M (41 page)

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.

7    Letter from Captain Repington to Sir Charles Hardinge, 21 March 1906, TNA HD 3/133.

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.

2    Harold Brust,
I Guarded Kings,
Hillman-Curl Inc., New York 1936.

3    
The Political Background of the Houndsditch murders and the Sidney Street Siege,
undated report with appendices, TNA KV3/39.

4    
The Times,
9 May 1911.

5    Frederick Porter Wensley,
Detective Days,
Cassell and Co, 1931.

6    Appendix to
The Political Background of the Houndsditch Murders, &c,
ibid. Gardstein was the wounded man who died.

7    
Houndsditch 1910
in TNA KV 3/39.

8    He was hidden for four days at 24A, Dock Road, North Woolwich, before getting out of the country. See note 1 above.

9    Archie Potts's account of James Melville's life (Metropolitan Police Museum) cites
The Times
of 3 May 1911.

10  Private letter to Archie Potts from Mary Melville (James's daughter), 29 March 1988, Metropolitan Police Museum, ibid.

11  Anthony Wood,
Great Britain 1900-1965,
Longman 1968, p.72.

12  The Ilfracombe holiday is referred to in the diary of Vernon Kell, 3 and 5 September 1910, TNA KV 1/10 and in the
Ilfracombe Gazette and Observer,
29 August 1910.

13  See
The Times
18 March 1912 p.3 col. D, and 23 March 1912 p.7 col. a.

14  Christopher Andrew,
Secret Service,
Heinemann 1985, p.61.

15  
Steinhauer, the Kaiser's Master Spy,
ed. Sidney Felstead, The Bodley Head 1930.