the same business.'
17

There were mutinous rumblings throughout the Metropolitan Police generally. Since taking over from Henderson, Warren had expected a militaristic style. Not only did he fail to understand that policemen needed to use their own initiative, but he could not grasp that detectives, to an even greater extent, must be relied upon to take decisions without referring upwards. As the
Pall Mall Gazette
pointed out, ‘the effect of this was felt throughout the entire force'.

The essential difference between a soldier and a constable is that the former is seldom or never used out of formation, while the latter is seldom or never in formation. That is to say, the soldier is an integral part of a machine, the efficiency of which presupposes the absolute and mechanical obedience of all its parts. The constable, on the contrary, is called upon at all hours to exercise his own judgment, to solve knotty practical questions of law and of fact, to compose disputes, to dispense rough-and-ready justice, and in short to act as an independent unit. For every policeman is the bishop of his beat, with jurisdiction almost like that of a magistrate. If he winks he can suspend the operation of the law. If he pleases he can convert the law into a weapon of oppression. The soldier is never left alone. He never acts on his own initiative. He is always under the eye of his officer, and his supreme quality is unhesitating and unqualified obedience. The constable is always left alone. He is constantly acting on his own initiative, and his supreme duty is the habitual exercise of self-reliance and common sense. Hence militarism is fatal to the force. But with Sir Charles Warren militarism is supreme.
18

By mid-August of 1888 Monro had had enough. He resigned, with dignity, in a brief note to Mr Matthews. Sir Charles Warren said nothing to Monro's men and ‘sinister rumours', according to Anderson, were circulating about who would take over on 31 August. Robert Anderson was made Assistant Commissioner but ‘for some occult reason', as Anderson put it in his memoir, ‘the matter was kept secret, and I was enjoined not to make my appointment known. I had been in the habit of frequenting Mr Monro's room as we were working together on political crime matters; but when I did so now, and Sir Charles Warren took advantage of my visit to come over to see me, it was at once inferred that he was spying on me because I was Mr Monro's friend.'
19

Anderson, laden with added responsibility for the ‘ordinary' CID work on the very day in August when the Jack the Ripper murders began in Whitechapel, was floundering. He was not the sort of man who could withstand Warren at the best of times and with Monro gone, no one else was, either.

The Commissioner had introduced a crowd of yes-men, all of them former soldiers, who saw it as their job to issue orders to the Metropolitan Police. These proved both unpopular and ultimately counter-productive. The height requirement for CID entry was arbitrarily raised to five feet nine inches, as though there were some correlation between height and cunning. Uniformed constables could be fined a stupendous £50 (approaching a year's pay) for being caught with a glass of beer when on duty. If they exerted their authority and made a mistake they risked being hauled before superior officers and dropping a ‘class'. As it could take eight years to get from one ‘class' to another and gain a pay increase of twenty per cent, this did not seem a punishment proportionate to the offence.

Melville, in France, was fortunately spared most of this. He could still work autonomously, reporting directly to Littlechild.

In London police morale was low; police officers were entirely demotivated and assertive action by the force, from murder investigation to crowd control, was disastrously affected. So disastrously, in fact, that with the Jack the Ripper killings of September and October the public began to grow restive and the Queen feared ‘that the detective department is not so efficient as it might be'. In October the
Pall Mall Gazette
printed an article that could only have been inspired by Monro, banished to some Home Office backwater but fighting hard. It demonstrated intimate knowledge of Scotland Yard and was entirely unsympathetic to Warren.

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